How We Wine Food

Our favorite wines to enjoy with food are lower in alcohol, higher in acidity, fresh- and alive-tasting, and are made by vintners who allow the grapes to speak louder than their winemaking methods. There are exceptions, of course. A grilled steak needs a bigger wine with deeper fruit flavors, like Northern Rhône syrah. A slow-cooked tagine with dried fruit is perfectly suited to the zinfandel grape that’s baked in the California sun.

When we’re thinking about wine food, we want balance first and foremost. Neither the wine nor the food should outweigh the other. Some wines are complemented best by foods with similar flavors. Think freshly shucked oysters with briny Muscadet. Other wines benefit from some contrast, like a rich, cheesy soufflé with high-toned gamay.

Most food can be wine food. Outside of super-spicy or overly acidic dishes, there’s a wine to match pretty much anything you want to eat. Try lots of different wines with the food you cook. The recipes and recommended wines that follow are merely starting points.

How to Use This Book

In the following pages, you’ll uncover recipes that aren’t typically partnered with wine, but deserve to be, as well as updated classics that beg for a good bottle on the table. Each recipe is a fresh introduction to a type of wine, with information about where it comes from, a few producers who are making exemplary versions to seek out, and commentary on how and why the wine’s flavors work so well with the dish. The wines and recipes are grouped into chapters based on occasions, seasons of the year, and times of the day, whether you’re hosting an afternoon barbecue or an evening “prefunk” before you go see a show. Interspersed are feasts for gatherings, with full menus meant for celebrating a specific type of wine; we recommend you invite friends to each bring a bottle to share. Also sprinkled throughout are pairing guides that cover everything from takeout food to ten of the most beloved pastas of Italy.

Our approach to matching wine and food spans both special and everyday reasons to open a bottle and cook something that will taste great with it. Many of the recipes are geared toward cooking simple, everyday dinners, but we think it’s important to consider any and all opportunities to drink wine and enjoy a good meal, from weekend brunches to cozy winter suppers to those times when all you want to do is pop a cork and pull something from the pantry.

Recommended Wines and Producers

As you thumb through this book, you may be surprised to see some of the grape varieties and regions we’ve included. For far too long, Americans have been on a limited wine diet, drinking wines made only from the most popular ten or so grapes that all come from the five highest-producing countries. What a shame. Italian pinot grigio, for example, is one of the most-consumed wines in the United States, but there are hundreds of other tasty varietals grown in Italy that you’ve probably never heard of. Our goal is to introduce you to more of the vast assortment of grapes and the countries that grow them.

In addition, we highlight emerging categories, such as pétillant naturel (“pét-nat”), biodynamics, and orange wine (see this page); a shift toward lower alcohol styles; and a new appreciation for wines made naturally.

The producers we’ve recommended all make natural wines. While the term natural can be quite controversial and doesn’t have a solid, agreed-upon definition in winemaking, it generally means that the grapes are grown without the use of herbicides or pesticides and the vineyards are organically or biodynamically farmed, regardless of whether they are certified as such. The wines ferment by way of their own wild yeasts, instead of commercial yeast strains, and they’re made without any additives except for little or no sulfur, which is naturally occurring in grapes and is often a necessary preservative. Seems pretty straightforward, right? Sadly, there’s a laundry list of legally approved additives that can be used in winemaking—everything from colorants to tannin softeners to fish bladders—without any requirement to list them on a wine’s label. The producers we highlight are some of our favorite winemakers from around the world, and you can have confidence that their wines are not only delicious, but also fit in the spectrum of naturally made wines.

This is a book for everyday wine drinking, so for most of the styles we recommend, you’ll be able to find a bottle for less than $25, with the occasional splurge.

A Note on Cooking with Wine

You may have heard the saying “Cook with a wine you’d be happy to drink.” While the thought of cooking with the same wine that you’ll be drinking with dinner is a nice notion, sometimes that means sacrificing half a bottle of said wine. We buy an extra bottle for cooking special meals like coq au vin, when the wine is a star component of the dish. But most of the time we keep half-drunk bottles in the refrigerator for a week to ten days for the purpose of using them in our cooking. In our recipes, we call for “dry red” or “dry white.” We’re not saying to pour a bottle of plonk into your pot, but we are saying that it is okay to use the dregs in the bottom of a bottle that’s been sitting on your counter a little too long (assuming that it was a tasty wine to begin with).

How to Buy Wine

Before you can drink wine, you have to buy it, and for most people, that’s an entirely intimidating experience that includes a wall of wine, shelves full of bottles, a million different label designs, foreign languages, and wildly different prices. And if it’s intimidating enough, you’ll probably just walk down the wine aisle of your grocery store, scan for prices, grab a label that appeals to you, and then maybe stick with that bottle every week until the store doesn’t have it anymore and you’re forced to choose a new wine. For something so delicious and exciting, that doesn’t sound like fun at all. Here are our tips to make finding and buying wine a more enjoyable experience.

Befriend a Shopkeeper

We’re often asked for advice on how to decipher good wine from bad. Well, lots of reading and tasting will help. But the most surefire way is to buy your wine at a shop where you can build a personal relationship with the shopkeeper. Maybe such a place doesn’t exist in your town, but there are numerous online retailers who sell fantastic wines and, even virtually, they will happily help you choose what to buy. Think of that person as a steward, a sherpa, a guide to get you to the wines you want to drink. Most people don’t have enough time in their lives to learn the intricacies of wine. But that sherpa has time, so you may as well take advantage of her wisdom. Start by telling her what you like and, equally as important, what you don’t like. Be forthright about how much you’d like to spend on a bottle. Let her choose a few wines for you to take home to drink. Take notes or photos of the wines you enjoyed and go back in a week or two for another round of bottles. Drink. Repeat. Over a month or two, that shopkeeper, now your friend, will have a really good idea of what you like to drink. We challenge you to go beyond the grocery-store wine department and discount outlets. Sure, they’re convenient, but the selection is often limited to wines that will help the store meet a bottom line, and the prices at an independent shop aren’t necessarily higher. For a list of some of our favorite retailers around the country, many of whom have online shops, see the Resources (this page).

The Price Is Right…or Is It?

Our lives very much revolve around our day-to-day expenses. And while wine isn’t a necessary expense, it is necessary…know what we mean? Our hope is that you’ll start to think about wine in the same way that you think about food, namely, that you get what you pay for. That doesn’t mean you have to pay $40 to drink a great bottle, or even $25. Price doesn’t always correlate to quality in the world of wine. We’ve had mind-blowing bottles that cost us less than a takeout dinner for two, and shockingly bad bottles that were the same price as a new cashmere sweater. Sure, certain wines just cost more because of where they’re from. Red Burgundy, for example, will always be more expensive than Languedoc-Roussillon wines, because of their prestige. That being said, you don’t have to choose the priciest bottle of Burgundy to drink well. On the flip side, heavily manipulated wines made at factory wineries typically will be inexpensive because they are mass-produced. In general, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a good-quality bottle for much less than $15. Of course, there are exceptions, but if you use that as your benchmark, you’ll be able to find good wines priced for everyday drinking. If you have $20 to spend, you’re in a totally different category with many more options. We recommend that you stick to what you want to spend on a bottle but stay flexible about the types of wines you’re willing to drink for the money.

Bottle, Box, Can, or Keg?

We say buy the bottle, 100 percent of the time. There are great merits to a box of wine in your fridge with an easy-access spout. Since it’s not exposed to air, you don’t have to drink it right away. Canned wine is awesome chilled in a cold creek after a long hike. And kegs have saved wineries the expense of bottles and labels and made wine more accessible by popping up in places like bars. But we’re traditionalists on this subject, and we most enjoy wine out of a bottle. We don’t love the idea of our wine sitting in the plastic bag that lines a box, nor do we like how wine tastes coming through keg lines. A canning line is much too expensive for a small winery, so it’s almost certain that canned wines come from large-scale operations where the quality won’t be as high. That being said, this is purely a subject of personal preference, so feel free to experiment.

Label Lexicon

How many times have you, or someone you know, bought a wine because of the label? The age-old adage “Don’t judge a book by its cover” comes into play here. We can’t emphasize this enough. There are marketing geniuses who create amazing artwork for terrible wines, and, conversely, some of our favorite bottles have labels that look like they came off a home printer. Don’t get wooed by critter labels—those with roosters or dogs on bikes—or fancy letterpress, or gold-leaf embossing. They might be cute, or even very beautiful, but they don’t give an indication of what’s inside the bottle. Deciphering labels written in a language you don’t read can be tricky. Even trickier is the fact that every country has its own rules for how wines need to be labeled. Three of the most common labeling styles to know are French, German, and Italian, but keep in mind there are many variations from region to region.

The Bigger the Bottle the Better

187.5 ml: Split

375 ml: Half

750 ml: Standard (5 glasses of wine)

1.5 L: Magnum (2 standard bottles)

3 L: Double magnum (4 standard bottles)

4.5 L: Jeroboam (6 standard bottles)

6 L: Imperial or Methuselah (8 standard bottles)

9 L: Salmanazar (12 standard bottles, 1 case of wine)

12 L: Balthazar (16 standard bottles)

15 L: Nebuchadnezzar (20 standard bottles)

Serve like a Sommelier

Sommeliers dedicate innumerable hours learning the finer points of fine-dining service and infinite details about grapes, regions, and styles of wine. It’s admirable, but not something most people are interested in pursuing. You don’t need to study for years or pass an intensive exam to serve wine at home. What follows are our suggestions for opening and sharing a bottle at your next party or for a quiet dinner tomorrow night.

Opening Act

The corkscrew—you can’t open a bottle without one. Well, you can, but it involves a shoe, or a book, or a pair of pliers. There are big, bulky cork pullers, like the rabbit-style, and electric bottle openers that take up too much space on a kitchen counter. There are fancy corkscrews with wings that cantilever the cork from the bottle, and the classic two-pronged ah-so that most people can’t figure out how to use. What you really need is available at almost every corner market or in your grocer’s wine department: an inexpensive waiter’s corkscrew, which folds up to fit easily in your pocket or kitchen drawer and will cost you less than $4. Some professionals swear by similar, but pricey, versions from companies like Laguiole, but for us, a stash of the cheapies works great. They have a short blade at one end to cut the bottle’s foil, and a screw, or “worm,” that folds in and out. There are single-hinged and double-hinged styles, and both work well. The double-hinged generally pulls corks out a little easier, but a lot depends on personal preference.

Musings on Glassware

It’s easy to be allured by the vast selection of wine glasses on the market. You can now have separate glasses for specific grape varieties. Instead of a plain ol’ white wine glass, you can have a riesling glass, an oaked chardonnay glass, an un-oaked chardonnay glass, and a viognier glass. And by the time you have all of those glasses, you don’t have room in your cupboards for anything else. All a marketing game? Not necessarily. Science has proven that certain varieties smell and taste better when drunk from certain shapes of glassware. However, we recommend having a tight selection of glasses that suit your storage space and the types of wines you tend to drink.

If you’re only into having one style, no problem. We’d recommend a standard 13-ounce white wine glass. In fact, that’s our everyday glass, regardless of what we’re drinking. It works just as well for a nice Barolo or a sparkling wine as it does for a simple white. You could add a second style, such as an 18-ounce Burgundy glass with more of a bowl shape, if you want something for those special bottles you open from time to time. But for us, that’s about all we use. Stemless glasses, tumblers, and, heck, even plastic cups, are useful for rosé at the park or txakoli (CHA-ko-lee) on your front porch, but most of the time we prefer to use a glass with a stem so the wine isn’t warmed by our hands. Champagne flutes can be festive and fun, but we’d rather use a standard glass for bubbles. A flute can be a little tricky to drink from, and it’s hard to get your nose in there to smell the wine. The most important takeaway is that you don’t need to spend a lot of money on glassware. Choose a simple, rounded style (no need for angular glasses, or bowls with big, curved lips), and, because glasses break, have a few extra on hand.

Keep It Cool

While we believe wine drinking should be fun and easy, there are a few things that we take very seriously about the whole matter, temperature being one of them. It’a always a bummer to be served a lukewarm bottle of red at a restaurant, or a white that’s so cold your teeth ache when you drink it. Getting the temperature right for your bottle is something we always encourage. We prefer sparkling wines and fruity, light whites to be quite cold, between 40°F and 50°F. A short dunk in a bucket of ice water will get these wines truly cold if they haven’t had enough time in your refrigerator. Richer white wines, rosés, and orange wines are best between 50°F and 60°F. Red wines are definitely best at or below room temperature, so drink them anywhere from 60°F to 65°F, and serve lighter reds slightly cooler than full-bodied reds.

Store your bottles somewhere cool and dark, and lying on their sides. The top of the fridge or that cabinet above your stove are decidedly the worst places for wine, as is the closet next to your furnace. Basements and other temperature-controlled areas are ideal, and a small wine fridge is a worthwhile investment.

To Decant, or Not

You don’t need to be drinking fancy or expensive wine to use a decanter. While we don’t use one often, it’s a helpful tool for separating the sediment from older wines, or getting some air into a bolder red. And a decanter is fantastic for orange wines, as they can always use some time to open up. If you’re decanting for sediment, pour the wine slowly so any deposits at the bottom of the bottle don’t end up in the decanter. You’ll leave a tiny amount of wine behind, full of gritty bits you wouldn’t want to drink anyway. If you’re decanting for air, you can glug the wine right into the decanter, no need to be gentle about it. Depending on the wine, you can decant and drink right away—the wine will open up as you enjoy it—or let it sit for an hour or two first. Be aware that some old wines are just too old to decant. Pouring them out of their bottle will expose them to too much air and they’ll fall apart immediately. If you don’t want to buy a decanter, other household items, such as a water pitcher, will work just as well. A large Erlenmeyer flask is another alternative, and it doubles as a great conversation piece.

Breathing Room

In many cases, you can pop a bottle and get to drinking it right away. Sometimes, though, you’ll want to open your wine ahead of time and let it breathe, either in the bottle or in a decanter. If it’s tannic or quite bold, some hang time with the cork pulled will make a big difference in how the wine tastes. Grippy tannins will relax a bit, and you’ll avoid most of the harsh, “furry” sensation that big wines leave on your palate. Leave those big wines to open up for an hour or two. Pay attention to how your wine tastes as you enjoy the bottle. You’ll likely notice a clear evolution from first sip to last drop, and that’s all due to how much air has come into contact with the wine.

Taste like a Pro—Swirl, Sniff, Swish, Swallow

You don’t have to know a lot about wine to enjoy drinking it. In fact, sometimes knowing too much makes it less enjoyable. But if you are armed with just a couple of tips for tasting wine and detecting flaws, you’ll always be able to drink a great bottle and not have to think about it too much.

While you’ll most likely want to just get down to the business of drinking, we recommend one proper swirl, sniff, swish, and swallow to make sure your wine isn’t flawed. The first thing you should do when you pour yourself a glass is swirl. Set the foot of your glass on a counter or table and give it a gentle circular swoosh to release some of the aromas of the wine. As it settles down, you should next sniff, but don’t hold your nose an inch above the wine glass. Tip the glass and really get your nose in it. Take a deep breath with your mouth closed and then open your mouth to exhale. You’ve now gotten the wine’s beautiful aromatics through your nasal passage, against the back of your throat, out over your tongue, and hit so many taste receptors along the way. Time to taste and swish. Now, the swish can be a bit annoying for casual drinking, but we encourage just one go at it when tasting a newly opened bottle to ensure it tastes okay. Take a medium-size sip of your wine and either swish it around like mouthwash, or purse your lips and draw in a small amount of air to make a gurgling or slurping noise before swallowing. Either way you do it, the point is to make sure the wine touches every part of your mouth so you can really taste it. If you don’t detect any flaws (read on for more about that), you’ve survived tasting your wine and you can now just drink it.

Common Faults

Since wine, at its simplest, is an agricultural product, and very much alive and constantly evolving, it’s no surprise that any number of faults could be present in a bottle. Some of the common flaws that you could possibly find in your wine, such as reduction, can be easy to ignore and might “blow off,” or disappear as the wine sits open. Others will have left their mark on the wine and, no matter what you do, will not improve. If you suspect your wine is flawed, take it back and ask your wine shop to exchange it for another bottle. Please don’t use it for cooking, which will only concentrate the off flavors you’re detecting.

Why Does This Wine Smell like Wet Dog?

Corked (trichloroanisole, or TCA) wines are a result of a tainted cork that leeches musty basement and wet dog flavors into the wine. Smelling the cork is one way to check for TCA; however, some corks smell corked even though the wine is actually perfectly fine, so be sure to taste to confirm. Corked wines cannot be recovered.

Why Does This Wine Smell like Nail Polish Remover?

Ethyl acetate (EA) is a reaction between the naturally occurring acetic acid and ethyl alcohol that is created during fermentation, and it is very hard to get rid of once a wine is bottled. There’s not much that can be done to save a bottle with EA.

Why Does This Wine Smell like Vinegar?

Volatile acidity (VA) is caused by bacteria in the wine that creates acetic acid, which is the same acid that gives vinegar its aroma and tangy flavor. Small amounts of VA are okay, and even add an interesting component to a wine when not overpowering.

Why Does This Wine Smell like Rotten Eggs?

Reduction is a hydrogen-sulfur compound and can occur when a wine isn’t exposed to enough oxygen in a closed container, be it a tank, barrel, or bottle. In small amounts, time in a decanter will allow some reduction compounds to dissipate. In large amounts, they’re likely there to stay. It doesn’t necessarily render a wine undrinkable; you just have to decide how much rotten-egg taste you can handle.

Why Does This Wine Smell like a Barnyard?

Brettanomyces, or Brett, as it’s commonly called, is a microbial fault that, like reduction, can be tolerated in small doses by most people. Once it lives in a winery, Brett is very hard to get rid of and causes a range of flavors from pigpen to horse manure to Band-Aid.

Why Does This Wine Look Brown?

Oxidation is the process by which a wine is exposed to too much air before or after bottling, and the wine changes color, loses its vibrancy, and starts to taste flat. Red wines will appear to have lost their lustrous color and white wines will start browning. These wines are past the point of no return. It’s good to note that some styles of wine, such as oloroso sherry and marsala, take well to oxidation and are purposely exposed to air.

Why Does this Wine Taste like Salami/a Mouse Cage/Corn Chips?

Mousiness is a flaw that people perceive in many different ways. Dana refers to it as “salami mouth,” but others taste a distinct corn chip or mouse-cage flavor. Mousiness is a lactic microbial flaw that is nearly impossible to detect by nose, but is obvious on the palate. It’s not a totally understood fault, and there is plenty of debate about whether it can go away once it’s in a wine. It’s most commonly detected in natural wines made without sulfur, and may not be recognizable until a wine has been in contact with air for a few hours.

Why Is This Still Wine Fizzy?

Re-fermentation can occur when a wine is accidentally bottled with just the tiniest bit of sugar and it starts to ferment all over again. These bottles will have a fizzy texture to them, and will bubble around the edge of a wine glass. Of note are wines that are bottled with a touch of carbon dioxide as an alternative preservative to sulfur. Such wines might have the slightest prickle that quickly disappears, and no bubbling in the bottle or glass. That trapped CO₂ generally goes away once the wine sits in the glass for a few minutes.

Why Does This Wine Smell like Dried Fruit?

A “cooked” (heat-damaged) wine has been exposed to temperatures above 75°F for a prolonged time, and gives off notes of dried and stewed fruits. The wine will taste flat, devoid of acid, and like someone laced it with brown sugar. You may be able to spot a heat-damaged wine if you notice that the foil cap is stuck in place or the cork has started to push out of the bottle. Some cooked wines experience seepage through the cork, but leaking wine isn’t always a result of heat damage.