Christmas and New Year's Eve are always an opportunity to sit around a beautiful table and enjoy a festive menu. Among the essentials of the end-of-year festivities, oysters are a must-have for the most gourmands. All that remains is to find a wine that will enhance this seafood product. So let's find out which wine to drink with oysters .
Respect tradition by accompanying oysters with a dry white wine
Even the uninitiated know, nothing beats a fruity and dry white wine to accompany oysters . This delicate marriage ensures a beautiful balance, without a false note. The white wines then offer fruit aromas and a beautiful acidity which perfectly highlight the iodized flavors of this shellfish.
White wines should then be served very chilled, and can accompany both raw oysters and hot oysters.
You can then turn without hesitation to different types of dry white wine , such as Chablis, Sancerre, or Muscadet.
Wine and oysters: more unexpected food and wine pairings
If white wine is a must for eating oysters, you can also try less traditional combinations, with wines that will surprise and delight your guests.
- Champagne : its small bubbles will have the advantage of accentuating the acidity and flavors of the wine, and bringing a nice freshness when tasting oysters. You must then choose a brut or extra brut champagne, which will be suitable for both raw oysters and hot oysters;
- Red wine : even more original and very unexpected, fruity and fresh red wine, like a pinot noir, provides a nice balance between acidity and freshness.
What wine to serve with a platter of raw oysters?
If you wish to refine your choice of wine, for a more subtle food and wine pairing, you can choose a bottle of wine which is particularly suitable for tasting a raw oyster.
Purchased in baskets for a festive meal, oysters don't need anything to be delicious. All you have to do is open them, drain the first water and enjoy them...with a good wine! But the exercise of choosing the bottle of wine becomes complicated when the gourmand adds bread, butter, lemon, or even vinegared shallots to his tasting. The explosion of flavors complicates the exercise, but we can already forget about red wine, whose tannins would spoil the party.
Then, for each oyster its wine:
- A muscadet for the Paimpol oyster;
- A Chablis for the Belon flat oyster;
- A Muscadet from the Nantes region for a fine, clear oyster;
- An Entre-deux-mers for an oyster from the Arcachon basin;
- A Picpoul-de-Pinet for a Bouzigues oyster...
And if you want to bring a little originality to your pairings, you can also serve your raw oysters with a Riesling, a Sylvaner, or even a Jurançon.
What wine to serve with hot oysters?
Hot oysters are a subtle dish that can surprise you, but always end up seducing. Here again, you have to find the perfect wine to accompany gratinated oysters and honor these incomparable iodized and grilled flavors.
With heat, poached, gratinated or sauced oysters lose their acidity. You will therefore have to compensate for this by choosing a fatter and more complex wine .
A Pouilly-fumé is, for example, a perfect wine to accompany the salty notes of cooked oysters, as are white wines produced from roussette, a white grape variety from Haute-Savoie.
And for a more glamorous and luxurious side, don't hesitate to serve a brut champagne with your hot oysters .
Wines from the MDCV group for your oyster and wine pairings
Best known for its rosé wines, Provence also produces high quality white wines each year. The MDCV group then offers you two vintages that will work wonders with hot or cold oysters.
- Ultimate Provence White 2021 - AOP Côtes de Provence: served in its pretty bottle, this white wine is as beautiful as it is good. Its pale gold color reveals extremely fresh aromas of citrus and pepper;
- Inspiration White 2020 - AOP Côtes de Provence: this elegant white wine, with a beautiful brilliant pale yellow color, reveals floral notes, and aromas of white fruits and citrus fruits.
Are you planning to serve oysters next New Year's Eve? You are now ready to choose a wine which will go wonderfully with these seafood products so popular during festive times.
