Indian Food and Red Wine: Are the Pairing Rules Wrong?
The meal that made me question the usual pairing advice took place not in London but in Maharashtra.
Several of us from Fratelli and Maharaja Drinks were having dinner at the Fratelli Estate in Akluj, including Giovanni Masi, son of the late Piero Masi, one of the original seven founders of Fratelli Wines. The table looked wonderfully confused. There was spaghetti tossed in an Indo-Italian pesto. There was fried pomfret and dal; fresh bread and good conversation. Several bottles of Fratelli wines appeared and disappeared with reassuring speed.
Nobody had designed a “wine pairing menu” and nobody seemed remotely concerned whether Italian pasta belonged beside Indian dal. We simply ate.
We poured different wines with different dishes. Some combinations sparkled. Others were less convincing. Nobody apologised for experimenting.
That dinner has stayed with me because it captured something important. Food pairing isn’t about following rules. It’s about paying attention.
One piece of wine advice I regularly hear is this:
“Indian food? Have an aromatic white wine.”
It sounds sensible and it has been repeated for years by wine writers, sommeliers and restaurant staff. Like many pieces of conventional wisdom, it contains just enough truth to survive unquestioned. But the dinner in Akluj made me wonder whether the advice had become too broad.
Imagine telling someone that every French meal should be served with Chardonnay, or that every Italian dish demands Chianti. We’d rightly question the idea. Yet when it comes to India—a country with more than 1.4 billion people, dozens of regional cuisines and thousands of distinct dishes—we often accept that one style of aromatic white wine is the answer to everything.
At Maharaja Drinks we’ve travelled through India’s vineyards, breweries and distilleries, eating at family tables, roadside dhabas and some of the country’s finest restaurants. If there’s one misgiving that journey has created for me, it’s this:
I’ve come to doubt whether “Indian food” is a precise enough description when choosing wine.
The label covers Bengali food, Goan food, Kashmiri food, Chettinad food, Punjabi food, Kerala food, Gujarati food, Parsi food…and much much more. Some dishes are smoky from charcoal and others are rich with tomatoes. Some are fragrant with coconut and some barely contain chilli at all. Others could happily strip the paint from your front door. Why, then, would we expect one style of wine to suit them all?
First, Let’s Stop Blaming Red Wine
Red wine has acquired an undeserved reputation as the enemy of Indian cooking and there are understandable reasons for this. Highly tannic wines can become bitter alongside chilli. Heavy oak overwhelms delicate spices. Very high alcohol exaggerates heat. All perfectly true.
But those are problems with certain red wines, not red wine itself. A balanced Sangiovese behaves nothing like a powerful Cabernet Sauvignon. An elegant Syrah bears little resemblance to an aggressively oaked Shiraz. Lumping them together simply because they’re red makes about as much sense as claiming every curry tastes alike.
Smoky Lamb Seekh Kebabs
This was where the conventional wisdom first began to wobble for me.
We opened Grover Zampa La Réserve Syrah Grenache, hoping its peppery character would suit grilled lamb. What surprised me was how naturally the two came together. The charcoal seemed to soften the wine’s tannins while the pepper and dark fruit echoed the spices in the kebab. Neither dominated the other.
Out of curiosity we poured Grover Zampa Art Collection Chenin Blanc. It was certainly refreshing but, to my taste, less interesting with the kebabs.
The white wine cleaned the palate while the Syrah seemed to become part of the meal.
Tomato-Based Meat Curries
Our biggest surprise wasn’t what worked: it was what failed.
A bottle of Charosa Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon looked, on paper, like the obvious choice. But on this occasion, it wasn’t. The tomatoes magnified every tannin. The fruit disappeared. The finish became hard and angular. Excellent wine, but paired with the wrong food.
Then came Fratelli Sangiovese. The grape’s naturally bright acidity seemed made for tomatoes. The curry tasted fresher and the wine more expressive. For me, the lighter balance proved more convincing than the Cabernet’s power.
Kerala Fish Curry
This was one occasion when the conventional advice proved entirely right. A coconut-led fish curry worked beautifully with Grover Zampa Art Collection Chenin Blanc. The acidity lifted the richness and the fruit softened the spices. The fish remained the hero. Several reds simply overwhelmed it.
Chaat
If any dish exists to embarrass wine writers, it is chaat. It’s sweet, sour, crunchy, creamy, spicy and tangy—usually all in the same mouthful.
Most wines struggled, until eventually we opened Grover Zampa Soirée Brut. This was the combination that felt most convincing. The bubbles refreshed the palate while the acidity handled the tamarind beautifully.
Had the sparkling not been available, I’d happily have reached for one of our lightly sparkling Borécha Kombuchas. Not every Indian dish demands wine, and that’s perfectly acceptable too.
Biryani
This may have been the evening’s biggest revelation. I often hear biryani described as too aromatic for red wine but I think the problem may simply be the choice of red.
Fratelli J’Noon Red had precisely the elegance the dish required. Its fruit complemented the rice rather than overwhelming it and its tannins remained gentle enough to respect the saffron and whole spices. For me, it was one of the most successful pairings of the evening.
Paneer and Dal
Paneer makhani worked beautifully with Fratelli Sangiovese. Dal proved even more interesting. Its slow-cooked earthiness seemed to welcome Grover Zampa Vijay Amritraj Collection Red with quiet confidence. Nothing dramatic happened: no fireworks, just harmony.
Curiously, that brings me back to Akluj. The dal served that evening wasn’t presented as a carefully constructed pairing. It simply shared the table with pasta, pesto, pomfret and several excellent wines. Nobody questioned whether it belonged—it simply did.
One Remarkable Exception
There is one wine in our collection that has repeatedly made me wonder how far my own argument can be pushed: Grover Zampa Signet.
At £54, Signet currently sits at the top end of our wine collection, so it inevitably creates expectations. It would be easy to assume it must be a bigger, richer, more powerful Shiraz.
What I found instead was restraint, balance and effortless elegance.
I’ve enjoyed Signet with tandoori lamb, Stilton and Peking duck…and perhaps more surprisingly, I’ve found myself returning to it throughout Indian meals. It doesn’t dominate the food. Its balance allows it to adapt gracefully as the meal evolves.
Thinking back to that evening at Fratelli Estate, I realised something. The bottles that work best rarely require lengthy discussions about pairing. People simply keep pouring them.
That’s probably the highest compliment any wine can receive.
Perhaps We’ve Been Asking the Wrong Question
Instead of asking: “What wine goes with Indian food?” perhaps we should ask: “What wine goes with this particular Indian dish?”
That small change makes the conversation much more useful. A smoky seekh kebab has more in common with grilled Mediterranean lamb than with a coconut fish curry. A fragrant biryani behaves entirely differently from a Delhi chaat. A comforting bowl of dal asks different things of a wine than Chettinad chicken.
India’s cuisine deserves more curiosity than a single pairing rule can ever provide.
Indian Wine Has Changed. My Thinking Has Too
For years, Indian wine itself was underestimated. I often encountered the assumption that India couldn’t produce elegant red wines, which made it easy to dismiss the idea of serving them with Indian food.
Travelling and tasting in Maharashtra and Karnataka has changed my own view.
I’ve tasted wines of genuine international quality. More importantly, I’ve tasted wines that deserve to be enjoyed with the extraordinary food of the country that created them. “What grows together goes together” is a phrase I often return to.
So the next time someone confidently recommends an aromatic white wine with every Indian dish, it may be worth asking which Indian dish.
One combination I would gladly repeat is Fratelli Sangiovese alongside a tomato-based lamb curry.
And when Signet is open on a special evening, I’ve learned not to overthink the pairing. It’s often simply the bottle people continue to pour.
At Akluj, nobody tried to settle the argument. We tasted, noticed and kept pouring. That’s still how I prefer to approach pairing.
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