The Absolute Best Wine To Pair With Paella

When pared back to the basics, even wine novices can make an educated guess about which wine varieties will work well with which dishes. White wine pairs beautifully with seafood, Caesar salad, and roasted turkey on Thanksgiving. Red wine makes a meal out of pasta bolognese, steak, and dark chocolate lava cake. But, like most of us, you might be at a loss when dinnertime dishes are a little more complicated.

Traditional paella, the Spanish dish popular around the world, is the perfect example. Made with a special kind of rice, saffron, vegetables, meat, seafood, or sometimes both proteins, paella immediately breaks the basic formula of using white wine for seafood and red wine for heartier red meat dishes. What's a host to do when your meal includes shellfish, chicken, and chorizo? Or shrimp and pork? To find the answer, Chowhound turned to an expert.

When speaking exclusively with Corey Garner, a winemaker at The Federalist, we learned that there is one wine variety that can perfectly suit our paella needs: chardonnay. "An easy all-around match, the Federalist Chardonnay has enough weight to stand up to the saffron and other spices in seafood or poultry preparations, while still maintaining freshness," she says. Lighter than red wine but stronger than crisp sauvignon blanc or fruity pinot grigio, chardonnay is the easy answer when guests are clamoring to dig in.

While chardonnay is a safe, all-encompassing choice, other wine varieties can make a serving of paella sing. "Paella, like pizza, is an incredibly flavorful dish, and the best wine pairings would depend on the ingredients being used," winemaker Corey Garner says. If your paella recipe is the traditional mix of meat and seafood but you strongly prefer red wine over white, you're in luck, as Garner has a suggestion for that, too. "If I wanted a red wine here, I would ... go for the Federalist Zinfandel," she says. "[It] would provide enough fruit and spice to handle the large range of flavors, but is still not overpowering the dish by way of tannins." If your favorite version of paella is actually more meat forward, Garner recommends a red blend instead. "Its softer, easy drinking approachability really makes it such a versatile wine in a food pairing context."

Even though chardonnay and some soft and spicy red wines work well with paella, don't let this fact lull you into a false sense of wine security — there are some bottles you won't want to uncork when serving this dish. "Wines I would avoid with paella again are any overly tannic reds, which can mask the delicate spice notes," Garner says. Nebbiolo and some young cabernets fall into this tannic category, so give them a miss when mixing up paella. "On the opposite end of the spectrum, any extremely light-bodied whites, which may not have enough heft or presence to complement the dish's complexity of spices," she adds. The delicate flavors in pinot grigio, sauvignon blanc, and riesling will simply be washed out by boldly spiced paellas, so save them for lighter meals where they can be savored.