1,508 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

The magic of local wines

It's never easy to find the right wine to serve with the dish you've just cooked for your guests, because we're not all amateur sommeliers, and then there are so many possible choices in wines that "the perfect match" seems like a distant utopia, almost impossible to obtain. Add to that a lot of preconceived ideas that we have unconsciously in mind, like fish = white wine, and meat or cheese = red wine, which make it very easy to get lost.

8,596 4.7/5 (15 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Wine Color Agreement Advice Regional Local

Last modified on: April 7^th 2020

For this post: Comment Follow Send to a friend User-friendly URL

The magic of local wines

Fortunately, you can ask your wine merchant for advice, which is always a good idea, or you can browse the web, but there you may also find almost everything and its opposite.

It is important to recognize that giving advice on wine is quite arbitrary, of course, matches that please everyone are possible, but there is also a good part of the taste, preferences and personal choices of the person who gives the advice that is found in the suggested wine, which is quite normal.

In short, all this to tell you that there are no established rules, and that the tastes of each person can give very different food-wine associations, and yet very successful.

So there are no rules? So it's true, globally, but there are some "tricks" that work all the time, and it's about one of them that I would like to say a few words.

There is a kind of constant in wine and food pairing, it is the wonderful association that happens almost every time with a regional dish, and the wine of the same region. Let's call it "The magic of local wines"...

I don't know which one influenced the other, but I have to admit that if you taste a regional dish, let's say typical of the area, you can safely opt for a wine from the same area, and be almost 100% sure that the match will be perfect.

I'll take two examples to illustrate my point:

cassoulet appellation cahors

1) Cassoulet and Cahors wine: If you serve a cassoulet to your guests, accompany it with a Cahors wine, a good one, which preserves its typicity, and not something neutral and smooth to flatter the globalized gullets, and you will be amazed by the result.

saucisse de Morteau vins du jura

2) Morteau sausage (a dish based on) and a wine from the Jura, in particular a white wine from the Savagnin grape variety, and there you touch on the marvelous... (Yes, yes, well, I'm probably overdoing it here, but what do you expect, this is one of my favourite dishes, and I should never get into it). Same thing if you taste an old Comté, with a lightly toasted sourdough bread.

This natural pairing is therefore an interesting option if you are hesitating about your choice of wine, and if your recipe is a little regional, look at the regional wines, you might just find what you are looking for.

Note of course that this agreement is not an obligation, besides there is never an obligation in gastronomy if you like, but just a very interesting option. And anyway, the possibilities are so numerous, and the tastes so different, that each one of us will have his way of seeing things, and thus of realizing his agreement. The ideal of course is that you, or one of your guests, say, after the first glass "Hey, it's not bad at all!

To sum up: Are you going to serve a (slightly) regional recipe? Always think of local wines to serve with it.

Lasts posts

Add a bay leaf

Bay leaf: small in size, but big in flavor. You'll find it in hundreds of recipes, and it's often added to cooking meat, in a sauce or broth, usually accompanied by other herbs or products. It's a staple of Provençal, Mediterranean and Oriental cuisine, but not the only one. Usually, in a...
July 31^th 20256055

Parsley stems

Parsley, whether curly or flat, is a delicious ingredient in many recipes, where it is used both raw and cooked. When used raw, in a salad for example, where it always provides, alone or with other herbs, a remarkable freshness, only the leaves are kept. And when used cooked?
July 28^th 2025823 13

A drizzle of olive oil

Often in a recipe, you have to "baste" vegetables, for example, before sending them to the oven. What the author means by this is that you need to put oil on top of the vegetables to cook them in the oven. Typically, we just quickly drizzle oil over the vegetables, hoping not to miss any, but...
July 13^th 20251,1855

Always secure your cutting board

When using a cutting board, it's very important that it's stable and doesn't move while you're cutting, for safety's sake. Boards have a natural tendency to slide on the work surface, but here are 2 ways to block them effectively.
July 1^st 20251,2035

Cherry clafoutis, with or without pits?

When it comes to cherry clafoutis recipes, there's often a camp of those who argue that you absolutely have to leave the stones in because it tastes better, and the other camp (myself included) who prefer cherries without stones, which makes a much more pleasant clafoutis to eat. But is it true...
June 29^th 20251,0875

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

Small, regular pieces

When we cook, bake or pastry, we often have to cut food into small pieces, often cubes, to incorporate them into a recipe or preparation. How do you get regular pieces fairly quickly?
November 28^th 20208,3444.5

In praise of the whetstone

Have you ever seen a butcher or a chef sharpen his knife before using it? Usually he uses a special tool, a long thin cylinder made of very hard metal. And in a smooth and elegant gesture, he very quickly passes the edge of the knife against the rifle, which makes a very characteristic noise,...
June 5^th 20219,0004.8

Should potatoes be washed twice?

Let's say you have to make a recipe that includes potatoes, let's say sliced, you'll most likely proceed as follows: Peel the potatoes, wash them, slice them, wash them again, pat them dry and add them to your recipe. But there's a "but": depending on the recipe, the second washing may be a bad...
May 19^th 20252,748 15

From website to blog

Hello everyone, Today I'm inaugurating the cooking-ez.com "blog". The idea is to have a space for discussion open to everone, but not necessarily linked to a particular recipe or page. I hope the posts will be sufficiently interesting that you'll enjoy reading and discussing them. The...
January 1^st 201118 K3.9

Maillard reactions

This subject cropped up recently in a discussion with my three charming nieces; do you know what Maillard reactions are? With a name like that, they could well be some principle in mechanics, but in fact the term applies to something much closer to all of us: it's what gives food more flavour...
January 28^th 201535 K4