Battle of the Flavors: How to pair Indian food and wine without overdoing it

In advance of the  DC Wine Week  from October 15th to the 23rd hope this post will make your meal at a participating restaurant even more enjoyable. Details of the DC Wine Week http://www.dcwineweek.com/fall-2011-schedule/

When it comes to Indian food, there are lots of options. So, let’s take this one step at a time. Before you start pairing your food with wine, you have to decide what kind of meal you want to have. There are many different flavors and spices associated 

with Indian food and deciding what taste you are going for should be priority number one. While we are always game for sipping some wine, we couldn’t have put together these suggestions without a little help in our research. We turned to previous postings by Fun and Food Café and Fiona Beckett’s Matching Food & Wine.

Generally speaking, white wines went best with the spicy dishes. In particular, Riesling was a good match. Because it is generally light and fruity, it works well with really heavy and flavorful dishes. Gewurztraminer is a German wine that also works really well. Translated, it literally means “spicy grapes” and it is also mildly sweet so it won’t overpower the rich taste of your food. If you feel like going a little dryer,champagne also works very well.

Red wines are a little harder to navigate. Because reds have more tannins than whites, they tend to be a little bit more overpowering. You want to avoid any wine that is too boldly flavored to make sure that you don’t drown out the flavor of your food. Basically, you want to try to keep thing as simple as possible to avoid messing with the focus of your meal. The consensus was that Pinot Noir is the best because it tends to be lighter and fruitier than other reds.

We hope that this brief overview will be helpful to you the next time you sit down to a nice Indian meal. Good luck and cheers!