Selecting The Right Wine To Go With Your Chicken Dish

One of the most important steps in preparing a wonderful dinner is selecting the appropriate wine to compliment your meal. Chicken, however, presents a challenge, as it has no strong flavor of its own. Since chicken is a very white poultry meat, white wines are almost always the way to go. Many say that chardonnay works as a very good universal white wine for most any chicken dish. But given the variety of ways there are to cook chicken, there are many wines that will finely compliment the dish you have in mind.

For roasted chicken dishes, a milder tasting wine will help compliment the flavor of the chicken. A chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc are both excellent choices for more basic chicken dishes. This is, however, dependent on the seasoning of the chicken itself. Recipes that use heavy garlic, for example, Foyle's war tend to go better dryer wines. Really examine the recipe to find out what flavors will be most prevalent in the dish and find the wine that goes best with that concoction. When dealing with fried chicken, you want to find the wine that will best compliment the herb and bread taste of the meal. For fried chicken meals, many prefer to go with a nice Sauvignon Blanc or pinot grigio. Again, chardonnay is always a solid choice here as well.

When going with creamy chicken dishes, such as meals with alfredo sauce or other creamy or white sauces, you'll want to go with a white wine that has a pretty strong flavor to it. Many recommend using voigner grape wine. White wines made with the voigner grape typically have a stronger, fruitier flavor that strongly complements the creamy white sauces of chicken dishes.

There are many chick dishes that make use of red sauces, like marinara or any tomato-based sauce. Now, the rule of thumb is that red sauces go with red wines, so what are we to do when red sauce is served on the white wine loving chicken? One typically sides with the tomatoes in this conflict, as red sauces tend to be more flavorful and will cancel out the taste of the chicken. Consider a Cabernet or Pinot Noir for these dishes.

Then there's the conundrum that is barbecue chicken. While many would think that barbecue chicken wouldn't require a wine selection as readily as other dishes, the gourmet in the room knows that the powerful flavors in barbecue sauce and seasoning need an equally strong wine to stand up to such flavors. As with the tomato based chicken recipes, you want to go with a particularly strong red wine, possibly one with a high alcohol content to be able to stand out amongst the typically strong flavors of barbecue seasonings. A heavy Merlot or Shiraz, for example, is an excellent choice for coinciding with barbecue chicken.

These are just a few suggestions to get started, but it's important to look at the specific flavors prevalent in your dish to find just the right wine.

Marley Martinerin is a regular contributor to a number of sites and writes articles about such topics as pine wine racks and corner wine racks.