How to pair wines with spicy food: A style guide

If you like your food hot and spicy, does that mean you have to miss out on a wine to enjoy with it? Not necessarily… Although spice is one of the trickier food-matching challenges, there are plenty of wine styles that can work well with the heat and complex flavours of spicy dishes.

There is a key choice to make before you start. Do you want to amplify the heat or tame it?

Chilli thrill-seekers could meet the heat head-on with what experienced sommelier Matthieu Longuère MS, wine development manager at Le Cordon Bleu London, describes as a ‘spice booster’ wine.

If you’re less excited by the Scoville heat scale, you’ll want a wine that mellows out the dish – without compromising the flavours of course. Off-dry white wines are a good option here, because their slight sweetness can help to reduce the heat.

Spicy noodles with chilli CREDIT: Aninka Bongers-Sutherland / iStock / Getty Images Plus

Spice boosters

Bold and fruity reds – such as Syrah/Shiraz or Grenache/Garnacha, which have spicy notes on the palate – are a good option if you want to ramp up the spice in a dish. Look for examples that have plenty of fruit rather than high tannins, as too much tannin is the worst enemy of spice.

Winemaking regions in the warmer southern hemisphere are a good place to find fruitier styles of spicy red wines. Think South America’s signature red grapes, Malbec and Carmenère or Pinotage from South Africa. Brambly, spicy Zinfandel from the US is another red that can work well with spicy dishes such as chilli con carne.

Chilli con carne CREDIT: Carlo A / Moment / Getty Images

Andrés Rangel, former sommelier at top Indian restaurant Gymkhana in London, suggests that it can be fun to think about matching spicy wines to specific spicy aromas and flavours in a dish. ‘Some of the herbs and spices used [in Indian cooking], such as cardamom, ginger, pepper, clove and coriander, are present in the flavour and aromatic profile of wine,’ he explains.

Cool customers

If you want to contain the heat of a spicy dish rather than amplify it, Rangel recommends off-dry aromatic white wines as ‘safe’ options. This means grape varieties such as Gewürztraminer, Viognier, Muscat, Pinot Gris and Riesling. While Alsace is a good place to start hunting, these varieties can be found all over the wine world. Argentina’s signtaure aromatic white grapes Torrontés, with its peachy fruit is another variety to look out for.

‘For me, off-dry wines only work if there is also an element of sweetness in the spicy food,’ says Anne Krebiehl MW, widely published wine writer and author of The Wines of Germany. ‘For example, there’s usually palm sugar in Thai dishes along with lemongrass and mild chilli heat. Here, an off-dry, light-bodied Riesling – but not sweet – would be perfect, just to echo that nuance of sweetness.’

Green Thai curry CREDIT: Kittikun Prayoonrat / iStock / Getty Images Plus

She adds: ‘Look out for the term “feinherb” (off-dry) on the label and aim for anywhere between 11-13% abv.’

Rosé and orange wines

Food and wine matching expert and Decanter contributing editor, Fiona Beckett, thinks fuller-bodied rosés stand up well to spice. ‘Rosés from the New World tend to be riper and sweeter than their European counterparts, and this is not necessarily an off-putting quality when they are paired with spicy food,’ she explains.

Italy’s Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo is another deeper rosé style that can pair brilliantly with some spicy dishes. Or seek out dark pink Spanish rosados made from Garnacha, a grape that’s naturally low in tannins. These punchy rosés will work particularly well with Caribbean jerk seasoning.

Both rosé and food-friendly orange wines are a good choice for Eastern Mediterranean and North African dishes, featuring spices such as sumac, harissa and ras el hanout. A lamb tagine or spicy aubergine would also pair well with lighter reds such as Beaujolais, which can be served chilled.

Sparkling success

Finally, don’t forget fizz. For Rangel sparkling wines with a creamy mousse are a reliable choice with spicy food – especially if you’re looking to reduce the heat. He advises thinking about the texture of the dish. Is it a creamy curry or a dry-spiced deep-fried snack?

‘The most effective way to match wine and spicy food is balancing weight by weight, and contrasting flavours,’ says Rangel. ‘For example, in Indian food, we find rich and fatty dishes, made with cream or yoghurt. So we need wines with enough body to support those dishes and at the same time ripe fruit flavours to create a pleasant contrast with the spices.’

Chicken tikka masala CREDIT: jayk7 / Moment / Getty Images

Krebiehl adds that sparkling wines can work particularly well with seafood dishes that carry just hint of heat. ‘I love to drink fizz and find that a rather creamy and really mature Champagne goes well with chilli-accented dishes; like soft-shell crab or squid fried in a cayenne-spiced batter,’ she says.

It’s not just about whites either; sparkling reds can also work with certain spicy dishes. ‘I am a big fan of Chinese five spice, with its warm redolence of clove and cinnamon. Rounder, gutsier Pinot Noirs that border on plummy fruitiness work well here, but so does sparkling Shiraz,’ adds Krebiehl