White wine with fish is one of the best known rules of thumbs in food and wine matching. Researchers at Mercian Corp in Fujisawa in Japan has discovered why red wine and fish don’t marry well. Apparently, when the iron contents in the wine reaches 2 milligrams per litre or more there’s a chemical reaction that creates unpleasant fishy tastes.
The researches are not quite certain with what the iron reacts but think that it might be with an unsaturated fatty acid that exists in some types of fish and shellfish. And since red wine generally has higher iron contents than white wines it is the red-with-fish combination that does not work. However, not all red wines have such high iron contents and not all fish/shellfish produce this result.
So the conclusion is: if you want red wine with fish you just have to try it and see if it works.
As reported in sciencenow.sciencemag.org
