The best wines for cooking, an unscientific experiment

Whatever its colour, the wine must be clean and without a harsh, aggressive taste. Very cheap table wine sometimes does not react well in cooking, and it is better to use something superior in quality, although this does not have to be a great wine.” So says the distinguished encyclopedia Larousse Gastronomique.

My mother, who spent most of her cooking years in Zimbabwe and used wine in many dishes, may not have complied with this advice, as anyone who has tasted Zimbabwean wine would understand. Her options were limited, but her food was always delicious. This brings us to a question that has divided chefs, cooks and wine lovers since time immemorial: which wines should you use for cooking?

French chef Marie-Antoine Carême codified the four “mother sauces” in the early 19th century, but it was Auguste Escoffier who introduced the “daughter sauces” a century later and with them made wine a structural element of classical cooking. But cooking with wine as an ingredient (as opposed to the all-important cooking with a glass of wine on the side, which is a vital part of preparing almost any meal) is a far older tradition. De Re Coquinaria, one of the earliest known cookbooks, probably collated by a Roman called Caelius Apicius in the fifth century AD, contained numerous recipes that called for wine.

Wine is a key ingredient in many centuries-old recipes, peasant and refined, particularly in Europe. Coq au vin, boeuf bourguignon, moules marinière, oeufs en meurette, cacciatore, chorizo al vino tinto . . . the list is long and sweeps around the Mediterranean. Like stock, wine adds flavour. Like vinegar or citrus, it adds acidity. It can also add sweetness. It marinates, macerates and adds piquancy splashed on the finish. It is used to poach, boil, stew, braise, steam and blanche. Reduced, or used to deglaze, it becomes a defining component of sauces, jus and glazes.

I was commissioned to update the “Cooking with wine” entry in the upcoming fifth edition of The Oxford Companion to Wine. I was stunned to discover how little scientific research there is on the subject. My own findings revealed a lot of contradictory “rules”. Cook with cheap wine. Cook with good wine. Cook with leftover wine. Never cook with leftover wine. Cook with tannic wine. Cook with wine without tannins. Cook with fruity wine. Cook with dry wine. Cook with red wine. Don’t cook with red wine. Cook with wine you like to drink. Cook with wine you don’t want to drink. Almost every piece of advice has its opposite. Choose your myth and wing it.

I set out to do some empirical research of my own, although this is a generous description of the unstructured, unscientific kitchen chaos that ensued. If I had learnt anything by the end of it, apart from that one doesn’t undertake an exercise like this without a full team of kitchen porters, it was that proper scientific experimental trials would be expensive, would take a great deal more planning and would require more equipment than a home kitchen could possibly support.

I scribbled a scrap-paper plan (if you must know, I used the back of a customs invoice attached to a box of wine samples) encompassing all the different wine styles and quality levels espoused by the various experts. The first hitch proved to be cost. Even though I’d bought all the vinous variables at the cheapest local supermarket, my grand plan was starting to push a budget of well over £500, and that was without the food.

The second hitch was the sheer range of vinous variables that should be investigated. Did I really want to taste-test a couple of dozen versions of mussels, or turbot poached in different types of sparkling wine? The hitches were piling up at an alarming rate. The task I’d set myself, I realised, should be undertaken in laboratory conditions with a large team.

I had the luxury of neither, but my elderly parents did sign up as willing sous-chefs. Their energy and their commitment to the madcap schemes of their middle-aged daughter are strictly limited, but there was no option but to plough on. Give me enough wine and I will plough on.

The expensive wines made no more impact and added no more depth than the cheap wines

To keep the application as broad as possible, including taking note of the interests of vegetarian and vegan diets, I decided to cook a very simple base dish of mushrooms and onions without dairy and finish it with different wines. In a perfect world, one would consider the variables of different ingredients as well as the impact of adding the wines at different times during the cooking process, heating it to different temperatures and cooking it for different lengths of time. This could be the work of a lifetime. I had one Saturday.

We cooked like crazy people. I did the mise en place; I aproned up my team, lined up the ingredients, turned up the Top Gun soundtrack and, with military precision, we chopped and chopped, sautéed and stirred, measured, reduced and gossiped over the relentless hum of the extractor fan. Unlike Top Gun, the kitchen looked nothing like the surgically neat landing strip of an aircraft carrier by the time we had finished. A paintball fight in a mushroom soup factory might have been closer to the reality. How is it possible to get sauce on ceiling beams?

Job done, we lined up small plates. We’d tested the recipe with a number of wines, from cheap to expensive, fruity to oaky, low to high acid, dry to sweet. Considering the limitations of the exercise, the results were strikingly simple and clear cut. Acidity and sweetness had the biggest impact on the finished dish and, in combination, proved to have the most profound, positive influence. Fruitiness, as opposed to sweetness, was the third contributing component.

Sweet wines with high acid, such as medium-dry Riesling, and fortified wines, dry or sweet, such as Madeira, sherry, Marsala and port, were by far the best wines to cook with. Dry wines, red or white, disappeared, sometimes leaving dishes needing a bit more acidity. They didn’t seem to add much depth of flavour, no matter how simple or complex they were.

The expensive wines made no more impact and added no more depth than the cheap wines. Tannic wines and oaked wines left a bitterness in the aftertaste of the dishes. Fruit matters — the wines with real juiciness of fruit added more to the dish than wines that were more on the savoury spectrum.

I didn’t try cooking with a faulty wine, so I can’t support or refute the theory that wine faults are exaggerated by cooking.

It is, of course, the crudest of experiments and I appeal to culinary institutes around the world to lean in with some proper investment in scientific research in this field. But in the meantime, all I can say is that, whatever you’re cooking, you can’t go wrong with Madeira. It covers all the bases and if you don’t use it up, it will last until the next time you need it. It also tastes delicious. In fact, you won’t have any left for next time.

Tasting notes on Purple Pages of JancisRobinson.com. More stockists from Wine-searcher.com

Tamlyn Currin is sustainability editor and staff writer at JancisRobinson.com. Jancis Robinson returns next week. More columns at ft.com/jancis-robinson

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