The Best Wine To Have With Chicken
While it’s often true that white wine pairs best with chicken, it’s not the be-all and end-all. Chicken gives white wines a chance to shine when complemented with a great meal, yet the right red wines have a large following for the wine enthusiast across all types of cuisine. Chicken tends to offer more subtle, delicate flavors, rich sauces, or flamboyant flavors layered with heat and spice.
The following collection of the best wine to have with chicken offers great bottles for you to try in both the white wine and red wine categories. There’s a wide umbrella of price points and styles for you to mix and match with all types of chicken dishes, whether it’s home-cooked fried chicken or a richer Italian dish.
White Wine
The domestic American white wine market is dominated by chardonnay grapes, mostly those grown in the Napa Valley and Central California.
The US white wine market is seeing growth in the pinot gris/pinot grigio market. It seems to be well suited to conditions north of California, in Oregon.
Sauvignon Blanc is a popular and versatile white wine while riesling and Chenin blanc grapes are popular as well.
Chardonnay
While not a left-field choice of wine, a good chardonnay offers certainty with wine pairing and allows you the opportunity to focus on food. An oaked chardonnay with vanilla flavors works brilliantly to complement roasted chicken, while a classic unoaked chardonnay complements the heat of a spicy chicken dish or a Mexican chicken recipe.
Varieties range from dry white wine to semi-sweet wine versions of chardonnay, at price points under $10 through to expensive bottles worth hundreds of dollars. The depth of acidity in a premier chardonnay contrasts the rich, fruity flavor and blasts away powerful tastes from rich gravies and sauces, cutting through any oil and fat textures on the palate.
Best Buy
1. Ramey Fort Ross-Seaview Chardonnay 2017
David Ramey is a master vintner and legend of the US winemaking scene, and his Fort Ross Seaview Chardonnay Vintage topped our recent list of the best US white wines to try. The Ramey Fort Ross-Seaview Chardonnay is the perfect balance of power and elegance, offering a dynamic fusion of floral aromas, citrus, and tropical fruit flavors, along with the influence of French oak.
The sea salt of the Charles Valley vineyard (just two miles from the Pacific) is evident in the grapes, helping provide subtle accents alongside ripe fruit and complex floral notes. The unique aspects of the Fort Ross-Seaview Chardonnay make it a great bottle for enjoying smoky chicken dishes, a romantic chicken marsala, or even a classic Italian dish such as chicken parmigiana.
2. Pahlmeyer Napa Valley Chardonnay 2018
A premium offering from one of the leading Napa Valley wineries, the Pahlmeyer Chardonnay is an elite wine for small entertainment. The palate offers richness and just the right amount of acidity through notes of green apple, ripe nectarine, and white peach, which mingles with the sweetness of cinnamon, vanilla, and crème brûlée on the long finish.
It’s the right wine complement to a decadent French meal or hearty Italian dish. Pahlmeyer Napa Valley Chardonnay puts the fine into American fine wine.
3. Sutter Home Chardonnay
Inexpensive but dependable, Sutter Home is a great independent winemaker with a good range of white wines that suit the budget wine lover. This chardonnay provides good value and some versatility on the palate, featuring a medium to full body and a buttery mouthfeel that works nicely alongside flavors of summer fruits.
If you’ve got a limited budget and are looking for a cheap and cheerful option to drink with barbecue sauce and a home-cooked fried chicken meal, you’ll struggle to find a better option than Sutter Home at this end of the market.
Viognier
A classic match for succulent white meat and seafood, the fruit flavor of viognier offers a great counterpoint to the bird’s tenderness, especially the notes of stone fruits and honey.
4. Fess Parker Rodney’s Vineyard Viognier 2017
If you’re a wine drinker heading to dinner and looking to impress with a versatile yet interesting alternative to chardonnay or riesling, you’re unlikely to be disappointed by a quality viognier.
This bottle from Santa Barbara on the Central Coast offers delicious fruit flavors – mostly peaches and honeysuckle – that pair well with a range of sauce and gravy options, cutting through the richness and amplifying the tenderness of your chicken breast or flavor of risotto.
Riesling
Dry Riesling is a great palate cleansing and taste option when crisply chilled. It helps the flavor of any chicken or white meat dish and refreshes for your next forkful of food (and is an underappreciated cooking wine).
Riesling grapes are native to Germany, with the best ones produced by the VDP. Grosse Lage designation that signifies quality.
5. Dr. Fischer Ockfener Bockstein Riesling Spatlese
The terroir in the Ockfener Bockstein vineyard is ideal: steep slope, 40-year-old vines, roots going 15 feet deep, and south-southwest exposure. The soil comprises hard, weathered, gravelly grey slate that carries over into the grapes to create a tasty dry riesling.
With a floral fragrance reminiscent of elderflower, lilac, and violets, a salty minerality pairs with the slate overtones to craft a wine that pairs beautifully with smoky chicken recipe options and gravies accompanying other dishes.
See more about - The Best Wine To Pair with Steak
Sauvignon Blanc
Sauvignon blanc is an amazingly layered, rich white wine that falls almost perfectly between dry and sweet. It’s a wine grape popular in the Southern Hemisphere – especially New Zealand and Australia – that pairs well with a light chicken salad, chicken breast, or stir fry, and is best served chilled.
6. Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc 2019
I’m firm of the belief that New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc is the premier version of the grape at all price points, so if you get the opportunity to get one then I highly recommend it. Cloudy Bay is an inexpensive vintage but one with great versatility, featuring nectarine and stone fruit flavors against crisp acidity that is a hallmark of the sauvignon blanc grape.
Served chilled, Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc is tremendous for sweet and sour chicken dishes, a chicken salad, or for enjoying with a spicy chicken dish, particularly Thai and Vietnamese cuisine.
Red Wine and Chicken
When pairing chicken or turkey with red wine, lighter tannins are essential to building the right flavor and mouthfeel. Tannins create the drying sensation in your mouth when drinking red wine, and work to contrast the fatty elements while also providing complexity for a leaner, more juicy piece of meat.
The most recognizable red wine options – syrah, merlot, malbec, and cabernet sauvignon – may pair well with white meat, however, the heavier tannins and robust flavors need to be tamped down somewhat and made smoother for a better overall table wine pairing.
Pinot Gris
The pinot gris (also known as pinot grigio) grape is a particularly strong varietal for the area of Willamette Valley, Oregon, a beautiful white wine grape growing region. Pinot Gris from Willamette Valley King features the boldness, acidity, and structure that is the best of this type of grape.
7. King Estate Domaine Pinot Gris 2018 (375ml bottle)
King Estate is a sustainably farmed, certified organic vineyard complex and state-of-the-art winery situated at the southern end of the Willamette Valley. The 2018 pinot grigio selection is mineral-rich and redolent of summer fruit flavors like peach, mandarin orange, and pear, with just a touch of lemon acidity.
There’s plenty of opportunities to match a perfectly chilled bottle of the Domaine Pinot Gris (or King Estate’s similarly excellent pinot noir) with sustainably sourced and grown cuisine from the local area.
Zinfandel and Beaujolais
If you are looking for lighter-bodied red wines to enjoy with seafood and white meat then pinot noir, zinfandel, and Beaujolais wines all work nicely to complement more subtle, succulent flavors.
8. Opaque Zinfandel 2016
Opaque Zinfandel 2016 is a versatile and affordable medium-bodied red wine from the Paso Robles region, home to some of the best expressions of this grape. After aging in French oak barrels for 14 months, Opaque Zinfandel offers ripe flavors of blackberry, boysenberry, and black cherry, but with a lovely touch of oak and leather that evens out the sweeter flavor.
Accents of spice and dark cocoa contrast nicely against the richness of a creamy sauce, and at 15% ABV there’s a strength of alcohol that doesn’t hurt either.
9. Jean-Marc Burgaud Morgon Cote du Py James 2018
This delectable Gamay from Beaujolais Burgundy is a brilliant wine to pair with rich food, as only the best French wine can. It’s strong and deeply colored with a beautifully layered flavor of blackberries and dark fruity.
Juicy and fruity but with a medium to full body but lighter in tannins, this red wine can be used for any white meat dish, whether it’s simple or sauce heavy.
Cabernet Sauvignon
When it comes to a quality sav blanc to pair with chicken, it’s important to take the heavier elements of the rich wine down, so they don’t overpower the chicken’s flavor and tenderness.
I recommend going for older bottles that have had time to soften and grow more rounded with maturity. Of the three types, merlot offers the wine drinker a fruitier sweetness and syrah more power, while the richest is cabernet sauvignon.
10. Stonestreet Estate Cabernet Sauvignon 2016
Stonestreet Estate is a fascinating patchwork of peaks, valleys, and ridges overlooking the Alexander Valley. The Estate Cabernet Sauvignon is a collection of grapes that come from the most highly prized vineyard blocks on the mountain during a given vintage.
The Estate Cabernet opens with savory aromas of bay, bramble, sandalwood, and menthol that opens up to the sweetness of plum and raspberry flavors. The palate is tannin-rich, with a long finish redolent of dark chocolate.
The Stonestreet Estate Cabernet Sauvignon is a quality bottle with the winery’s interesting personality there for you to taste. It’s a great choice for the wine drinker looking for a rich mid-priced cab sav to enjoy with red meat.
Conclusion
Trying to match your wine with your favorite chicken dishes is a lot of fun, but not the be-all and end-all for your wallet or taste buds. Make sure you can enjoy wine drinking both individually and/or together with food and don’t sweat the small stuff.
Take notes and snap pics when you are wine tasting. Think about what you like and why you like it – from the wine’s aroma and color through to its taste – then try to find more while building your information base.
