WSET Level 2 Food Pairing Quiz: 20 Free Questions
Free WSET Level 2 quiz on food pairing, storage, and service: 20 questions on how food changes wine, serving temperature, decanting, and faults.
Drill this topic
20 questions drawn at random from the 26 in Sommo's WSET Level 2 bank that cover food pairing, storage, and service. Explanations on every answer. Free, no sign-up, unlimited retakes.
This is the part of Level 2 that people assume is common sense and then lose marks on, because the exam does not ask what tastes nice. It asks what a specific food component does to a specific wine component, and the answers are counterintuitive: sweetness in food makes a dry wine taste thinner and more acidic, umami makes tannin taste harsher, salt makes it softer.
The quiz drills those interactions along with storage conditions, serving temperature, decanting, glassware, and the faults you have to recognize on service.
Common questions
Sweetness and umami in food are hard on wine: they increase the perception of acidity, bitterness, and alcohol, and strip out fruit. Salt and acidity in food are kind to it: they soften tannin and make the wine seem fruitier and rounder. Matching intensity matters as much as matching flavors.
Because a dry wine served alongside something sweeter than itself tastes thin, sour, and hollow. The wine has to be at least as sweet as the dish for the pairing to work, which is why Sauternes with a fruit tart succeeds where a dry Riesling fails.
Cork taint, which smells of wet cardboard and flattens the fruit; oxidation, which browns the color and brings bruised-apple or sherry notes where they do not belong; volatile acidity, which smells of vinegar or nail polish remover; and refermentation, which leaves an unexpected spritz in a still wine.
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