For countless years we have been told to pair red wine with red meats and save white wine for choices like fish and poultry; but these archaic guidelines aren't able to take into consideration the wide range of foods and produce available today with their multitude of varying flavours.

There is definitely much more to food and wine pairing than just taking the type of meat into consideration. However, finding the right type of wine to compliment your meal doesn't have to be a complicated or bothersome endeavour.

While the "rules" for food and wine pairing have been relaxed quite a bit in recent years, it nevertheless remains a highly subjective process. Experimenting with your tastes and expressing your own personality are recommended as excellent ways of finding a wine that will make the perfect match for your meal.

With any type of meal, regardless of its ingredients or preparation methods, the ultimate goal is to find a pleasing balance between the wine and the food.

Wine should never overpower the flavour of food, and vice versa. All wines taste differently when drunk without eating anything and the right match can greatly help to enhance the taste of food. Components of wine like acids, sugars and tannins interact with foods to bring about a variety of tasteful sensations.

Although you want a balance of sweetness between the food and drink, be careful when matching foods sweeter than the wine to avoid overpowering or masking flavours.

Sweet foods will intensify the astringency of wines, causing them to taste stronger and drier. Salty foods, on the other hand, can help to tone down the bitterness of a wine causing it to taste considerably sweeter. And for acidic foods, choose equally acidic wines, or a very light, sweet choice to complement the meal.

Alternately, you may also want to consider pairing opposites, such as a sweet dessert wine along with a hot, spicy dish. Opposites do attract in this instance as the very different flavours help to cleanse the palate making it easier to fully enjoy each separately but also together.

For the best match, aim to balance flavour intensity equally pairing lighter bodied wines with lighter dishes and fuller bodied varieties with heavier, richer foods.

Matching flavours is another guideline to follow, such as pairing earthy wines like a pinot noir with a hearty mushroom soup. Dishes with meat as its main ingredient or those with creams are best suited for fuller bodied wines with up to 15% alcohol content whereas simpler dishes, perhaps with fewer or lighter ingredients, will call for wines with lower alcohol content somewhere in the seven to 10 percent range.

If you find that you are really at a loss pairing a meal with a certain wine, it would be difficult to go wrong using geographic location as a starting point. Using regional foods with their respective wines, as in Italian dishes with wines from the same country, often results in a rather tasteful pairing.

Ultimately, you will know you've found the ideal match when you enjoy either the similarities or contrasts of flavours, texture or body, intensity, and of course, taste.