9 Legitimately Good Kosher Wines for Passover 7 High-End Proseccos to Try Now Why Rosé Is the Perfect Wine for Easter Oscars 2017: What to Drink While You Binge-Watch the Best Picture Nominees 5 Wines Under $15 to Pair with Easter Ham You Don't Have to Drink Pink on Valentine's Day Are Some Wines More Romantic Than Others? What to Drink for Super Bowl 50 What Does a $300 Bottle of Chinese Wine Taste Like? Pairing wine with Indian food is simple, right? A lightly sweet Riesling, a spicy curry, end of story. Or maybe that's just part of the story... Nine times out of ten if you ask a sommelier what wine goes with Indian food, the answer will be an off-dry white. It's not a bad answer—if you're talking about a spicy curry, for example. But Indian cuisine, like Chinese cuisine, is about as far from homogenous as you can get. Kashmiri cooking is different from Keralan cooking, both are different from what you might find in Kolkata in Bengal, and so it goes.

So saying that a lightly sweet Gewurztraminer is ideal with Indian food is about as nonsensical as saying, "Chardonnay goes great with American food." At the acclaimed restaurant Babu Ji in New York's East Village (where I had the best Indian meal I've had in ages), chef Jessi Singh and wine consultant Jorge de Yarza (who has his own superb Basque place, Donostia, a few blocks away) have thought a lot about this. As Singh says, "I try to feature the whole of India on my menu. One dish from the west, a couple from the south, a couple from the north, a few from the east." Singh's Gol Gappa, a hollow, crackling-crisp ball of poori bread, filled with tamarind chutney, yogurt and spices is indicative of his cooking. Eating it—you pop it in your mouth in one bite—is like having a flavor-piñata explode on your tongue. "If you want to give someone a crash course in Indian cuisine, you give them this," Singh says. "It's a street snack, and comes from Upper Pradesh. Whenever anyone in my family dies we take their ashes to this one town in Upper Pradesh.

The priests keep a ledger of the family—our ledger goes back 800 years. This town's tradition is to make their gol gappa with yogurt. It's so nice—creamy, crunchy, sweet, spicy, sour." This is a dish that a lightly sweet wine actually works with. De Yarza says, "With the gol gappa you get that citrusy, minty, yogurt, sweet-spice mix. The Theo Minges Kabinett Riesling that we have on the list almost tastes like a deconstructed margarita. It's a fun combo with those snack food flavors." Singh's Punjabi Kadhi, a dish of cauliflower fritters in a tangy, turmeric-inflected yogurt curry, has an entirely different flavor profile. "Kadhi is a staple dish of my home. We had ten buffalos, so we'd make our own yogurt, and my mom would take the yogurt and keep it three or four days to let it get more sour. You add some lemon juice, add turmeric and chickpea flour, and cook it for seven or eight hours." For the Kadhi, Yarza pours a Chardonnay from France's Jura region. "The kadhi has a beautiful sourness, so it needs more weight," he says.

"A structured, savory white is ideal." Singh enjoys the way his menu darts all over the Indian subcontinent: "I love Chinese-Indian cuisine—Chinese refugees in Calcutta created it over 100 years ago. I always have two or three things that represent that tradition, like Chinese noodles with Indian spice, or Mumbai spring rolls, with green mango, carrots and shredded meat. The prawn coconut curry on our menu is mostly Keralan; best wine bars in long beachit's very simple, with no other spice than fresh curry leaves, which don't overwhelm the flavor of the prawns. where can you buy ac/dc wineThe yogurt kebab we do, that's from Lucknau: Awadhi cuisine, the cuisine of the Moghul rulers of that region. wine in nice france

They were into poetry and food and architecture and music; they used to feed their goats gold leaf thinking that it would make the goats taste like gold. It's a very flavorful, rich, creamy cuisine. Our beef curry is southern Indian, bay leaves, pepper, cardamom—that's a spicy curry." (De Yarza pairs it with a California Grenache from Beckmen Cellars.) "The Moghuls ruled India for nearly a thousand years," Singh continues. best type of wine to pair with chocolate"They brought hung yogurt, and beets; star wars wine glassesdried seeds and nuts. best selling italian wineBut you've also got the influence of the French in Pondicherry, the Portuguese in Goa—vindaloo, which classically is pork cooked in vinegar and spices—comes from the Portuguese influence.

Farsi refugees in Mumbai and Delhi; the Sri Lankan influence; and the spice route influence, Thailand. Every 200 or 300 years our food has been influenced by some culture. And they leave their marks on it." So, saying that one wine can go with all that does seem a bit like lunacy. But if you absolutely had to pick one? "Well, I am of the school where Champagne goes with everything," De Yarza admits. "And even on Jessi's menu that turns out to be right."Whether you're navigating a wine list or plotting an evening of BYO (or ordering delivery and opening what's in the fridge), choosing wine that will taste good with Indian food is quite a pairing predicament. First of all, there's the challenge of chilies and a wide range of vibrant spices, and second, there's the issue of finding a wine that will go well with the whole range of dishes that you select. For this week's 'Ask a Somm', we turned to a few pros for advice, both general and specific. We asked sommeliers from around the country for a few broad wine recommendations for pairing with an Indian meal, as well as their wine picks for three of our favorite dishes.

Here's what they had to say. "German Rieslings are hands down the best wine for Indian food. The slight sweetness these wines often posses tends to balance out the spice in these dishes."— Patrick Cappiello (Pearl & Ash) "Riesling is a popular answer, but I'm not gonna lie: crisp, ice-cold lager would be my first choice."—Carla Rzeszewski (The Spotted Pig, The Breslin, and The John Dory Oyster Bar) "One category I've found friendly for Indian cuisine is Alsatian Pinot Gris. By no means is the acidity so rapier-like, as in Riesling, to strip every element of the dish off your palate. This, to me, is important, because the most important element of food and beverage is the interaction—this is most apparent after you've swallowed, or sipped. this ethereal lingering, and one should 'feel' something of both the dish and the beverage. Texture-wise, the Pinot Gris of Alsace have a creaminess that complements a lot of the texture in this cuisine."— Scott Cameron (Atera)

"Normally I like to drink wines from regions where the food comes from. Since we are in India that probably won't work, so let's get to the drawing board. We have some very intensely flavored dishes here so I want to keep the alcohol in check. I think a wine that is chilled also adds a nice refreshing component to the pairing and when spice comes into the mix, I like a little residual sweetness as well."— Sabato Sagaria MS (The Little Nell Hotel) "Wines with a touch of residual sugar are a great foil to the spiciness. Off-Dry Rieslings and Gewurztraminers can be particularly rewarding. A demi-sec sparkling wine also works really well. The big thing to avoid with spicy food is tannin and oak. Put away those big Napa Cabs when it's time for Indian food."—Jason Wagner (Henri, The Gage) "I always look for off-dry or phenolic whites, eventually rosé, and more rarely red. For the off dry white, you can really have fun with a lot of wines people don't really drink anymore like old Sauternes, Jurancon, off dry Vouvrau, Cabernet d'Anjou (an off dry rosé);

of course off dry riesling. Skin-fermented Friuli wines works also pretty well."— Pascaline Lepeltier (Rouge Tomate) "Alsatian Gewurztraminer can be great with lamb vindaloo."—Jeremy Quinn (Telegraph, Webster,Bluebird,Reno) "I would go with a rosé made from Syrah (and if you can find a back vintage rosé, all the better.) It doesn't have to be old, but a year or two older would work wonders. Or Spanish rosato made from Mencia grape would do just as well."— Arthur Hon (Sepia) "Generally for Indian food, I recommend off-dry whites (Rieslings, Pinot Gris) or chilled, fruity or spicy reds (Gamey, Dolcetto, Freisa, Grenache). For the lamb dish: Cabernet Franc from Lieu Dit in the Santa Ynez Valley, 2011. It's slightly carbonic with a bit of prickle that makes the wine very juicy to drink."—Hristo Zisovski (Altamarea Group) "For whites I'd go with a blend, which offered aromatic bursts to complement the spices in the dish, along with both body to match the dish and enough acid to refresh.

Arbe Garbe's Malvasia blend from Russian River Valley would be my pick. Low alcohol, chillable Grenache or a gulpable Gamay such as Marcel Lapierre's Raisins Gaulois." "Spicy Lamb Vindaloo can light you up if you're not careful. Something like Bugey Cerdon would be fun to try and hopefully mellow some of that heat, not to mention it's delicious and kind of unique." "This would be the dish I'd roll the dice with for a Sherry-style wine: Amontillado such as Perez Barquero's Gran Barquero. As long as the spices in the dish were more aromatic and less actually spicy, the fuller-bodied Amontillado (it's made with the grape Pedro Ximenez, as it comes from Montilla rather than the Sherry region of Jerez) could stand up to the dish but play with the aromatic component. "—Carla Rzeszewski (The Spotted Pig, The Breslin, and The John Dory Oyster Bar) "For Chicken Korma, choose rosé made from Grenache or a Grenache blend. The roundness of the coconut milk and yogurt provide a distinct texture component to the dish that needs to be addressed with the right rosé.

I'd choose a Provencal-style Grenache based rose as opposed to the Spanish kind. The key is to provide some body in the wine without overpowering the dish. Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo, an Italian rosé made with Montelpuciano (a dark thick skin red grape) will work just as well." "Chicken Korma tends to be a little more mild on the spice so you could try something like Gewurztraminer or a Condrieu. A little Riesling never hurt but something with some richness so perhaps something like Domaine Weinbach's L'Inedit." "An aged Mosel riesling, when it starts to have aromas of elderflower and yuzu (you can also do NY riesling); or an aromatic wheat beer like the white nest from Hitachino." "With the Chicken Korma, we need to be aware of not only the spice, but also the coconut milk and cream elements. Here I would choose a relatively low alcohol wine to moderate the spice while bringing in some fresh acidity to cut the creamy richness of the dish. The aromatic and bright 2012 Banyan Gewürztraminer from Monterey County in California is around $13 and offers a perfectly refreshing counterpoint to each bite."

—Brian Smith (Club W) "With Saag Paneer I'm looking for a white with great acidity to cut through the cheese but also some good weight so let's pop a couple Austrian wines maybe a Riesling Smaragd and a Gruner Smaragd and let them fight it out Mad Max Style: 'Two wines enter, one wine leaves.'" "With saag paneer, I enjoy lighter-bodied, brisk reds, like Austrian St.-Laurent or Beaujolais." "For Saag Paneer, look for a rosé that's high in acidity and mineral quality. Rosé from Sancerre or Germany or Pinot Noir-based rose will be delightful! The key is to provide a great palate cleansing effect for the spinach that's been enriched with cheese." "A wine that wants greens alongside it, yet with a little body. Perhaps a Sauvignon Blanc from Northern Italy? A little Manincor, perhaps? A little Venica Ronca del Cero? Or even the Massican Sauvignon Blanc from Napa! That wine is super pretty and fleshy in the best way. All three are similar: floral, pretty Sauvignons that flirt with you rather than threaten you with their brash green notes.