The One Rule To Remember When Pairing Wine With Salad
Salad may not be your first pick for a food to pair wine with, but your favorite bottle can be just as satisfying with a fresh mix of greens as it is with steak or pasta. Of course salad is a very broad category, with light summer salads featuring citrus and fruit sharing the name with heartier fare like a classic Cobb salad or even taco salad. While that does mean your wine-pairing possibilities are wonderfully wide ranging, it also makes it hard to get a handle on exactly what you should be focusing on when choosing a wine. That's especially true when you are dealing with a lot of different ingredients and flavors melding together. So to untangle all these questions, we asked expert Gillian Ballance, a master sommelier at Treasury Wine Estates, for her top rule when pairing wine and salad.
Ballance noted the fundamental challenge of wine and salad, saying, "Salads can range quite a bit in flavors and acidity, so likewise, there are a range of wines you can pair with salads depending on the contents." But she zeroed in on a few good barometers, telling us "when pairing wine with a salad, I recommend paying attention to the acidity and the dressing type." This is a great baseline way to categorize your salad, because the dressing is always going to dominate the flavor the most. Acidity levels are usually easy to notice, and are one aspect of wine tasting that even casual drinkers can suss out pretty well.
More acidic white wines pair best with acidic salad dressings
So what wines actually have the acidity for most salads? Ballance says "Generally, white wines tend to pair best with salads." As she explains it, "a good guiding star with acidity is to pair high acidity with high acidity," and most salad dressings are pretty acidic. She warns, "If you pair a wine too low in acidity with a salad that has a truly acidic dressing, such as a balsamic or Italian vinaigrette, the salad may overpower the wine." And while acidity can vary in both red and white wines, in general white wines have the crisper, tarter taste you are looking for with salad.
Luckily for anyone concerned about salad pairing, some of the most popular white wines are also acidic. Sauvignon blanc is a widely available variety grown all over the world that is light, sharp, and perfect for trying with acidic salads. Pinot grigio — aka pinot gris — is also decently acidic, holding up well to most dressings, and usually features bright citrusy tasting notes that complement refreshing salads. Finally, riesling is also a high-acid white wine, but comes with a caveat, as you want to make sure you get a dry riesling. Sweetness as a flavor can mellow out acidity, just think what sugar does to coffee, so sweeter rieslings and other sweet whites won't have the bite you want with a salad. But don't worry, there is always dessert to plan for if a sweeter wine appeals.