Whether we are organizing a dinner party at home or at a restaurant, we may sometimes be stuck for ideas when it comes to choosing a wine to go with the planned dishes.

Although there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to pairing food and wine, below are seven easy food and wine pairing tips that you could follow when planning a dinner party. These seven tips are designed to make planning the party easier for you. I know, planning a party can be highly stressful! But the most important thing is to choose wines that you really like.

Seven Easy Tips To Make Merry With Food And Wine:

Wines that go well with a range of foods are somewhat acidic, slightly sweet, and generally full flavoured but medium-bodied. Choose wines with these qualities if you are looking for a “one bottle fits all” kind of wine.

Are you planning a multi-course meal? Work from light to dark wines progressively. Lighter wines tend to bring out the best in appetisers and salads, whereas heavier reds go better with hearty meat dishes. Matching flavours (such as choosing a fruity wine with a fruit-based dessert) or creating a contrast (choosing a sweet wine with a tangy meat dish) is highly subjective.

Cheese tends to bring out the best in almost every wine. You can try bleu with port, madeira or sherry; old cheddar with sauvignon blanc; brie with champagne.




Sparkling wine complements seafood appetisers like raw oysters or shrimp. Champagne also makes an excellent pairing with sushi, foie gras or mushroom appetisers.

The lightness of champagne will go down well with chicken or seafood dishes like lobster, scallops and shrimp dishes without the creamy sauces. Champagne also works marvellously with light treats like berries, fruity desserts, shortbread or cookies.

Match the weight of the dish (in terms of its richness) with that of your wine (in terms of its age, flavour and tannin levels).

Select a wine that is a tad sweeter than your dessert. This combination will eventually even out, with the wine tasting a little less sweet than the tit-bits. You may want to sip ice wine on its own, as a substitute for, or after desserts as it is a sweet wine on its own.

If you wish to pick up further useful information concerning food and wine pairing, you could check out the following guides from Amazon. I’ve read them and they have certainly made my wine tastings and dinner parties a lot more fun. Have a great day!

You can consume wine when you are a diabetic, but you should consume wine with a carbohydrate food or with a meal. Consuming wine without a meal can cause one’s blood sugar to dip unexpectedly (hypoglycaemia), especially if he or she is dependent on insulin or medication. When blood sugar drops, the liver starts to turn stored carbohydrate reserves in the body into glucose which is then released into the bloodstream to counter the hypoglycaemia.

However, when a diabetic consumes wine without a meal, the liver does not turn stored carbohydrate in the body to glucose. Instead, the liver turns the wine that is being consumed into glucose instead. When more than a light to moderate amount of wine is consumed, the alcohol in the wine starts to react with many of the prescribed diabetic medications, and worsen the side effects of diabetes, such as the increase in blood pressure.

Therefore, if you are a diabetic, you should only consume a maximum of two 10 g standard drinks per day for men, and one 10 g standard drink for women. One 10 g standard drink is approximately 100 ml of wine.

Recent studies have shown that the regular light to moderate consumption of wine by a diabetic with a meal, may also reduce your overall risk of cardiovascular disease. This is related to the positive effect of alcohol on your body’s metabolism of glucose and insulin, and on your plasma concentration of high density lipoprotein (HDL), which increases the removal of cholesterol from your body. On the other hand, the heavy consumption of wine or alcohol will worsen the effects of diabetes, such as significantly increasing your fasting plasma concentration of fats, such as triglyceride.

Therefore, how do you harness the health benefits of drinking wine without worsening your diabetic condition?

Diabetics should consume low sugar or “dry” varieties of wine such as dry sherry, still or sparkling wines. Diabetics should steer clear of medium dry or sweet sherry as well as sweet dessert wines. High sugar liqueurs and fortified wines are not recommended for diabetics.

Click here to read Julia Hanf’s amazing true story of how she overcame her wedding night disaster and cured her husband of diabetes. Click here to check out her comprehensive diabetes guide now.

The February 2008 issue of Journal of Food Biochemistry published a report with news that red wine and tea may help type 2 diabetics metabolize sugars and starches properly. However, the study’s authors warn that results are not yet conclusive and that more research needs to be done.

Type 2 diabetic patients must keep blood sugar levels as normal as possible to prevent the disease from elevating the chances of heart disease, high blood pressure and possible damage to eyes, kidneys, nerves and blood vessels. “Levels of blood sugar, or blood glucose, rise sharply in patients with type 2 diabetes immediately following a meal,” said researcher Kalidas Shetty, a professor of food biotechnology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a U.S. State Department Jefferson Science Fellow. “Red wine and tea contain natural [phenolic] antioxidants that may slow the passage of glucose through the small intestine and eventually into the bloodstream and prevent this spike.”

Shetty and his team at the department of food science conducted the study as part of a larger initiative to examine the benefits of a diverse diet filled with fresh and healthy, locally available ingredients. Currently, medication for type 2 diabetes to regulate blood sugar has side effects that include intestinal issues. The medication induces improper regulation of pancreatic enzymes, which may in turn cause cramping, flatulence and diarrohea. Shetty and fellow scientists Young-In Kwon and Emmanouil Apostolidis said that alternative therapies, such as dietary management, may offer a solution with no uncomfortable side effects.

Diets rich in red wine have already shown established benefits to heart health. The “Mediterranean diet,” rich in wine and fruit, has been shown to protect against heart attacks. Likewise, research on tea has shown beneficial effects on health. Both are rich in phenols. Phenols are plant-based chemicals that have been found in previous studies to prevent cardiovascular disease. The chemicals also act as antioxidants, which help reduce the damaging oxidative stress on human tissues prevalent in type 2 diabetes.

The scientists prepared samples of two enzymes. The first enzyme alpha-glucosidase, is responsible for triggering the absorption of glucose by the small intestine. In type 2 diabetes sufferers, alpha-glucosidase causes too much starch and sugar to be broken down in the small intestine, thus flooding the blood with too much sugar. The second enzyme, called alpha-amylase, is often triggered by type 2 diabetes medications, causing the painful side effects.

After preparing the enzymes, the scientists exposed the samples to four types of tea: green, black, oolong and white, as well as eight kinds of wine: four reds and four whites, all sourced from local liquor stores. When the scientists exposed the enzymes separately to the teas and wines, they found all of the red wines were able to inhibit the enzyme alpha-glucosidase by nearly 100 percent, which meant better blood-sugar regulation. The white wines were only able to inhibit the glucose-digesting molecule by 20 percent. All of the teas inhibited alpha-glucosidase by 85 to 95 percent. Shetty added that the differences between red and white wines came as no surprise given the levels of phenols in red is considerable higher.

Furthermore, neither the wine nor the tea triggered the pancreatic enzyme, alpha-amylase, which means the beverages may potentially prevent the painful side effects.

In spite of this, Shetty warns that red wine as a type 2 diabetes therapy is still in the distant future as it is difficult to create a daily dosage recommendation for the general population based on one study. Therefore, Shetty would not suggest drinking red wine to solve a problem on its own. Instead, he suggests drinking one to two glasses of red wine daily, plus four to five glasses of tea with a diet comprising a wide choice of whole and fresh foods, in order to consume optimal levels of protective phenolic chemicals. The best approach is to have sufficient local food and traditional food diversity.

For tips on how diabetics can consume wine safely, please refer to the next post. To learn more about the root cause of diabetes and slowly but surely trigger your body to produce more insulin, click here to read about how your body can achieve a diabetes breakthrough.

This free wine rack plan was found at Burke’s Backyard.

Scott Cam built a simple wine rack to hold 12 wine bottles, 6 on the top shelf and 6 on the bottom shelf. Scott took only about an hour to complete this easy and inexpensive wine rack project. The wine rack shown was built from maple, but you could use whatever timber you wish.

Materials and Estimated Costs

2 x maple end pieces (19 x 285 x 300mm) approximately $29.90 per metre for 19mm by 290mm maple stock

4 x maple supports (40 x 40 x 600mm)) approximately $6.40 per metre for 42mm x42mm maple cross pieces

34 x maple moulding chocks (9 x 9 x 40mm) approximately $5.45 per metre for 9mm x 9mm maple moulding

1 x 50 piece pkt brass wood screws counter sunk 8 gauge x 32mm)

1 x pkt bullet nails, 15mm)

1 x 250ml PVA adhesive glue)

1 x 200ml Wattle Wood Gel (wine rack shown had Western Jarrah on) at about $8.75

1 x MDF sheet (3 x 900 x 600mm) for $3.30

Acrylic paint (whatever colour you like)

1 x 500ml Wattle Estapol Gloss at about $8.40 for 250 ml

The materials listed above are all available from hardware stores.

Step by Step Wine Rack Plan Instructions

Cut 2 pieces of 19mm x 285mm maple to match the length of a wine bottle (300mm). These will be the ends of your wine rack. Cut 4 x 600mm lengths of the 40mm x 40mm maple. These will be your supports. (Tip: to save time, have the timber pre-cut to length.)

Lay the end pieces flat and position the wine bottle on the timber, keeping the bottle at a slight slant so that when it sits on the rack the cork always stays wet.

Using a carpenter’s pencil, mark out where you want the supports to go, making sure you mark out both sides of the bottle. Use a triangle square to check your positions.

Using these marks, pre-drill all your screw holes.

Lightly sand all your timber pieces with a fine sanding sponge until all the edges are smooth.

Insert your brass screws into the pre-drilled holes on the end pieces. Attach the supports to the end pieces. Sand the outside of the end pieces to smooth out the drill holes.

Once the wine rack was complete, Rita Hill added the finishing touches.

Rita’s Wine Rack Finishing Touches

Cut the chocks to the same width as the supports (40mm). Measure out 40mm intervals along the 9 x 9mm maple moulding then use a mitre box to make your cuts uniform and square. Sand off the rough edges.

Measure and mark out 100mm intervals for the back chocks. Glue and nail into position. (Tip: nailing the chocks is easier if you tap each nail in first, just to get it started). Wipe off any excess PVA glue. Use the neck of a wine bottle as a guide to help you space the front chocks, then nail and glue them into position.

Stain the rack in the colour of your choice. (Rita used Wattle Wood Gel ‘Western Jarrah’.) Allow to dry thoroughly.

Using spray adhesive, stick the page of letters to some 3mm MDF. Cut the letters out using a jigsaw, and then peel the paper off.

Paint the letters with acrylic paint. When dry, lay the letters out and stick them down with PVA glue.

Finally, give the whole wine rack a coat of varnish, such as Wattle Estapol Gloss.

You can go to Burke’s Backyard for more factsheets and other information on home and garden.

Learn how to build a wine rack within 4 hours! To have access to twelve easy, step-by-step detailed wine rack plans, click here. Includes twenty wine rack design ideas, as well as tips on how you can customize the wood wine rack plans to suit your very own needs.