Mythbusters: Rethinking Red vs White Wine Pairings

Ep 149

What if the red-with-meat, white-with-fish rule isn’t actually a rule at all?

In this Mythbusters episode, I’m sharing where the red-with-meat, white-with-fish idea came from and why it’s more of a simplification than a rule. It worked when wine styles were more predictable, but that’s just not the case anymore.

Instead of color-coding your pairings, this episode walks you through what actually matters: matching the weight and richness of the wine to the weight and richness of the dish. You’ll hear real examples, from grilled salmon with mushroom sauce to filet mignon with chimichurri, and learn why sauce and your cooking method can matter just as much as the protein itself.

So, if you are ready to feel more confident stepping outside the old red wine vs white wine pairing mindset and pairing wine in a way that actually makes sense for what’s on your plate then this episode is for you.

Thank you to our exclusive sponsor, Last Bottle, for sponsoring this episode. Go to www.lastbottlewines.com and use code CORKANDFIZZ for 10% off your order! (And be sure to sign up for their mailing list so you never miss a bottle!)

Resources: 

Ep 11: Wine and food pairing 101: My Signature 2-step process - https://www.corkandfizz.com/blog/guide-to-wine-podcast-episode-11

Episode Highlights:

• Where the red wine with meat rule came from
• Why color is not the best pairing guide
• Matching weight and body in food and wine
• Why sauce matters more than you think for your wine selection
• Pairing red wine with salmon
• Pairing white wine with steak
• Why enjoyment always comes first

Transcript

0:00

If you love wine but hate overpaying, listen up. Today's sponsor, Last Bottle Wines, drops one deeply discounted sommelier-picked wine every single day. I'll tell you why I'm obsessed later in the episode, but for now, head to lastbottlewines.com and use code CORKANDFIZZ for 10% off. Interested in learning about wine but not sure where to start? You're in the right place. Welcome to the Cork and Fizz Guide to Wine Podcast. I'm your host, Hailey Bohlman, and I'm so glad you're here. I'm a wine enthusiast turned wine educator and founder of the Seattle-based wine tasting business Cork and Fizz. It is my goal to build your confidence in wine by making it approachable and lots of fun. You can expect to learn everything from how to describe your favorite wine to what to pair with dinner tonight and so much more. Whether you're a casual wine sipper or a total cork dork like myself, this podcast is for you. So grab yourself a glass and let's dive in. Hello and welcome back to the Cork and Fizz Guide to Wine podcast. So glad to have you here. Today we are doing another episode of the Mythbusters miniseries where I debunk wine myths new and old and give you the straight facts. Okay, plus a couple of my own opinions, but this is my podcast after all, right? Today's myth that we're going to be talking about is that you should always pair red wine with meat and white wine with fish, and we're talking about why you don't have to follow that rule anymore. And as a reminder, I know these episodes are a little shorter than normal, but if you are missing hearing my voice and you want to hear some longer episodes, you can always check out my backlog. At this point, we're nearly up to 150 episodes. Isn't that just like incredible? I don't even know how that has happened, but it has. And if you've been around for all of them, thank you. And if you're new here, you have some episodes to go listen to, so go enjoy. But listen to this one first. Stick around. Okay. Let's dive into the myth first, right? This old rule where white wine goes with fish and red wine goes with meat. And honestly, I'd go as far as to say this myth is based on a fact, or maybe it's just like an extreme simplification. And it does give you a good place to start because you wouldn't necessarily go wrong, I guess, if you followed this, but I feel like it would be very limiting in a way. So when you think of pairing wine with food, it's really about allowing both components to enhance the other. You essentially, the way that I like to think about this is you want them to sing a duet with perfect harmony, right? You want your wine and your food to work together. And the easiest way to do this is to match the intensity or the weight of both the wine and the food. In the past, white wines tended to be light and fruity. Whereas red wines were tannic and heavy for the most part. And that's basically just what they were. White was this and red was this. Naturally, it made sense to then associate white wine with lighter foods, AKA fish, and red wine with heavier foods like meat. But it's no longer that simple. We can't just color code the pairings. So let's dive into the facts more. Just a quick reminder, if you are not on my mailing list yet, what are you waiting for? I would love for you to join. When you do, you'll get a free shopping guide that has 15 of my favorite wines under $15. Head to corkandfizz.com, scroll down to the bottom, and there'll be a little section where you can join the mailing list. I send out a weekly newsletter filled with wine tips, recommendations, special offers, and so much more. Now let's get back to the show. First and foremost, one of my favorite things about wine and food pairing these days is how experimental and fun it's become. Rather than there being hard and fast rules, it's more about finding unique and potentially surprising flavor combinations. And above all else, what's most important is that you drink and eat what you like. If you like a glass of big, buttery Chardonnay with your grilled steak, then that's a perfect pairing for you. Do you want some Cabernet with popcorn while you watch TV? Do it. That's a good pairing for you. Beyond this, so if we go beyond just eat what you like, drink what you like, that's totally fine. But if you were curious to know a little bit more, like I said before, the key to wine and food pairing is balance. You want harmony between the wine and the food. Neither should overwhelm the other. The goal is essentially to match the weight or the body, the richness of both the food and the wine. So for food, we're going to look at the fat content when we're thinking about how rich or how heavy the food is, but we're not just going to look at the main ingredients. So for a lot of times, we tend to just look at the protein, right? Is it steak? Is it fish? Is it chicken? Right? And what's the fat content of that? And that's going to decide what we pair. But honestly, looking at the sauce that's used with the dish, and the cooking method can have a major impact on the heaviness or the weight of that dish. For example, a salad with ranch dressing is much richer than one with a vinaigrette, right? Or let's say, let's take two different chicken dishes. Chicken Marsala, much more rich than let's say like shredded chicken tacos with like a really fresh peach salsa on it, right? Those are both made with chicken, but two different totally dishes. 2 totally different dishes with 2 totally different levels of richness. As for the wine, the main thing you're looking at is the body of the wine, right? This is— whenever I describe the body, I say the weight of the wine, how heavy it is, right? So this is what's going to tell you how heavy our wine is. But the acidity and the tannin levels do also contribute, so don't completely forget about those. So now with this in mind, it's easy to imagine why we would naturally pair a big, heavy red wine, let's say Cabernet Sauvignon, with a grilled steak or lamb chops because both are equally bold and rich. And on the flip side, Sauvignon Blanc works great with fresh seafood and fish because they're both light and delicate. But this doesn't mean red wine with meat and white wine with fish is a hard and fast rule. Take, for example, let's, let's think about a dish. Let's think about grilled salmon with a nice stewed buttery mushroom sauce. All right, so first off, salmon. So if we just think about the protein first, salmon is a fatty oily fish, so it is in the fish category, but I don't know how delicate I'd call it. Then we're grilling it, right? So this type of cooking adds a level of intensity to the dish. It adds flavor. It adds richness and it adds like this like smoky flavor. And finally, our mushroom sauce. Well, that's certainly adding some richness to this dish, right? I don't think you'd look at this and go like, oh, that's nice and light and delicate. Like it's got some oomph behind it. So now we need a heavier or a richer wine than like a Sauvignon Blanc to go with it. You could go for, let's say, a full-bodied white, right? So we can still, we don't have to just like automatically switch over to red. Now instead, we're thinking about the weight of the wine. So it doesn't, you know, we're not just going to color code white versus red. So you could go for something that has more weight as a white wine. So something like a Chardonnay could work really well. Or if you wanted to, this is where we can get into pairing our fish with a red wine. You could go for a light to medium red wine like Pinot Noir. Pinot Noir and salmon is like a perfect pairing up here in the Pacific Northwest. Like, I think you'll find more people drinking Pinot Noir with their salmon than you will any white wine. And in this case, it works out, right? So we're not going for a big, heavy red wine still because the salmon is still not quite as rich as a steak, right? And we did grill it and we added mushroom sauce, but it's not incredibly heavy. So we don't want to go too heavy on the wine, but we do want to have a little bit more oomph to it, and we don't want the wine to get lost in the food. Okay, now let's look at a lean steak dish, right? So we're going to kind of look on the other side of the coin. Who doesn't want incredible wine for a steal? Today's podcast is brought to you by Last Bottle Wines, a Napa Valley-based online wine shop with a super fun twist. Some of the best bottles I've ever opened, AKA the ones my friends still talk about to this day, came from Last Bottle. And I love when they say, this is incredible, and I get to reply, yep, and it's usually an $80 wine. I only paid $25. At Last Bottle Wines, they offer just one handpicked wine per day until it sells out. New day, new wine. It's like a fun little daily surprise. And the deals? Wild. We're talking 30 to 80% off retail, so you can try amazing bottles without the scary price tag. Their team tastes hundreds of wines every week, so you know what you see is worth grabbing. There's no subscription, no minimums, and free ground shipping when you buy 6 or more bottles. Use code CORKANDFIZZ for 10% off and go see today's wine at lastbottlewines.com. Let's look at filet mignon, right, with a chimichurri sauce. So first off, Filet mignon is a leaner, AKA a lighter cut of meat. There's less fat on this cut of meat. Now, as long as it's cooked medium or medium rare, and let's say it's pan seared and then maybe roasted in the oven a little bit, as long as it's medium and medium rare, it won't have too much intensity of flavor added to it, right? If we let it get cooked well done, well then you're looking at something a little different, but we're going to say medium, medium rare. Our chimichurri sauce, right? We need to look at the sauce along with the style of cooking and the like main dish. So the sauce, chimichurri, it's bright. It's not rich. And so we wouldn't want to pair this dish with a big tannic red wine. It would fight against the spice in the sauce and overpower the delicate cut of meat. Instead, you could reach for a textured white wine that is powerful, but not necessarily overly rich, right? So we're not going to go for that full-bodied white, like the Chardonnay I suggested for our grilled salmon. Instead, maybe we want like a Chenin Blanc, but maybe it's from a little bit of a warmer region. So we've got some texture going on, but it still has this acidity. And maybe we find one that has a hint of sweetness just to offset the spice of the sauce. And now you've managed to pair a white wine with a steak dish. So all that said, I hope you can see now that you don't have to pair red wine with meat or white wine with fish. Instead, here's what you should think about. First, eat and drink what you like. That's most important. None of this matters if you don't like red wine, right? Like, you shouldn't pair red wine with food if that's just not your thing. And more than anything, eating and drinking wine is about enjoyment. So make sure you enjoy it. Second, what you can look at is matching the weight, AKA the body of the richness of both the food and the wine. And finally, don't forget to take into account the sauce on the dish and the cooking method. Those are incredibly important. And honestly, half the time I'd say the sauce— honestly, more than half the time— the sauce is more important than the main dish. If, if it's like covered in sauce, if you're just like doing a little dip, that might be a little different. Now, if you want to learn more about wine and food pairing, I have an entire episode dedicated to this topic. It was an early one. So if you've been listening just recently, you'll have to go back a little ways to find it. And if you've heard it once, why not hear it again? Uh, you can go back and listen to episode 11,

which was titled Wine and Food Pairing 101: 12:25

My Simple 2-Step Signature Process. Or if you're somebody who's a little more hands-on, you can book a private tasting with me, either virtual or in person, and select the wine and food pairing class. I'll teach you all of the different things that I talk about in the podcast, plus we will experiment with them. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Cork and Fizz Guide to Wine Podcast. If you loved it as much as I did, I'd so appreciate it if you could take a quick second, rate it, leave a review. I know I say this every time and you're probably sick of hearing me say it, but it really does mean a lot to me to read your reviews and hear that you're enjoying the podcast. And of course, helping the podcast grow is another great thing that you can do. So share this with a wine lover in your life. And if you'd like to show additional support for the show, you can become a paid subscriber. Click the link in the show notes and become a monthly supporter for$10 or less a month. You'll get a shout out in the next episode I record. Plus, if you choose the $10 per month option, you'll get to choose a topic for a future episode. Speaking of a future episode, in next week's episode, you'll hear part 1 of my interview with Heather Danitz of Craft and Cluster. Heather is a wine industry photographer and marketing strategist based in Santa Barbara County. Through her business Craft and Cluster, she helps small wineries connect with their audiences through authentic behind-the-scenes photography and marketing strategy. She is the 2025 Wine Photographer of the Year and the Food Photographer of the Year Awards, which is so well deserved. If you've never seen her photos, go Look her up on Instagram. It is phenomenal. She's also the writer and host of the Wine Marketing Field Guide, a newsletter and podcast dedicated to practical, direct-to-consumer wine marketing for busy wine professionals. We're going to talk about why it's so important that as consumers, we are focused on supporting small wineries. And she's going to give you some reasons that you might not have realized and kind of give you a little behind the scenes of what goes on at a small winery. Thanks again for listening, and if you want to learn more about wine, come follow me at Cork and Fizz on Instagram. Cheers!