Matching Choosing by 'method' or personal taste? What is the best match? When does a sip of wine demand a mouthful of a certain dish and vice versa? Apart from any more or less scientific theory the best way is the simple, very personal opinion on which foods and wines go best together. Of course there are certain fundamental rules, dictated by personal taste and following a certain reasoning: to eat a very delicate dish with an overpowering wine would ruin the dish; on the contrary a very complex dish would obscure the aromas of the wine. In other words, using your head is often the best way. There have been many studies of the combination of food and wine and two theories are particularly well-known. The first is the one used professionally by the wine waiters of the Italian Association of Sommeliers (AIS). This is the so-called Mercatini method, which considers certain features of the wine and the food and giving points for each sensation. The results are then scored on a diagram with concentric circles which, when joined, form two irregular polygons, one for food and the other for wine. The more similar the shape of the two polygons the better the pairing will be. Another technique is the 'Sicheri method': in this case too, intensity values are attributed (0-4) to different characteristics of the food and the wine. The values are added and the more similar the values are the better the food and wine will complement each other.