Picking the perfect wine to go with your dinner can be a daunting task. A decision between red, white, sweet or dry and that’s just the start! We’ve done the hard work and want to share with you our guide to picking the right wine to compliment your dinner.
Powerful flavours from Rib-Eye Steak, an aged sirloin or a fillet steak need something equally as bold to compliment them. For that matter – pretty much all cuts of beef steak will sing when paired with full-bodied red.
Red wines contain natural compounds call Tannins. These compounds help to soften the flavour from the steak fat and bring out the amazing flavours.
So, you need a wine that can stand up to the rich, smokey flavours of your steak. We recommend a good quality Cabernet Sauvignon or Shiraz. Their robust fruit and powerful flavours make them the perfect wine to pair with your steak dinner.
Naturally, we think an Italian grape would be the way to go for this classic Italian recipe.
As a Bolognese is very acidic, you need a wine that is equally acidic in order to balance it.
We suggest a Barolo or Barbera. These two tick the right boxes for us – classic Italian and high in acidity.
When you achieve mutual levels of acidity between the wine and food, they naturally cancel each other out and the flavours really start to shine through.
If you go too low in acidity of the wine, you’ll find it will taste very flat. A delicious high acidity red wine is your answer.
As the old adage goes “red wine with meat, white wine with fish.” That’s for good reason.
Red wines are best avoided when eating white fish. The high levels of tannin in red wines can react with the fish oils and leave an unpleasant taste in your mouth.
So white wines are defiantly the way to go when you are cooking white wish.
We recommend a Pinot or Chardonnay. These wines are often dry with delicate flavours which couple perfectly with fish.
A roast chicken occupies a middle ground between fish and red meat. For this reason, you can match it with both red or white – depending on your personal preference.
A soft, medium-bodied white wine will compliment the gentle flavours of a roast chicken. For clean, crisp wine with citrus notes we'd suggest a good quality Chardonnay.
If you prefer a glass of red, it's best to avoid bold reds with lots of tannins. High tannin wines will over power the roast chicken. We recommend a Pinot Noir – it's lighter than other reds and low in tannin make it incredible with a whole roast chicken.
Recipes for carbonara vary quite a lot. Many make it with cream and garlic, although Italians will call this sacrilege – it is pretty delicious. So, yeah.
But if you’ve got a nice creamy pasta with Italian speck, ham or bacon lardons you can pair a whole host of wines.
Pinot Grigio is Italian, light and pairs beautifully with this kind of pasta. It’s also quite an authentic choice.
For many, this will conjure memory’s of Del Boy from Only Fools & Horses, but a good quality Chablis is another fantastic choice to go with pasta and ham. It used Chardonnay grapes but typically has more acidity which cuts through the richness of a creamy pasta brilliantly.
For lighter meals like salads or shellfish, dry rosé is a beautiful wine pairing.
It’s not as sweet and won’t overpower your meal which is quite important when you have delicate flavours.
Medium- to full-bodied rosés come with a bolder taste. These wines will enhance the flavour of meals that feature heartier seafoods such as lobster, salmon or tuna.
Lamb is a very versatile meat with a huge range of dishes than can be prepared with it. You can have everything from a slow-roasted lamb shank, leg of lamb, lamb roasting joint, a rack of lamb, lamb chops or even a lamb kofte.
To suggest a wine that matches every cut of lamb would be impossible, but generally, your wine pairing for lamb can follow the same rules as beef. Most cuts of lamb have a good fat content which give lamb great depth of flavour.
To compliment those big bold flavours of a big piece of lamb we suggest a good Bordeaux or Rioja Reserva to compliment it. For those slow-cooked pieces such as lamb shanks, avoid the big tannic reds and opt for slightly lighter reds such as Côtes du Rhône.
