Pair your spicy foods with this refreshing Vouvray

Spicy foods are great for banishing the winter’s chill. But they can be hard to pair with wines in a mutually flattering way. Some white wines, like delicate French chenin blanc, are uncommonly well-suited to dishes that come to the table packing heat. However, they’re often overlooked by wine lovers simply because they are slightly sweet and therefore unfairly viewed as unsophisticated in our popular culture.

As a general rule, wine and food synergies tend to work best when we pair like with like: rich wines with rich foods, acidic wines with acidic foods, and so on. One exception is that the wines we describe as spicy like fiery Rhône blends, typically clash or fall flat with spicy foods. This is mainly due to their elevated alcohol, which amplifies the perceived heat of the spiciest foods rather than taming the flames. Because alcohol’s volatility is also highest at warmer temperatures, drinking red wines with fiery foods can feel about as pleasant as pouring gas on a barbecue.

As a result, spicy foods usually taste best with wines that are served chilled, particularly those that score low on alcohol and high on residual grape sugar like this mouthwatering Vouvray. It’s true that many cheap and cheerful wines are characterized by faint sweetness, but there is nothing unsophisticated about this lightly sweet wine. Its sugars are perfectly balanced with bracing tartness and the wine features a lingering finesse in the finish that is the hallmark of the French classics. On the nose, it offers piercing scents of orchard-fresh apples that come to life on the palate with an almost citrusy zing. Even if your tastes generally run to drier styles, this is a wine worth keeping around for serving with recipes that have a spicy kick, from tacos and hot wings to curries and stir fries.

» READ MORE: This $20 cabernet has quality written on the label

$15.99; 12.5% alcohol

PLCB Item #8747

Sale price through Jan. 1, 2023 – regularly $17.99

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