What do you drink with it?
For each dish three wine styles that work, with the reason why, and one alternative without alcohol. No algorithm, just an opinion.
Oysters
An oyster is salty, cold and alive. Whatever you drink with it has to respect all three, and most wine does not. Oak, ripe fruit and alcohol turn a Fine de Claire into a fish finger. You want acidity, salt and as little decoration as possible.
See the wines →Sushi
Sushi is not one dish but ten: fatty salmon, lean tuna, sour rice, sweet unagi, with soy sauce and wasabi over everything. So the wine needs to be broad, not perfect. Acidity and a hint of sweetness do most of the work; anything with oak or serious tannin loses to the soy.
See the wines →Cheese board
Red wine with cheese is the most stubborn mistake at every birthday party. Cheese is fat and salt, red wine has tannin, and the two make each other bitter. White, sparkling and above all fortified wine do better, and one style does better than everything.
See the wines →Jamón and tapas
Tapas are salt, oil and garlic in small portions, and jamón ibérico is fat that melts on your tongue. In Jerez they have solved this for two centuries with wine from their own region, ice cold, in glasses you empty within ten minutes. Anyone opening a Rioja Crianza here has missed the point.
See the wines →Barbecue
A barbecue is smoke, charred sugar and fat, eaten in the sun from a plastic cup. Great wine is wasted here and heavy wine is a mistake: at thirty degrees nobody wants fourteen percent Shiraz. What you need is fruit, some tannin for the meat, and a serving temperature that can fight the heat.
See the wines →Christmas dinner
Christmas is not a dish but an evening: drinks, starter, main, cheese, dessert, and eight people with eight opinions. You do not need a different bottle for every course. Three styles cover the evening, and in the right order you will not have to convince anyone.
See the wines →Indonesian rijsttafel
Rendang, sambal, satay sauce, ketjap and acar on one table. Sweet, hot, sour and fatty all at once, and that is why most wine stumbles here. Dry red turns bitter from the sambal and oaked white drowns in the ketjap. What works is fruit, a little sugar and low alcohol.
See the wines →Asparagus
White asparagus the Limburg way, with ham, egg and hollandaise, is one of the hardest dishes for wine. The vegetable itself is faintly bitter and sulphurous, the sauce is butter and the ham is salt. Red is out, oak is a mistake, and yet there is one region that solves this every spring.
See the wines →Chocolate
Red wine with chocolate is a marketing idea, not a taste experience. Cocoa has tannin, red wine has tannin, and together they turn dry and bitter. The rule is simple: the wine must be sweeter than the chocolate. That rules out almost all dry wine and leaves a short list that does it spectacularly.
See the wines →Mussels
A pot of Zeeland mussels with onion, celery and white wine is the easiest dish for wine there is: the wine is already in it. Take the same style as in the pot, cold, and put the bottle on the table. What you want is acidity, salt and no oak. What you must avoid is anything round and ripe.
See the wines →