The Christmas season is coming, along with a great amount of special meals and we want them to be absolutely perfect. Very often we focus basically on the dishes we are serving, somehow neglecting the wine. We frequently uncork that bottle we’ve been saving for that special occasion or that wine we’re particularly interested in opening, but perhaps that wine and the meal you’re about to offer are not precisely a good combination. The secret for a good wine-pairing is the harmony between the food and the drink. To be successful when choosing a wine for your Christmas meals, we suggest the following pieces of advice: 

Think of the menu as a set of food and drink. Do not think of combining that tasty dish you cook so well with that great wine you received as a gift; the harmony between both might be non-existent. If you want your guests to enjoy the experience to the full, regale them with perfectly tuned dishes and wines.

Take into account the flavour of the dishes. Traditionally fish and white meat are paired with white wine, whereas game and red meat go with red wine. Well, we recommend you to pay more attention to the flavour of the dish. For instance, some white meat may wonderfully harmonize with a full-bodied red wine if it is cooked with an intensely flavoured sauce. The same applies to fish: salmon, being a fatty fish, may be perfectly combined with a young red wine, although smoked fish harmonizes much better with a barrel-fermented Chardonnay, for instance. For more elaborate dishes with very intense flavours, you may choose Cabernet or Syrah wines. All in all, make your choice on the basis of flavour, not of meat vs. fish.

Focus on the guests. Remember you want your guests to enjoy a great experience. Therefore, consider their preferences when drinking wine. If they don’t usually drink wine, less astringent wines might be a better option, since they’ll probably enjoy them more. And don’t think that opening an aged wine for a Christmas dinner is compulsory. If you believe your guests will prefer a menu with young wines, go ahead. A young wine needn’t be either bad, poor or of low quality. Wine quality has nothing to do with age. Don’t compose your menu in terms of the aging. Do it according to the quality of the wines. In that sense, we recommend Pago Wines as a guarantee of quality wines.