Choosing the Right Wine For Your Food
Nothing can make a meal more satisfying than having a glass or two of good wine to go with your food. Now you don’t have to be a wine connoisseur to have a superb wine with your meal. There are simple rules when it comes to choosing right wine and they shouldn’t be too hard to follow.
- Red wine should go with pasta and beef, white wine should go with fish and chicken.
- The wine’s “body” refers to how powerful and weighty the liquid will feel in your mouth. There are heavy-bodied wines and light-bodied wines. Heavy-bodied wines should be paired with heavy meals packed with more flavor. Light-bodied wines should go with lighter foods, such as salads.
- Full-bodied wines are great with beef, barbecued chicken, game and pastas in red sauce. Light seafood, grilled chicken, hams and mild-cheeses will do best paired with light-bodied wines.
- If you want to keep things simple, you can pair food and wine that comes from the same region. They generally taste well together because winemakers consider how their wine would taste when creating it. So if you’re eating Italian food, you can’t go wrong with a Chianti.
- There are wines that are better paired with desserts than other foods. Wines such as Ports, Sherries and Muscats are very sweet and will not taste really well with heavy meals such as beef or chicken. Dessert wines can also be paired with cheeses.
If you want to be more specific, here is a short list of foods and the wines that will go well with it.
Steak
- Merlot
- Syrah
- Zinfandel
- Cabernet Sauvignon
Barbecue chicken
- Zinfandel
- Chianti
- Syrah
- White Burgundy
Grilled or baked chicken
- Sauvignon Blanc
- Chardonnay
- Pinot Grigio
- Pinot Noir
- Burgundy
Fish
- Pinot Noir
- Beaujolais
- Chardonnay
Pasta in Red Sauce
- Zinfandel
- Chianti
- Pinot Blanc
- Cabernet Sauvignon
Paste in White Sauce
- Chardonnay
- Merlot
- Sauvignon Blanc
