What’s the best wine to drink with Christmas pudding? (Updated)

There is an argument that you don’t need anything to drink with the classic Christmas pudding*, especially if you’ve sloshed brandy all over it but if you’re pairing other courses of the Christmas meal you might fancy a small glass of something sweet.

How rich is your pudding?

Which type depends on your pudding. Some are much darker and stickier than others. Basically you’ve got a choice of serving something equally intense or going for a lighter, fresher contrast.

Both options have some potential drawbacks. If you serve a rich sweet wine like a liqueur muscat or an ultra-sweet sherry like a PX you can make an already rich pudding overwhelmingly rich. 

On the other hand a lighter dessert wine such as a Sauternes or a sparkling wine like Moscato, can get lost amidst all the rich spicy fruit.

In my view the type of wine that works best is a dessert wine with a touch of orange or apricot. Inexpensive options would be a Spanish Moscatel de Valencia (one of the best value dessert wines around), a Muscat de St Jean de Minervois from Southern France or an orange muscat such as Andrew Quady’s Essencia.

Better still but slightly pricier and harder-to-find would be a Passito di Pantelleria, a glorious marmaladey dessert wine from an island just off Sicily or a Hungarian Tokaji (the latter is also a particularly good match for Stilton and other blue cheeses).

And I recently enjoyed a marsala dolce which brought out all the rich dried fruit flavours in the pudding. A sweet madeira, where the sweetness is balanced by a lovely acidity, would work well too.

All these will work better if you serve your pudding with whipped cream rather than brandy butter which has a strong alcoholic flavour of its own.

If you can’t resist the brandy butter try a 10 or 20 year old tawny port which is slightly less sweet than a ruby port like a Late Bottled Vintage and I think the nutty, treacley flavours work better than brambley ones. Serve it as they do in Portugal, lightly chilled.

If you’re a beer fan you could also put a bottle of barley wine (an extra-strong ale) on the table. A classic example is J W Lees Harvest Ale.

Or serve your pud with a small well-chilled glass of Grand Marnier or other orange-flavoured liqueur.

*For those of you unfamiliar with a British Christmas pudding it’s a steamed pudding full of dried fruits like raisins, currants and figs, often with some citrus peel added.

Photo © Anna_Pustynnikova at shutterstock.com

You might also find the following useful:

8 great wine and other matches for stollen

8 great drinks to match with mince pies

3 things you need to think about when pairing wine with chocolate

Chocolate is supposed to be impossible to match with wine but like any other ingredient it depends on the chocolate and how it’s used.

In general I’d discourage you from serving a lighter dessert wines like Sauternes but if the chocolate flavour is not too intense and some kind of fresh fruit (strawberries or passionfruit, say) is involved it should be fine.

If you’re trying to find a wine pairing for chocolate it helps to ask yourself these three questions. (The answer may not necessarily be wine!)

What kind of chocolate?

Are you trying to match milk chocolate or dark chocolate or even white chocolate though some would argue that isn’t really chocolate at all? The lighter the chocolate - and the airier your dessert - the easier your task is. See these suggestions for chocolate mousse for example. With a chilled chocolate soufflé you could even serve a glass of bubbly, rosé champagne or sparkling wine for preference.

What are you serving with it?

Think of the fruits that match with chocolate and it’ll give you a clue as to which wines - and other drinks - work too. Cherries are great with dark chocolate for instance and would make a sweet red dessert wine like a Maury or a late bottled vintage port a good match (or a cherry beer or liqueur).

Orange and chocolate? A well-tried and tested combination. An orange-flavoured moscatel or marmaladey Tokaji will echo those flavours . Dried fruit like raisins and figs pair with chocolate too as does a figgy, raisiny sweet sherry or madeira while a chocolate dessert with nuts is a great match for a tawny port or amaretto.

(See this post on the best matches for a chocolate yule log which vary depending on the filling.)

Is it hot or cold?

A cold chocolate dessert is easier to match than a hot one, the trickiest being a molten chocolate fondant pudding. Serving it with cream or ice-cream will help but you’re still better to choose a fortified like a liqueur muscat rather a conventional dessert wine (PX sherry, I've discovered, is insanely good with warm chocolate brownies and ice cream.) Oddly enough a dark beer like a porter or imperial stout is particularly good with molten chocolate puds as you can see from this post.

Image © al62 - Fotolia.com

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You might think there was no way of enjoying chocolate more than you already do but we’ve come up with 101 of them - all amazing drink pairings to enable you to get even more pleasure out of your favourite food. Download the e-book: 101 great ways to Enjoy Wine & Chocolate.

The best wine matches for Manchego, Berkswell and other hard sheep cheeses

Hard sheep cheeses are the winelover’s friend.

Nutty, tangy and savoury, they show off a good red like no other cheese which makes them a great choice if you’ve picked a serious wine with your main course.

You can also pair them with sweet wines, and with sherry and other fortified wines. Here are the pairings I think work best:

Mature Spanish reds especially Rioja and Valdepeñas (the latter comes from the same region as Manchego, La Mancha). Other oak-aged tempranillos too.

Mature Bordeaux

Reds from the south-west of France - an area which specialises in sheep’s cheese - often served with a cherry compote. Madiran, for example. Sweet wines from the same region such as Jurançon and Pacherenc-du-Vic-Bilh also work well

Mature Chianti - especially with aged pecorinos

Sherry, especially dry amontillado, palo cortado and dry oloroso. Aged tawny ports are also good - see this post on Zamorano and 30 y.o. tawny

Aged oaked white rioja - its nuttiness compliments sheep cheese perfectly as you can see here

Orange wines. Maybe not your cup of tea but their quince-like flavours are brilliant with sheep cheese (think membrillo)

Younger, fresher-tasting hard sheep cheeses are good with a crisp dry white such as albarino or vermentino

Image © nito - Fotolia.com

The best wine and liqueur pairings for a chocolate yule log

A chocolate yule log or ‘buche de Noël has become an increasingly popular dessert at Christmas but what kind of wine should you pair with it?

As usual with chocolate it depends how intense the flavour is and what the log is filled with.

A simple shop-bought log filled with whipped cream or a light buttercream doesn’t need as powerful a wine as a rich home-made one with, say, a chestnut filling.

You may of course feel that a sweet wine is over the top with something that’s already incredibly sweet and that you’d rather have a cup of black coffee or tea with it. But it is Christmas and I suspect most of you probably won’t!

Here’s what I’d suggest:

* For a shop-bought log I’d go for a Brachetto d’Acqui - a sweet, gently fizzy Italian red wine that isn’t too high in alcohol. If you’re serving it with fresh berries you could even serve a sparkling rosé or rosé champagne

* With a slightly richer homemade log with a chocolate cream filling you could try a stronger sweet red wine such as a recioto della Valpolicella, Maury or a black muscat like Elysium. If it’s flled with boozy cherries try a vintage character or late bottled vintage port.

* With a log with orange in the sponge or filling like this chocolate and clementine log try an orange muscat, Passito di Pantelleria, a lovely marmaladey dessert wine from an island off the coast of Sicily or a South African straw wine. Or you could serve an iced shot of Cointreau

* With a rich chocolate and chestnut yule log like this rather delicious-sounding version from Felicity Cloake I’d go for a dark cream sherry or sweet oloroso sherry, sweet madeira or Australian liqueur muscat

* If there are nuts or Nutella on or in your log as in this recipe try a tawny port or, if it includes almonds, a glass of amaretto.

What I personally wouldn’t go for:

Sauternes or similarly citrussy dessert wines - simply because I’d rather have orange flavours than lemony ones with chocolate. Ordinary non-vintage champagne because it’s too dry (though a demi-sec champagne would be fine with lighter recipes) and Asti because it’s a bit too light. But if you disagree go for it!

What other drinks have you enjoyed with a Yule log?

You may also find these other suggestions for what to drink with Christmas desserts useful:

Wine matches for Christmas pudding

Wine matches for mince pies

Wine matches for trifle

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