There are countless books written on the subject. The "bible" being What to Drink with What You Eat
What makes it worse is the fact that I usually hit the nail on the head when I don't actually follow a recipe, but mash a few together to accommodate what I have in my fridge and pantry. While these meals are a delight and help boost my confidence in the kitchen, they make me sad and a little angry when they're over because I won't be able to duplicate the experience. I never write it down because I go by taste and feel. Great for the dish, bad for posterity. I know it should be more about the journey, blah, blah, blah, but it would be great to have a few pairing/recipe locks in my repertoire.
A few months ago I was at a bar where the hip, mustachioed bartenders were touting their selection of superlative old-school cocktails. So I ordered a Manhattan. My husband turned to me and said, “You know a Manhattan is a guy’s drink, right?”
After about a decade of studying and drinking wine, I've become the
de facto "expert" amongst our group of friends. Which is to say I've
read more wine books, taken more classes and wine tasted in more
regions than them, but what I've learned is just the tip of the wine
iceberg. That being said, since I have this website, I get asked a lot
of questions about wine, but there are two that always seem to come up
with the answers usually engendering surprise. 
The mint growing in my garden is prolific. I'm really bad about getting out there and thinning it so it pretty much takes over. I don't mind though, I love sprinkling it over summer fruit and mixing it into iced tea and water in the summertime. As far as I'm concerned I could never really have enough mint, I find it's uses endless.
Though I love wine, I don’t own much wine paraphernalia. Good glassware and a sturdy corkscrew is pretty much all anybody needs. Carafes are nice for entertaining. Aerators a possible necessity if you’re drinking a lot of young red wine, but I generally spend my wine dollars on wine. We have a fairly large cellar and once people find out how many bottles we have - enough to survive a year without buying more, not so much we couldn’t drink it in our lifetime - the first question is always “how much do you drink?” Let’s just say there are two of us, usually one bottle a day…you can do the math.