Food » Dinner in a Breeze » 15 Foolproof Seafood and Wine Pairings Photo: Howard L. Puckett We love: Martín Códax Albariño Rías Baixas (about $14) Seafood and wine make a natural pair, and choosing the right wine for your dish can really highlight those flavors of the sea. In this recipe, you have scallops and shrimp and mussels and oysters—oh my! When there’s this much delicious seafood in the mix, a semi-dry white is a terrific choice. A light red, which you can use in the risotto, is another good pick; serving both will please all palates. In either case, look for light-bodied wines to balance the richness of the buttery rice, the piquancy of the garlic, and the fatty, spicy chorizo. Other can’t-miss matches: Albariño, red or white RiojaGalleryAsk a Sommelier: What's the Best Wine for Seafood? In the hot summer months, even if we can't be relaxing by the beach, we find ourselves planning meals that revolve around seafood: briny raw oysters, buttery lobster rolls, wild salmon charred on the grill.

But what should we drink? What about red wines? How do you go about choosing a wine for seafood dishes? We asked our sommelier crew for a few wine-and-fish tips. Chat with SE: Drinks on Twitter. Keep in the loop with our weekly newsletter.top wine list chicago The tastiest bites delivered to your inbox!best wine for thanksgiving meal Keep up with our latest recipes, tips, techniques and where to eat!where to buy wine in paris Sparkling wine, whether it's from California, France, Spain or Italy, is spot-on perfect for fried food. buying wedding wine franceI list this one first because most of us love fried seafood, and while light beers match up well with fried seafood, most wines lose something when you pair them with tempura or a thick beer batter. best way to serve rose wine

Not so with sparkling wine, whose bubbles cut through the weight of fried food as if the wines were made for the dish. These wines also pair well with caviar. Don't like sparkling wine?... Lauri Patterson / Getty Images These are the aristocrats of white fish wines. best wine bar city of londonDry, austere and crisp, Chenin Blanc and Pinot Grigio are the wines I reach for when I am serving lean, white fish cooked simply. Flounder, halibut, walleye, snapper, raw clams or oysters all do well with these wines. Alternately, you can use these wines to cut through the natural fat in some fish, such as striped bass, catfish, lobster, or mussels. Looking for something off the beaten track that fits this style? Try an Italian Vermentino or a Greek... dapan photography / Getty Images This is the realm of the fuller whites. Oaky Chardonnay gets a bad rap these days, but I love it with striped bass, crab, raw oysters -- even lobster.

The theory here is to match a full-bodied wine with a full-bodied dish. If you have a broth-based soup, such as , Chardonnay works wonderfully. If you have a fish that's a little oilier, such as bluefish or mackerel, try Pinot Gris or Viognier, or an Italian Grillo. Owen Franken / Getty Images These are even fuller whites that often have some lingering sweetness to them. I go for these wines with Asian seafood or anything spicy. Gewurztraminer is especially good with the zingy Vietnamese seafood I eat often, and the tropical aromas of Roussanne and Marsanne, which are Rhone white varietals, marry perfectly with the flavors of Asia. John Peacock / Getty Images These varietals are from Spain and Portugal, but are increasingly being grown in California. There's something about them that makes these wines absolutely perfect with shellfish: clams, mussels, scallops as well as crab and lobster. It is rare that I will not open an Albarino when I eat clams or scallops. Claudia Totir / Getty Images

I split this one out because it is the perfect wine with simply cooked shrimp. Period, end of story. If you eat a lot of shrimp cocktail, steamed, grilled, stir-fried or , this is the drink to go with it. Be sure to buy real Spanish dry fino sherry, which is achingly dry and slightly salty. Tip: This wine marries well with almonds, too. alle12 / Getty Images Basically, this is the light red wine category. There are precious few instances where you'd want a big red with seafood, but light reds do quite well with salmon, tuna, marlin, swordfish, mackerel, bluefish or other fatty, meaty, big-flavored fish. I love a Chianti -- which is mostly Sangiovese -- with spaghetti and clam sauce or octopus stewed in tomato sauce. Be careful, though: Avoid combining reds with spicy seafood, as you will probably get a nasty metallic taste. Foodcollection RF / Getty Images Kind of a 'tweener of a wine. I will serve Spanish, French or California roses when the sauce is heavier than what I want for a white, but not quite right for a full-on red.

Roses can substitute for full-bodied whites such as Chardonnay and Fume Blanc. I use them a lot in summer, too, when I am grilling swordfish or tuna steaks. Rose is also a good choice with a tomato-based seafood soup, such as cioppino or zuppa da pesce. on May 11, 2016 at 2:12 PM, updated Ice-cold beer and spicy boiled crawfish go together like Sunday morning and church service. Still, that classic pairing can leave non-beer drinkers sipping iced tea or a soda while everyone else elbow-deep in crustaceans is slaked by Abita. Or, perhaps, like me, seafood-boil lovers have tried a wine or two and found the experience less than satisfying. Pairing wine with a spicy South Louisiana seafood boil can be tricky to get just right. "Crawfish is the hardest of the three" to pair with wine, said Dan Davis, wine director at Commander's Palace. "Shrimp and crab are sweeter and there is more of it. With crawfish, you get that tiny little tail and whole bunch of heat. Also, "crawfish have higher iron content and a propensity for tasting metallic and fighting with a lot of wine," he said.

Understanding which wines complement seafood boils means understanding how the wines interact with seafood as well as the spiciness and heat of the seasoning. "When you have big, bold foods like that you want the wine or whatever you are having to prepare you for another bite, not to shut you down," Davis said. Here, Davis offers general tips for finding the right reds, whites and sparkling wines to pair with a seafood boil as well as specific recommendations. The suggested wines are easily accessible and relatively easy on the wallet. Red wine with seafood? "Fruit-driven," light-bodied red wines without tannins work well with the spiciness of South Louisiana boils, Davis said. "With crawfish, I like a really light red wine, like a crus Beaujolais and I like a light chill on it," Davis said, explaining that he is referring wines from the 10 Beaujolais-Villages. "I love them with everything you have in a crawfish boil, the potatoes, the corn..." Davis said of what he calls "fruit-driven wines" that also are lower in alcohol.

"These are not necessarily expensive. They are almost always going to way over-deliver for the money. Most are $25 or less, many retail in the teens." Beaujolais works well with boiled shrimp and crabs as well, he said. With crawfish, because of its less delicate flavor, Davis also recommends a "nice fruity Zinfandel, with very little tannin. It's a bigger wine, so you have to have a taste for red wine with seafood. I like it a lot." One caveat: "Anytime you're having a red wine with seafood, it needs to be served a little bit chilled. If I went to grocery story and bought a bottle of crus Beaujolais, I'd put it in the refrigerator for 15 minutes or an ice bath about 3 minutes." "Most white wines are going to shrink in the face of a Louisiana seafood boil," Davis said. "There are very few white wines that would have enough oomph to stand up to those flavors." Also, he explained that when a wine is a mineral-driven, such as Sauvignon Blanc, that quality in a wine can bring out the mineral flavor in seafood, particularly crawfish, creating an unpleasant taste.

"Most Sauvignon Blanc is going to be fairly delicate. It has a more reserved and nuanced flavor," he said. "That delicate flavor is blown away by flavors of a crawfish boil." So which white wines might work? Davis said he'd consider a full-bodied Chardonnay, "something with a lot of oak on it or perhaps a Vouvray sec." Another option might be a German Riesling kabinett, which has a hint of sweetness and lots of acidity.In between bites, they are delicious, great fruity wines," he said. Bubbles can actually help clear away the burning sensation that occurs when the capsaicin oil in seafood boil spices hits the tongue. "The reason beer does so well, is you have bubbles and alcohol, both serve to cut through that oil and to help you recover from the spice and heat," Davis said, adding that beer is served cold as well, so it helps to cool down the spicy boil experience. The same is true of Champagne and some sparkling wines. A true Champagne and many Brut Roses would go fine with most seafood boils, he said.