When it comes to enjoying your meal, it’s always a great idea to wash it down with a nice glass of wine. However, every wine is different and has its own profile, meaning that certain wines work best with some foods over others.
It’s important to know which foods work best with which wines as you are at risk of washing out your meal or making your wine taste bland simply by pairing the wrong two together.
As a result, a lot of people often need help finding the best wine to pair with their meal.
If you are wondering what wine you should enjoy alongside some classic sushi, then this is the place for you! Check out the guide below to find the best wine for your meal! Enjoy!
The Tricky Thing About Seafood
When it comes to pairing wine with meat, it’s generally recommended to opt for a full or medium bodied wine that is high in tannins and acidity.
As these meats also tend to be salty in flavor, high acidity wines perfectly complement this – but with seafood things are a little different.
Unlike other meats, seafood has a delicate flavor that can easily be overpowered with a full or medium bodied wine.
This means that when enjoying seafood, you should opt for a wine that is light bodied. This is so the high level of tannins does not overpower the unique seafood flavor and instead create a balanced palate.
As for acidity, you can still enjoy a highly acidic wine with seafood. Citrus flavors like grapefruit and lemon work great with seafood and help complement the flavor, so light and zesty fruity wines are the best choice to enjoy with seafood.
This means that if you are enjoying sushi for your lunch or dinner, a glass of light citrus wine is a great choice.
So, seafood works a little differently from other meats. A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that seafood follows the same rules as pork or beef, and end up drinking a wine that completely washes away any flavors of the meal.
If you want to enjoy your sushi, then check out these wines below!
These are our recommended wines to drink alongside sushi and each one has been carefully selected to ensure you can enjoy a balanced meal of flavors that perfectly complement each other.
So, check them out to find the right wine for you!
Sushi And Wine
Here are our recommended wines to enjoy alongside your sushi. There are a range of different wines on offer so check them out to find the right wine for you – good luck!
It originates from France and is made from green skin grapes to create a light bodied wine (however, there are medium bodied variants that you can also find, so watch out!). It’s low tannins level means that it won’t overpower the flavors of your sushy.
Sauvignon blanc is also well known for its bright and zesty flavors of lime and passion fruit. It is one of the sweeter wines on this list, making it perfect for sushi such as tempura due to the light batter that coats the seafood.
However, you can find more zesty variants of sauvignon blanc which feature higher acidity, making it far more suitable for stronger seafood.
Riesling
Another great wine to pair up with seafood including sushi is riesling.
Riesling is a white grape wine that originates from the Rhine region of Germany, making it an aromatic wine known for its high acidity. This high acidity makes it a great wine to pair with seafood as the acidity perfectly complements the unique flavors of sushi.
As for flavor, riesling features plenty of notes of flavors including pear, peach, and other fruits. This makes it a sweet wine as well as an acidic one, making it perfect to mellow out spicy sushi and seafood.
Albarino
For something sharper and stronger in flavors of lemon and lime, you will want an albarino.
Albarino is a Spanish wine that is super complex in its profile. It’s both strong and delicate thanks to its refreshing acidity and dry finish. It has strong notes of lemon, lime and pear, paired with more subtle sweeter notes of beeswax.
The longer this wine has to develop, the sweeter it can become – so it’s better enjoyed with sushi when it’s still zesty and sharp!
Its bitterness makes it a great match with sweet sushi including shrimp, so why not give this wine a try?
Pinot Noir
It can be tricky finding a red wine that doesn’t turn your sushi into a metallic mess due to the high level of tannins, but a great red wine to try with sushi is pinot noir.
This means that even those who prefer red wine can still enjoy a glass alongside their sushi although you need to ensure that the pinot noir you have is low in tannins.
Despite this, the light and refreshing taste of pinot noir is still a great pairing with seafood and sushi due to its bright acidity, light to medium bodied levels of tannins, and complex fruity flavors.
With notes of cherry and raspberry, pinot noir still pairs well with the delicate flavors of sushi – although we will argue that more citrus flavors found in white wines are a better match again.
However, if you are a red-wine die-hard, then a pinot noir is the best wine for you and your sushi meal.
Final Thoughts
So, there are lots of different wines you can enjoy alongside sushi but in order to preserve the sushi’s unique flavor and elements, you will want to pair this meal with a wine that is high in acidity and low in tannins.
This will help you enjoy the sushi and the wine by creating a perfectly balanced profile!
Hi, I’m Rachel Edwards and I enjoy a glass of wine as much as the rest of them. Well, maybe slightly more.
My parents own a vineyard in Napa Valley and were constantly making new wines for the locals to try. Their brand was one of the most popular across the US at one point. My sister and I loved running up and down the vines, picking the grapes for our parents, and even helping with the ideas.
Since moving out of the family home, my love for wine has not waivered - in fact, I consider myself somewhat of a connoisseur. I’m always the one to bring the wine to our girly gatherings, family meals, and picnics - let me know what we’re doing, and I’ll supply the goods.
