Very few things can stimulate your palate more than succulent stuffed chicken breasts with a drizzle of rich gravy. But for some, the crowning touch remains elusive because they don’t know what wines go well with chicken. This question has caused many a cook to fret, but there’s really no need to. We’ve been making wine to complement food for over 5,000 years, and with a few exceptions, most wines pair well with most foods. But what if you want to go one step further and find the perfect taste combinations to bring out the full potential of your dining experience?
Understanding Taste and Smell
To do this, it’s necessary to understand a little about how our sense of taste and smell work. What we interpret as ‘taste’ actually involves many sensory stimuli, including olfactory, visual, sight, and even hearing. They all work together. This is why better restaurants go to the trouble of selecting a particular décor, music, and food presentation. Proper dining is a complete sensory experience, and the right wine can make or break it.
The actual sense of taste is pretty simple. You have four types of taste buds, each sensitized to a particular kind of stimuli: Bitter, Sour, Salty, and Sweet. Each type is concentrated in a different part of your tongue. The rearmost ¼ is made up of taste buds sensitized to Bitter. The next ¼ forward is for Sour. In front of that, we have Salty, and the first ¼ to the tip of the tongue is Sweet. All food tastes are just varying combinations of these four qualities. Chicken, depending on how it’s prepared, is mostly Sweet and Salty. There’s a secondary component called ‘mouthfeel,’ which has to do with texture and viscosity, but this doesn’t involve the taste buds. Chicken would be interpreted as firm and fibrous. Another factor is temperature, which is also sensed in the mouth and plays an important role in how all these other characteristics come together to create the complete experience. Something considered ‘full-tasting’ stimulates all of these senses.
Many people don’t realize it, but the majority of what you interpret as ‘taste’ actually involves your sense of smell. While the tongue can only sense four qualities, your nose is a marvel of chemical-detection engineering. We may not be bloodhounds, but the average human nose can detect concentrations as low as one part per several billion parts of air. This is done with around 5 to 6 million olfactory receptors, located high in the nasal passages. By comparison, rabbits have over 100 million of these receptors, and dogs have over 500 million. Human olfactory receptors can detect and interpret thousands of odors. Your nose is actually more relevant to your sense of taste than your tongue. This is why people who have colds often complain that food has no taste or all food tastes the same.
Now that we understand how things work, we can go about the task of selecting the wine that will provide the maximum taste experience. So, let’s roll up our sleeves and discover what wines go well with chicken. A good place to start is to learn a few basic ‘Rules of the Road.’
- Red wine with red meats, and white wine with poultry, seafood, and other meats. This is a basic rule, and there are many exceptions, but it holds true most of the time.
- Don’t worry too much about the exceptions. Chicken is a white meat, but there are many spicy chicken dishes that pair very well with a light, fruity red or blush wine.
- Like matches like. Try to select a wine whose characteristics closely match the characteristics of your entrée. If your entrée is light and delicate, you might want something like a light, slightly sweet Chablis. For very spicy chicken, you may want to go with a full-bodied dry California Chardonnay, Rhine, or maybe even a rosé.
- Occasionally, opposites attract. Sometimes, opposing tastes can create a new sensation. It has a lot to do with what you’re looking for as the end result. There are rare occasions when a particular chicken dish might be pleasantly surprised by the contrast of a bold red, such as a good Sangria or Merlot. This is especially true for some Mexican chicken entrees.
The ultimate rule is to drink what you like. Everyone is different, and it’s your meal. You are entitled to enjoy it the way you want.
One caution: There’s a difference between ‘spicy’ and just plain ‘hot.’ There are some very hot dishes, like strong curries, where the capsicum from peppers and other spices can react unpleasantly with the tannins and phenolics in wines. They tend to irritate the sense of taste and smell rather than complement them. These dishes are best paired with more ‘rustic’ beverages like beer, tea, soda, etc.
Another good idea is to try matching the style of wine with the style of cuisine you are serving. For example, Italian wines with Italian cuisine, French wines with French cuisine, and so on. It’s not critical, but it’s a nice extra touch where possible.
Suggested Wine Pairings for Chicken
Here are a few suggestions for your chicken entrees. These are just my opinions, and many may disagree, but it will give you a starting point. For delicate dishes where the main overtones are floral or fruity, such as boneless, skinless chicken breasts pan-braised in herbed butter or stuffed breasts, try a good Sauvignon Blanc (Fumé Blanc), Chablis, Chenin Blanc, or a light Riesling. For spicier dishes such as Sticky Chicken, Gumbo, Jambalaya, Satillo Pollo con Arroz, Monterrey Chicken, and most Oriental dishes, try a good dry Chardonnay, Gewürztraminer, Rhine, Merlot, White Zinfandel, or Pinot Noir. For salads with chicken, such as Oriental Chicken Salad, Cobb Salad, or Crispy Chicken Chef Salads, stick with very light, dry, and crisp wines like Chablis so they won’t compete with the salad dressings for your attention.
Again, these are just basic guidelines based on my decades of culinary experience. Your tastes may differ. Only experience can tell you for sure what wines go well with chicken.
