How to choose cooking wines

May 11, 6:18 PMSacramento Nutrition ExaminerAnne Hart

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Let's look at the inexpensive wines in which to cook food. Wines are used to cook lean poultry in such as turkey baked in a white wine crème sauce with green grapes and blueberries, or lean veal and eggplant in a white wine cheese sauce. Red wines and white wines, sweet wines and dry wines, natural wines and fortified wines, still wines and sparkling wines are cooked with various dishes -- such as baked avocado and flaked fish in sparkling champagne with a champagne-sour cream sauce.

Season artichokes with cooking wine or with Cynar, an Italian bitter apéritif artichoke liqueur. It's about 33 proof.

Year of vintage makes a difference in European wines, but in domestic, it doesn't matter. Your wine dealer will guide you and suggest the best wine to select. Chablis should be added to lighter foods, chicken, fish, shellfish, cheese dishes, brains and sweetbreads.

White Bordeaux are frequently called Sauternes. All the dry white Bordeaux or Sauternes are served with the same light foods as are the white Burgundies. The very sweet Sauternes are served as after-dinner toppings to desserts and over crepes. German wines and their domestic equivalents are popular with shellfish.

Champagne is best added to poultry dishes and sweet and sour shrimp served in a chafing dish. Cream Sherries are best mixed with desserts and with nut dishes, such as pecan-sherry pie. Fruits go well with the brandies and wines.

Vermouth is more aromatic than sherry because of the addition of herbs, roots, spices and peels in its making. Dry vermouth (also called French vermouth) is light in color, should be served well chilled and served in a cold avocado soup with dry vermouth, sherry and madrilène.

Or sweet vermouth, also called Italian vermouth) is darker in color. It is served hot, added to a dish of barbecued spare ribs with scotch whisky (not a wine) and vermouth.

How deliciously vermouth drenches the spare ribs when mixed with lemon juice and basted over ‘roasted’ or barbecued ribs, Greek-style lamb or goat, turning on a spit. It just relates to tart greening apples with a dash of angostura bitters. Other sweetened aromatic wines you can use when cooking with 'spirits' are Amer Picon and Dubonnet. Amer Picon has an orange character to it. Or as an alternative to using wines in cooking, you can use liqueur made from artichokes.

The sparkling wines, sparkling Burgundy, and the dry champagnes are perfectly acceptable in a champagne sour cream sauce over baked avocado and salmon over veal and eggplant, or veal parmigiana. Red Burgundies are the heaviest of red wines. Use them to flavor poultry or cold roast veal.

The heavy red Bordeaux can be served with veal, eggs and cheese dishes and with chicken and green grapes to create a wine sauce. Americans call Red Bordeaux "clarets". The Bordeaux bottle is distinctive. It has high shoulders and a short neck. The well-known French red Bordeaux wines are St. Emilion and Pomerol (heavy). Medoc and Graves are lighter.

Other familiar red wines are the Italian wines. These wines are mixed in pasta sauces or with meat and vegetable dishes such as squash stuffed with meat and rice, marinated and drenched with red wine, or eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, or other stuffed vegetables packed with ground veal, chicken or fish.

Rose wines are lighter. Their more delicate flavors go well on basted ham, pork, as a base sauce for making cold cuts look fancy, and over salads with some hot, mulled spices added to dress up fruit salads.

White Burgundies are referred to in the U.S. as Chablis. White Burgundies are bottled in the slope-shoulder type of bottle. The domestic "Chablis" includes such varietal wines as Pinot, Blanc, Chardonnay, and Folle Blanche. These wines are mixed with lighter foods such as chicken salad and sliced chicken, fish, shellfish, light cheese dishes--whipped up in a soufflé or cheese omelet, and basted over sweetbreads, and organ meats.

White Bordeaux called Sauternes here are dry, not sweet or heavy. Use them over light foods -- poultry, fish, shellfish, cheese-egg, salads, fruits, such as poached fruit and vanilla sauce with the white Bordeaux beaten into the sauce, whatever your favorite sauce would be -- over the poached vegetables, fruits or dairy meals.

Vegetarians love the zest this wine gives to vegetable cutlets. Just pour it into whatever sauce you use, salad dressing, or blend into your favorite vegetarian recipe. German and Alsatian wines are bottled in tall, slender green bottles. Moselle is sharp. German wines are light and dry and taste best with shrimp or fish. Cook the fish in the wine or add to your favorite recipe.

White wines do not keep as well as the reds, and should be stored in the refrigerator. Dessert wines are sweet and have higher alcohol content than dinner wines. They are served at room temperature over poached fruits, such as a mocha apricot pudding, or over lemon shells and with blazing hot pears with very cold wine custard.

Add dessert wines such as Malaga and the tawny ports -- but not the rubies -- to custard and pour over custard, spiced or heated, if desired. Dessert wines can be served also blazing hot over ice-cold desserts and dotted with a spice, like cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, allspice, etc.

They can also be poured over a cheese-and-fruit course served at room temperature for dessert or late night snack. Try Malaga over stuffed cheese balls in a melon.

Cream Sherries are the sweetest Sherries and go well with coffee ice cream and chocolate cake. Try Olorose, deepest in color of the sweet, Spanish sherries. It has a mellow, nutty flavor that adds something aromatic to oriental and almond-dishes or pastries.  

Watch the uTube video below on cooking lobster with cognac.