A wine tasting can teach you about the ways in which wines interact with powerfully flavored foods.

¢ Pair chips and a picante salsa with a few wines: for instance, a Riesling, a sauvignon blanc and an oaked chardonnay. Taste each against the salsa, and see if the wine’s effect is cooling, complementary or exacerbating.

¢ Or pick up some wasabi peas, and taste them against a big, high-alcohol, tannic red, such as a cabernet sauvignon (which turns up the volume on the heat levels), vs. an off-dry, lower-alcohol Riesling (which is likely to tame the flames).