The best wines to pair with courgettes or zucchini

There’a a fair chance that if you grow courgettes - or zucchini - you’re eating more than your fair share of them at this time of year but what wine should you drink with them?

As you’ll be well aware they don’t have much flavour of their own so it’s more a question of thinking about the flavours you put with them when you're working out a wine pairing. Zucchini go particularly well with soft cheeses and yogurt, with herbs, especially dill and mint, with tomatoes, and with olive oil - if you fry them crisply this will bring out more of an intense flavour.

You can also turn them into a hot or cold soup but these again tend to be seasoned with the same herbs

For me this generally points to crisp unoaked white wines rather than red and even than rosé, though as they’re often served as part of a meal rather than the main event, a pale dry rosé could well hit the spot

Good wines to pair with zucchini

A citrussy sauvignon blanc

Rarely fails.

Crisp dry Italian whites

So many Italian whites are sympathetic to vegetable dishes - pinot grigio, pecorino, Falanghina, Greco di Tufo, verdicchio, vermentino .… I wouldn’t bother with the showier chardonnays though

Fresh Greek whites such as assyrtiko and moschofilero

Greeks have some of the best ways of cooking zucchini so why not try a Greek white with them?

Courgette and feta fritters with yoghurt

Dry riesling especially if there’s a touch of spice in the recipe as in this delicious savoury courgette seed and curry leaf cake

Stuffed courgette flowers are even more delicate and really need an accompanying white wine that won't overwhelm them. An Arneis from Piedmont, for instance or a sparkling wine such as Franciacorta.

Courgette and tomato gratin

If you bake courgettes with tomatoes and cheese you could drink a Beaujolais or a light Italian red such as a Valpolicella. (Or that rosé you've been dying to crack open ... )

Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay

Wines to match different pasta sauces

What wine should you pair with your favourite pasta?

As you might guess it depends on the sauce rather than the pasta shape. From rich and meaty ragùs to zesty herby pesto, each sauce has its own unique character that suggests a different wine pairing. That said I like to pair Italian wine with pasta wherever possible as it suits it so well and isn’t too full-bodied or alcoholic.

In this guide, I’ll walk you through the best wine pairings for six popular styles of pasta sauce, from the classic tomato-based marinara to creamy Alfredo and beyond. Each sauce calls for a different approach: think crisp whites to cut through the richness of a carbonara, or a bold red to stand up to a hearty Bolognese. 

What Wine to Match with Different Pasta Sauces

Creamy pasta sauces

To offset creamy sauces (eg carbonara or fettucine alfredo) think Soave, Bianco di Custoza, Pinot Bianco, Sicilian whites and lighter Chardonnay or Chardonnay blends.

Spaghetti Carbonara. Image source: Engin Akyurt

See also six of the best wine matches for spaghetti carbonara

With baby vegetables (primavera) or herbs (verdura): try a crisper Italian whites such as Falanghina, Vermentino or Arneis. Or a Loire Sauvignon Blanc.

With mushroom pastas serve Soave, Bianco di Custoza, Lugana or Chardonnay, or a light Merlot or Pinot Noir.

Seafood pasta sauces

Seafood (spaghetti alle vongole, spaghetti with mussels, linguine with crab) need crisp dry whites such as Frascati, Verdicchio, Vernaccia di San Gimignano, Muscadet or Picpoul de Pinet. Crab or lobster sauces can take a fuller white such as a good quality Soave or Chardonnay.

The best wine pairings for spaghetti alle vongole

Photo by tofuprod licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Red or tomato-based pasta sauces

Tomato-based sauces include fresh tomato with basil: crisp dry whites such as Pinot Grigio or Verdicchio.

Cooked tomato sauces such as napoletana or marinara): Montepulciano d’Abruzzo or a light Sicilian red.

Meat-based sauces e.g. bolognese, spaghetti with meatballs, sausage-based sauces are a logical partner for Sicilian and Puglian reds (especially Primitivo), Sangiovese, Rosso di Montalcino and inexpensive Barberas. Zinfandel is good too.

Six of the best matches for spaghetti bolognese

Pesto and other cheese-based sauces

Dry whites such as Gavi, Soave or Verdicchio are best with green pesto - you could also try Sicilian whites and lighter Chardonnays).

With red pesto I’d go for a medium bodied red such as Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, Sangiovese or Merlot. It’s a colour thing as much as anything

With cheese-based sauces such as four cheese and Gorgonzola): try crisp dry whites such as Verdicchio, light Chardonnays or light reds such as Teroldego or Merlot.

Spicy pasta sauces

With hot spicy sauces such as arrabbiatta, aglio olio e peperoncino (garlic, oil and chilli) and puttanesca (anchovies, capers and olives) try either a sharply flavoured dry white wine or a rustic Italian red: a Primitivo or Sicilian red or a Zinfandel

The best wine pairings for spaghetti puttanesca

Photo by being0828 licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

With fashionable cacio e pepe (pecorino cheese and black pepper sauce) I prefer a light red like a frappato as you can see from one of my matches of the week.

Pasta sauces with pulses

Tuscan reds such as Chianti work well with pasta with beans or lentils (Pasta e Fagioli) or try an earthy, neutral white such as Orvieto or Vernaccia di San Gimignano)

Top image by Brent Hofacker at shutterstock.com

The best wine pairings for vitello tonnato

One of the best hot weather dishes, this piquant dish of cold poached or roast veal with a tuna, anchovy and caper mayonnaise invariably pops up on menus at this time of year. But what to pair with it?

* as it originally comes from Piedmont a Piedmontese white like Roero Arneis or a Gavi seems a good place to start. Other neutral dry Italian white wines such as a Vermentino or even a quality Pinot Grigio from the Alto Adige would be a good match too.

*It's not traditional but a mineral Chablis or Aligoté would work as would a mature Muscadet-sur-lie or an Albarino.

*Try a dry rosé - especially Provençal rosé (see also this longer list of good Provencal rosé pairings)

* Personally I think it’s more a white wine dish than a red but a young Langhe Nebbiolo or other light Italian red like a Valtellina or even a light red burgundy would work fine. (Not too lush and fruity a pinot in my opinion as the anchovies and capers will accentuate its sweetness. Italians rarely drink wines without a fair amount of acidity in them.)

Image © zoryanchik - Fotolia.com

The best wine pairings for spaghetti alle vongole

The ideal pairing does of course depend on how you make your spaghetti alle vongole - the classic Italian dish of spaghetti with white wine and clams - but in my book, the answer is simple: a young, unoaked, Italian white wine.

Goodness, there are enough to chose from! A simple Soave, Bianco di Custoza, Frascati, Falanghina, Vermentino, Vernaccia or Verdichio dei Castelli de Jesi, basic Sicilian whites - even a Pinot Grigio though be prepared to pay more than the lowest cut price offer for it.

Italian grape varieties grown elsewhere such as Vermentino and Pinot Grigio would do the trick but make sure it’s the classic Italian style rather than the off-dry Pinot Gris one.

You could of course drink any crisp dry white from elsewhere. Muscadet would be fine as would Chablis, Picpoul de Pinet or Albarino. Sauvignon Blanc I personally think is too powerfully aromatic for this simple dish.

A genuinely dry rosé - such as a Côtes de Provence or a Bardolino would also be a good pairing.

Including more tomato in the dish might mean you want a wine of greater intensity - say a late harvest Vermentino (intense but not sweet) or a Greco di Tufo from Campania, but I personally don’t think you can better this version from the Guardian’s excellent Felicity Cloake who assiduously road tests a range of recipes in her weekly How to Cook The Perfect . . . column.

Image ©nbixer at fotolia.com