You Don't Pair Wine with Salad?

Pssh.

I think not!

Plus it was in the 80s° F today in New Jersey, so I’m sure as heck not cooking.

Dinner tonight was Veggieful Mediterranean Tabbouleh Salad courtesy of Hungryroot. Delicious! I’d definitely make something like this again. I used just a dash of red wine vinegar and extra virgin olive oil, and the primary flavors are from the red bell pepper, the slightly sweet red onion, and the parsley. So what pairs well with that?

This guide from Serious Eats has lots of good ideas, and this one is a good principle to keep in mind:

"Salads can be real wine killers: a wine with medium acidity suddenly becomes flabby in the face of zippy salad dressing because vinegar is infinitely more tart than any of the acids that turn up naturally in wine. There are two ways to deal with this issue. The first is to select wines that bite back. Brighter styles of wine (read: higher acidity) will hold their own next to the sourness of, for instance, lemon juice or vinegar…. The other way to address the issue of pairing salads with wine is to make a salad dressing with slightly lower acidity by substituting something like a lower acid citrus (tangerine or Valencia orange, perhaps) or verjus (the juice of underripe grapes)….

Sounds like the perfect thing to drink on a hot evening. I opted for 2022 Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc from Turley.

Talk about great acidity! I get a smooth slightly citrusy note on the nose. There’s nice sharpness on the palate, and the finish spreads nicely across your mouth. It was a good pick that worked well with the chickpeas and crunchy veg. This would still work with chilled chicken too. I’m not sure how it would do with a creamy mayonnaise-based classic chicken salad.

But hey, it’s going to be a long, very hot summer, so we have lots of time to experiment!

Drop your favorite pairings in the comments, and stay cool!