Book excerpt: Food and Wine Pairing: A Sensory Experience provides a series of discussion and exercises ranging from identifying basic wine characteristics, including visual, aroma, taste (acid, sweetness, oak, tannin, body, etc.), palate mapping (acid, sweet, sour, bitter, and tannin), basic food characteristics and anchors of each (sweet, sour, bitter, saltiness, fattiness, body, etc). It presents how these characteristics contrast and complement each other. By helping culinary professionals develop the skills necessary to identifying the key elements in food or wine that will directly impact its matching based on contrast or similarities, they will then be able to predict excellent food and wine pairings.