Tell me more ×
Seasoned Advice is a question and answer site for professional and amateur chefs. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 8 down vote favorite

In other words does it make a difference in the event that a recipe calls for a Red wine you use a Merlot, Cabernet, Shiraz ect..?

share|improve this question

5 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Yes. If you wouldn't drink it, don't cook with it.

Whatever it tastes like out of the bottle, it will add that to the dish. Cook with a wine you might pair with the dish (light wines for seafood, chicken; heavier wines for meats and stews).

Don't use a fruity wine unless you want your dish to have some fruit notes. Don't use a very dry wine if you're making a sweeter dish.

share|improve this answer
up vote 16 down vote

As a corollary to the excellent advice from Aaronut, there is an important rule of thumb when selecting a wine to cook with:

If you wouldn't drink it, don't cook with it.

share|improve this answer
5  
As a corollary to this corollary: If you regularly drink Two-Buck Chuck, ignore this rule of thumb. ;) – Aaronut♦ Jul 25 '10 at 16:20
2  
Additional correlary : mad dog and thunderbird don't count as wine, nor does Boones Farm or wine coolers. (they make the two buck chuck look good by comparison) – Joe Jul 25 '10 at 19:55
4  
The reason for this is important. When you cook with wine, the alcohol cooks off, but the flavor notes remain, and in fact, are intensified. So if the wine isn't great out of the bottle, those things which make it not great will only get stronger when you cook it down. – Nick Jul 26 '10 at 16:01
@Nick - Alcohol doesn't necessarily cook off, it depends on how you cook the food and for how long. Have a look at this article: Does Alcohol Really Boil Away in Cooking? – Neil Fein Jan 28 '11 at 3:54
up vote 9 down vote

It absolutely does matter, as all of the different varietals have their own very distinctive tastes. However, there's not really any "correct" wine to use when you see a recipe requesting it.

Probably the most common ones (where I'm from) are Cabernet Sauvignon for red and Chardonnay for white, but those are definitely not the only kinds you can use, and it depends entirely on the recipe and your personal preferences.

If it's going into a strong/spicy sauce where the taste of the wine will be overshadowed by the other ingredients anyway, then I'll often use any inexpensive wine I have lying around. But if it's something like a wine sauce, or a reduction, then you should essentially treat it as a wine pairing; look up what varietal pairs well with the food you're making and use that in your sauce.

share|improve this answer
1  
I'd suggest a Sauvignon Blanc for any seafood cooking. – Chris Cudmore Jul 26 '10 at 17:45
up vote 2 down vote

I tend to disagree a little bit on this. Cooking removes almost all of the subtlety from a wine, especially long cooking like in a reduction-based sauce. I'd like to see a double-blind taste of several reduced red varietals to see if you could tell much of a difference.

share|improve this answer
Agreed -- I wouldn't use a foul wine as you risk intensifying bad flavors), but I wouldn't go with anything expensive, either. – Joe Jul 25 '10 at 19:57
@Joe and OP: Certainly I wouldn't start worrying about vintages, but the difference between Merlot and Cabernet is more than just a subtlety. I also don't think a typical double-blind taste test, assuming the subject "fails", necessarily proves that it makes no difference; simply not knowing which wine was used to make the sauce doesn't mean that they taste the same. An ABX test perhaps, where a subject tries two otherwise identical samples and then attempts to identify which one is the "mystery" sample, would be more interesting. – Aaronut♦ Jul 26 '10 at 0:18
@Aaronut -- good point ... the original question was about varietals, for which there would be a distinction ... dry white wine is going to be different from a fruity red, etc. – Joe Jul 26 '10 at 1:12
Yes, for sure the red vs. white distinction is essential. I agree, the ABX test would be more relevant. Or on a more aesthetic level, just pick a dish that has a wine based sauce and make it with say a Pinot Noir vs. a Cabernet, reducing both to an appropriate level of intensity, and see if they taste substantially different and if so, if one is clearly a better match to the rest of the dish than the other. – Michael at Herbivoracious Jul 28 '10 at 19:55
I drink a LOT of wine. I buy quite a few $10 bottles just for fun - to taste something different. When I taste one that is sub-par, it goes into my "red wine for cooking" stash. If the wine is really nasty, then it goes down the sink instead. – Rick G Sep 6 '10 at 21:13
up vote 1 down vote

Avoid excessive oakiness.

Other than that, find a decent, cheap somewhat drinkable blend (one white, one red), and buy a couple 1.5 litre bottles of each. and keep them on hand for cooking.

I'm wiki-ing this answer so feel free to add any brands you've found good for this purpose.

share|improve this answer

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.