Wine Recipes

Wine in cooking occupies a role quite different from wine in the glass, and yet the same principle applies: quality matters. The old advice to "cook only with wine you'd drink" has its sensible basis — the heat of cooking concentrates whatever is in the bottle, and a wine of poor quality becomes more, not less, itself under heat. A wine with genuine character, however, transforms as it reduces, its primary fruit softening into savory depth, its acidity brightening sauces, its tannin softening over long braises into something more complex than either ingredient could achieve alone.

The great wine-cooking traditions of Europe are inseparable from their culinary geographies. In Burgundy, the canonical boeuf bourguignon demands a good Pinot Noir — the wine of the region, simmered with lardons and pearl onions until the beef has absorbed the wine's earthiness and the sauce has collapsed into silk. The coq au vin achieves its finest expression with a proper Burgundy rather than a generic "cooking wine."

In Italy, osso buco al gremolata requires a full-bodied white for the braising liquid, which reduces to an intensely savory fond. Risotto al Barolo, that magnificent extravagance of the Piedmontese, uses an entire bottle of Italy's most celebrated wine to color the rice a deep ruby and infuse it with the grape's complex character.

The beurre blanc of the Loire Valley, the matelote of Alsace, the clam and white wine preparations of Portugal's Alentejo: in each, wine is not a flavoring agent but a structural element — as essential to the dish as the protein it surrounds. Cooking with wine is not about expense; it is about understanding that the glass and the pot are part of the same conversation.