Dear reader,
First and foremost, happy Christmas! 2020 has been such an uncertain year. Celebrating family and the good things in life in any way we can is so deserved. With good wine and food, even more.
Whether you are planning to hold a small gathering with your closest ones (or your household), with safety, or doing Zoom calls, you can still enjoy playing with ideas to make the best out of pairings for Christmas.
Christmas foods to match with wine
Unlike Thanksgiving, for which we showed in a recent post that lighter wine styles could dictate its pairings, Christmas calls also for bolder varieties.
Depending on where you’re from, Christmas dishes heavily vary. So we’ll try to keep some all-rounder pairings.
For appetizers
When thinking appetizers, sparklings such as Champagne, Cava, Prosecco or general Crémant are good for both seafood openers, dips and smoked cheeses. Versatile and in style, huh?
Since cheese platters may vary a lot from place to place, it’s good to have some overall pairing notions so you can choose what will go best with what you got.
A personal favourite appetizer of many Christmas enthusiasts, smoked salmon canapes also call for some white wines with more acidity. Chenin blanc and Sauvignon blanc-led, such as Bordeaux’s, might do the trick.
Meanwhile, the richness of a roast salmon goes perfectly with more buttery chardonnay, complementing the oily flavourful fish.