Wine and Appetizer Pairings: a quick guide

Get ready for your next Super Bowl (or other) party as our American contributor Monica Shaw offers tips and wine pairings for popular appetizers. 

The best wine to pair with appetizers and hors d’oeuvres largely depends on whether they precede a meal, as is traditional, or—as is more common these days—actually make up the meal itself. After all, we all seem to enjoy grazing these days.

The challenge is that people often serve multiple appetizers at once, each with contrasting flavours and a wide variety: cold, hot, rich, fresh, spicy, and often quite salty. The wines you choose should be as palate-cleansing as they are quaffable. Chances are, you’re entertaining, so you’ll want to pick wines that all your guests will enjoy.

In this post I’m sharing tips on crowd-pleasing wines that tend to pair well with all manner of appetizers, from dips and chicken wings to cheese boards and nachos. I’ll also cover some of the most popular appetizers (with recipes!) and the wines that go best with them. 

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