The best wine pairings for eggs benedict

The ideal wine pairing for eggs benedict - that unctuous dish of poached eggs and ham topped with buttery hollandaise sauce - is likely to be dictacted as much by when you eat it as the dish itself.

Although it’s so good you could eat it at any time of day - at least I could - it’s primarily a breakfast or brunch dish which suggests, if any alcohol at all, champagne, sparkling wine or a sparkling wine cocktail like Bucks Fizz.

Does it matter which one? I’d go for a lighter style myself - a blanc de blancs or all-chardonnay sparkling wine rather than a richer, toastier blanc de noirs or vintage champagne. French ‘cremants’ like Cremant d’Alsace or Cremant de Bourgogne are low cost alternatives to champagne or you could go for a cava or prosecco though to my taste the latter are generally a touch too sweet for eggs. There’s great fizz too from England, California, New Zealand and South Africa - even Brazil these days.

Classic orange juice-based brunch cocktails like Bucks Fizz and Mimosas work well too though not, I think, a Bloody Mary which is better suited to a more robust egg dish with bacon or chorizo.

If you’re eating your ‘benedict’ at lunchtime or for supper and don’t want to drink fizz I’d go for a smooth dry white wine such as an unoaked or lightly oaked chardonnay or an Alsace pinot blanc.

These choices will work with egg benedict variations with smoked salmon* or spinach too. Scrambled eggs are also very good with sparkling wines like champagne.

* See also this very successful beer match with Eggs Royale

Photo © Olga Nayashkova at shutterstock.com

Dry or fruity? Which style of white wine pairs best with simply grilled fish?

About the last place I’d have expected to have an enlightening discussion about food and wine matching is in a fisherman’s shack called Chez Loulou down on the Languedoc coast. Actually I do it an injustice. It’s a restaurant - just - but one that relies for its appeal on fabulously fresh fish rather than fantastically skilled cooking.

The owner though, whose name I don’t yet know, has absolutely the right attitude to wine. How many restauranteurs when you order a particular wine would ask you how you like it - dry or fruity? (The wine in question being the local Picpoul de Pinet.)

When we hesitated he went on to suggest that if we were looking for a wine to drink as an aperitif we should choose a fruity one whereas if we were concerned to match the grilled sea bass we had ordered we should opt for a drier style.

Of course this advice is particularly apposite in France where, when you order grilled fish, that’s what you get. They don’t go in for veg or other accompaniments that might possibly create a bridge to a fruitier wine.

But there is a useful insight here - namely that ultra-dry whites that don’t particularly shine on their own (Muscadet being the other obvious example) spring to life when partnered with simply cooked, ultra-fresh fish. And that fruitier wines can sometimes overwhelm their delicate sweet flavour.

It also shows how deeply engrained knowledge of food and wine still is in the average Frenchman!

Although not enough to keep the restaurant going, sadly. It has closed since I wrote this post!

See also...

• 12 great wine pairings with salmon
• What's the best wine pairing for tuna? 
• When to pair red wine with fish

Image credit: Oleksandr P