Salad and wine, do they match?

I sometimes find it difficult to match wine to salads. I often pick salads that I know are wine friendly. My experience is that some salads especially those with sweet salad dressing do not go well with wines for the most part.

Tonight we had one of our favorite salads - chicken rice stick salad. It matched very nicely with the leftover Kunstler riesling with the acidity in the wine going well with the sesame oil and balsamic vinegar dressing. This salad has toasted chunks of roasted chicken, toasted sesame seeds, deep fried rice noodles, mushrooms, celery, pea pods (sometimes cucumbers) mixed with lots of fresh lettuce (buttercrunch tonight) and spinach from the garden topped off with the balsamic and sesame oil dressing. The sesame seeds also had a nice interaction with petrol elements of the riesling.

Two other salads that we enjoy that tend to be wine friendly are warm beet-spinach salad and caesar salad with bacon. Pinot noir goes well with the beet salad and the caesar goes well with nicely oaked shiraz.

How do you match wine to salad?

Do you pick the salad to go with a wine?

Or, do you pick a wine to go with your favorite salad?

Or, is salad just not worth matching with wine in your opinion?

For vegetable dishes of all kinds, I look first to Austria: Gruner Veltliner, Zweigelt, Blaufrankisch. (GV is also tops with fried chicken, but that's a story for another day...)

[Jenise]

Tom, we eat salad with virtually every meal, and sometimes salad IS the meal, so we have a lot of experience pairing wine. And the first thing I'd say is that most commercially made salad dressings are tough matches. It's like they're made to cover up the taste of lettuce, not compliment it. And there's usually too much acidity. Since I home-make every dressing we use here expressly for each salad we eat, and since my dressings are never sweet, it's not a problem I have to deal with, but I think we're unusual. I advise people who only use commercially made dressings to dilute the dressing with a little extra virgin olive oil for improved compatibility. Sweet dressings are pretty much deal-killers. Cheeses, like chevre, bleu or parm, usually create a nice bridge to wine. Dry whites are typically good choices. Gruner, pinot grigios.... Sauvignon blanc loves chevre, peas and spinach, or any salad dressed simply with lemon juice and olive oil. Light reds often work well, dark heavy reds never--sangiovese, for instance, is usually good with tomatoes. So is viognier. I agree with your comment about pinot and beets.

Ah, but now we run into the question of the French habit of eating a green salad following the main course and before the cheese course. In many such cases best rule of thumb is to rely on lemon and not vinegar, to avoid the use of sweetness and to complement the lemon based vinaigrette with a bit of mustard. Amazing - such salads will then go nicely with whatever wine you had with the main course.

Best
Rogov

[David M. Bueker]

I own a ton of Riesling Auslese.

One of my favorite matches for slightly older auslese is a salad of fresh spinach with toasted or even candied pecans, some crumbled blue cheese (or goat cheese if you don't care for blue), a little olive oil & a dash of balsamic (plus S&P). Some blood orange sections can take the whole thing one level higher if you want.

Delicious match.

A favourite in France (especially southwest) is a salad de geziers et foie gras de canard. Works with everything from dry white, through sweetish white, to light reds.

A favourite in France (especially southwest) is a salad de geziers et foie gras de canard. Works with everything from dry white, through sweetish white, to light reds.

Sounds like a base canard to me.

Don't not try to match reds with salad. One of my earliest, and still best, wine/salad matches was a 2000 Texier CdR St. Gervais that was made better by a salad that Jenise prepared at her house for a little group that descended upon her and Bob from time to time (depending on airline schedules). I've never forgotten that match.

Salad comes inbetween entree and dessert for me. Rather than plan for it, I make a decision on the spot whether to finish the wine before or after or with it. If both salad and wine are acidic it will be with. Samo if both are not very acidic.

[Jenise]

Don't not try to match reds with salad. One of my earliest, and still best, wine/salad matches was a 2000 Texier CdR St. Gervais that was made better by a salad that Jenise prepared at her house for a little group that descended upon her and Bob from time to time (depending on airline schedules). I've never forgotten that match.

How sweet of you to remember that! But really, like all things wine, it comes balance, doesn't it?

So I read you're on baby duty today?

Sounds like a base canard to me.

I canardly believe you said that!

In my "gotta make sure the wine & dish are paired to perfection days" the trick I used was to substitute some acidic white wine for either half or even all of the vinegar in the salad dressing; since I'm used to using well-aged balsamic vinegar (which is much less acidic than regular wine vinegar) it wasn't much of a palate adjustment, believe it or not. Come to think of it, the dressings made with wine were very good!

Also, to my taste, most people use way too much vinegar in their salad dressings, anyway; salt, some fresh or dried herbs, a touch of Dijon mustard or a bit of lemon/ orange juice in lieu of some or all of that vinegar works wonders. If you like some garlic, and or thinly sliced onions, that helps, too!

i.e. I very much agree with Rogov and also Jenise re: Pinot N. & beets (similar odor profile)!

Salad comes inbetween entree and dessert for me..

Isn't the main course what comes inbetween the entree and the dessert?

More seriously, I agree with your wait-and-see approach. I usually end up not drinking wine during the salad and have rarely found matches to be 'great'. But, I survive to drink again..

Jenise,

We make a lot of salad dressings ourselves also, and actually my wife made this one. Like you, we sometimes have salad as the main course and for this salad that was the case. Of course, I think I had three bowls and my wife had two for the meal. When it is the main dish, matching it with a wine becomes more important than when it is a side dish. I garden and the main theme for my garden is fruit and salad, so most of what I grow in the vegetable garden is geared toward making salads with butterhead (buttercrunch in this case) and romaine my main types of lettuce. The rice stick salad requires about 8 cups of fresh lettuce or spinach, so having a garden with lots of ready to pick lettuce and/or spinach is a requirement for the best salad.

Marco stole my suggestion, using some wine in place of part of the vinegar. You just don't want too acidic.

Rahsaan, I fight the battle, pretty much always refer to main courses, but in US entree is ubiquitous, even if it makes no sense.

Rahsaan, I fight the battle, pretty much always refer to main courses, but in US entree is ubiquitous, even if it makes no sense.

Yes, I know..