One reason why I love wine is its ability to engage all your senses. Its shiny hue entices you to the glass. It’s a reflecting pool or a transparent prism to see yourself and the world in a different way as you take each sip. Of course it engages your sense of smell and taste, but equally as important is how it feels in your mouth and glides down your throat as the alcohol slowly relaxes your nerves. However, the sense that is least engaged directly is hearing. Perhaps the sound of the cork being popped and the wine being poured conjures up some Pavlovian response. Sparkling wines also have a sound and that may actually indicate the size of the bubbles and hence the quality. Otherwise, there’s not much that wine directly adds to your sense of hearing. Yet, some of the greatest conversations you’ve had were over a glass of wine. You’re listening acutely to who and what’s around you as your other senses are enthralled in pleasure. And if there’s the right music around you, it can enhance your overall drinking experience too. So how do you find the right wine and music pairing?
Research
Surprisingly, there’s already been some research on this topic. At the most fundamental level, psychologists say your surroundings influence your brain and hence your pleasure doing something. For example, my wife loves to listen to music while doing the dishes. Thus a boring task becomes more fun as a result. Restaurant owners have known this for years when creating the ambiance for dining. Although there are many other factors influencing your enjoyment of a wine and many other choices one has to consider when choosing wine and music (food, occasion, lighting, etc.), your music pairing choice can improve your enjoyment of wine and vice versa.
One study showed that certain wines matched certain rhythms and pitches better. For example, it said that sweet wines went well with a slow tempo and high pitch while acidic wines work well with a fast syncopated tempo and high pitch. In addition, wines with chocolate oaky notes pair with low pitch music and tannic wines match with rock guitar music. Much of these findings sound a lot like how to pair wines and food. If you match similar characteristics together like a heavy wine with heavier food, then why not a heavy wine with heavy music? You can find more research here from an Australian producer.
My Music Pairings
Beyond the studies, I often pair wine with music from the same country or region the wine comes from. Perhaps it’s a bit cheesy, but having Spanish flamenco music or the Gispy Kings, with Spanish food and wine makes me feel like I’m back in Andalucia. A bit of Edith Piaf with French Bistro food and a Burgundy or Cotes du Rhone go perfect together. Since this is a Chilean wine blog, I should recommend some Chilean artists to try with your next glass of Chilean wine. Some of the most popular Chilean musicians today are Gepe, Manuel Garcia and Mon Laferte. If you’re old school, you can look for some Violeta Parra folk songs or if you’re feeling revolutionary, try Los Prisioneros rock music. Here’s a good summary of other rising Chilean artists. Overall, this type of pairing is an attempt at a fuller cultural immersion, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be that shallow if you do your research.
I have some other common pairings I do. I’m more likely to pair Old World wines with more classical or traditional music and New World wines with more modern music. Therefore, a Bordeaux seems great with Mozart while Napa feels more like pop R&B. For some reason, I love classic Jazz with more complex wines. Perhaps it’s the improvisational aspect of Jazz that matches the unexpected nature of complex wine.
None of the studies I saw really focused on lyrics either, but I imagine we could also match lyrics with styles of wine. Sometimes, if I drink a particularly easy or heady wine, I listen to a song about wine or with the word “wine” in the lyrics such as A Case of You, Lilac Wine, Red Red Wine, Hotel California, Norwegian Wood or maybe Ironic with my Chardonnay. Even better, I’ll try listening to Dame de Haute Savoie next time I have a wine from the Savoie with my melted cheese dish. If you’re rolling in dough, there are plenty of Jay-Z songs mentioning Cristal and other wines that you can pair with his music. You’d be surprised how many customers come into wine shops looking for drinks mentioned in songs.
In the same vein, if you’re a huge fan of a certain musician, you can try drinking the wine they love paired with their music. For instance, Bjork reportedly loves Châteauneuf du Pape, Katie Perry loves Argentine Malbec, and Adele loves California Sauvignon Blanc. If you can afford it and love Rihanna, try drinking a Sassicaia along with Umbrella and Diamonds.
Lastly, another factor I’ve considered is pairing my wine autobiographically (I stole this from High Fidelity). Firstly, you can simply match an older vintage with music from the year or decade it came from. Both the wine and music bring you back nostalgically to that year/decade. On the other hand, certain music and wine I associate with certain memories, people and places. I can match a producer I used to drink at a certain time in my life and match it with the music I also listened to during that time. The music and wine can also match the person you’re drinking with. If I had wine from Eastern Europe, perhaps I would play the Californication Album because that’s what was playing the most the summer I backpacked there. If my friend from high school was over for dinner, then maybe I’d have a California wine (where I’m from) with some music from my high school days (not going to reveal my age here).
Conclusion
Ultimately, even more so than with food and wine, music pairing is highly subjective. Moreover, there’s no point in pairing a type of music you hate because some study showed it pairs best with a type of wine you love. In fact, there are times when no music is best with wine. I know it sounds stupid, but sometimes when a place is too noisy and the wine isn’t particularly forthcoming, I awkwardly try to cover my ears and close my eyes while I drink a wine to try to drown out all the other senses. The underlying factor with music and wine, like with most things in life, is paying more attention to how you plan things such as meals, having your senses engaged in the moment when you commune with others and remembering where you came from. Music and wine simply add another layer to how you make the most of your moments. Being stuck at home for several weeks has helped me to appreciate those little layers to an everyday moment.
What are your favorite wine and music pairings? Please share.
Addendum
After sharing ideas about this topic with others and doing a little more research, I realized that there are other ways wine and music pair together. For some producers, music inspires their wine making such as the label and is part of their business model. Tarpon Cellars partners with Spotify to bring music, art and wine together. Frontera (a Concha y Toro label) also does the same. Tarapaca also some music recommendations for their wines. As a guitar player too, I neglected to reflect on how wine and performing music often go together. My conclusion on that is that you always feel you’re playing better than you actually are, but perhaps it relaxes you enough to find your groove. If you’re into ASMR, I found a youtuber doing wine ASMR videos trying to use wine sounds to trigger that tingling sensation, but I prefer just the tingling buzz from drinking wine rather than listening to it. I also found a Chilean producer who uses music to serenade his wine in barrels. It’s called Viñas Inéditas. The same article also mentions that there have been proven effects on music vibrations on plant growth too. I imagine all those monks in Burgundy chanted around their wines too. Speaking of which, Montes uses Gregorian Chant to serenade their Purple Angel while it’s in barrel and Comte Abbatucci in Corsica plays traditional Corsican music with loudspeakers over their vines. Finally, there have been studies on how music influences wine purchases in stores, with classical music leading to more expensive purchases for example. Thanks for sharing. I keep learning new things too.
Read the follow-up article here, where we experiment with music and wine tasting.