Local Expert Shares What Wine Goes Best With Your Dish

It's the holidays. You'll be getting together with friends and family and enjoying a good meal. Sometimes those meals include wine.

I'm not a wine snob by any means, but I DO try to match the right wine with the right dish.

I asked for some wine suggestions from our listeners and we had Jolene call with some great suggestions. Also listening was Justin Osborne, who is the chief executive winemaker at the Four Daughters Vineyard in Spring Valley. He said it's best to match the wine with the color of the food. For example, if you're serving pasta with red sauce, you should serve a red wine. I asked him to send me over all of his suggestions. After all, he is the expert. I'm just the "wine research specialist".- Alan

Easy rule of thumb: Match wine and food colors. So fish, chicken, pork, etc., are good with white wines. Red wines are better with red meats and chocolate. The exception to the color matching is cheese. Eating cheese with wine will actually improve the wine you are drinking and make it smoother (scientifically true!). No matter the wine and cheese pairing you can't go wrong, but people tend to pair strong cheeses with red wines and milder cheeses with whites. More tannic wines like Cabernets will be the most improved by eating cheese with them.

If you are ever unsure what wine to serve, you can't go wrong with sparkling wine. Officially good with shellfish, salads, and salty foods, sparkling wines are more refreshing and therefore are the most versatile. They aren't more expensive but have a feeling of luxury so they often get a free pass with pairings. Case in point, our Christmas Eve dinner last year we had lamb and sparkling wine

Another drink option around the holidays is hard cider. Aside from drinking it straight, there are many ways to jazz it up for the holidays. Mulled hot cider is a great drink on a cold day. If you are having a party, you can make a batch of mulled cider in a crock pot to keep it warm, but not so warm that the alcohol boils off (which happens at 173 degrees).

There are also some great cider cocktails out there. My favorite is called Cidre Royale. It is 5 oz hard cider, 1 oz creme de cassis, and 1 oz calvados. Both creme de cassis and calvados are available at larger liquor stores in Rochester. Creme de cassis is blackcurrant liqueur, and can be substituted out with other red fruit syrups or liqueurs. Calvados is french apple brandy, but can be substituted out with other apple brandies. I find our hard cider, Loon Juice, to be better at making mixed drinks because it is much less sweet and is therefore more versatile.