We have prepared a mini guide that will help you choosing the right wine to match, so you never get wrong the wine chosen with the dessert of the holidays and always be great to your guests
When the temperatures drop and the colors of autumn begin to paint our cities, the leavened product that can never miss in our tables is the panettone, which makes us our dinners more precious, even before Christmas. But when it comes to choosing the right wine in accompaniment, we often realize that it is not a so obvious pairing. Precisely for this reason we have prepared a mini guide that will help you to choose the right wine to match, so you never go wrong a combination with the panettone and make a good impression at the party table. Very often in fact, panettone is served in combination with unsuitable wines, risking to spoil the taste of both. A very common mistake is to combine panettone with dry sparkling wines, such as a sparkling wine with Brut dosage, which would certainly highlight the hardness of the wine and would not enhance the qualities of our panettone.
First rule: sweetness. The very first rule is that if you want to accompany the panettone with bubbles (and not only), it must be strictly sweet. Then choose a wine for dessert or meditation that can match in accordance with our panettone. While for other dishes, you can play with the pairings both by concordance and by contrast, in the case of our panettone, a sweet wine, or in any case a wine with a good sugary residual, will certainly be a more harmonious matching, otherwise our panettone would highlight the hardness of the wine. Second rule: taste. The second element to consider is the taste of our panettone, as well as the aroma given by the ingredients that enrich it, such as candied fruit, dried fruit etc. Also in this case you should choose a matching in accordance with the wine, a panettone rich in ingredients such as dried fruit, chocolate and others, should be accompanied by an equally intense, complex and persistent wine. A hazelnut panettone must e paired with a wine with a proportional aromatic persistence. While a very spicy panettone could be combined with a spicy wine and with an intense aromatic component, which recalls the aromas present in the panettone as a Gewurztraminer passito. A very aromatic panettone with candied fruit could be paired with a very fragrant Champagne Blanc de Blancs Demi Sec that recalls an explosion of aromas typical of panettone and candied fruit (notes found in many Chardonnays). Third rule: occasion. Another element that we can consider, is definitely the occasion, if it is an important dinner such as Christmas dinner, you can opt for a more important wine as a Champagne with a high sugar dosage as a demi-sec, a Sauternes, or a good Passito di Pantelleria.
The combinations
Then we propose ten very tasty but also very well matched combinations, to give you a bit of inspiration in the choice of wine:
1. Panettone with dried apricots Passito di Pantelleria DOCG Salvatore Murana 2. Panettone with pastry cream Trento DOC Demi Sec Ferrari 3. Chocolate Panettone Primitivo Dolce Naturale DOCG 11 Filari Cantine San Marzano 4. Panettone with raisins Moscato d’Asti DOCG Nivole Michele Chiarlo 5. Panettone with dried fruit and candied fruit Umbria IGT Muffato della Sala Antinori 6. Panettone with hazelnuts or pistachios Recioto di Soave Classico DOCG “Le Colombare” Pieropan 7. Panettone with candied and dried fruit Vin Santo del Chianti Classico DOC Castello Pomino 8. Berries Panettone Franciacorta Rosè Demi Sec DOCG La Montina 9. Citrus and spice panettone Lazio IGT Grechetto Passito Muffo Sergio Mottura 10. Panettone with spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and vanilla Gewurztraminer Passito Vendemmia Tardiva DOC Terminum Cantina Tramin.
