How To Pair Wine with Seafood

The pairing of seafood and wine dates back thousands of years, long before your favorite restaurant's sommelier carefully curated the perfect sip to match your exquisite fish dish. The story of wine and fish stretches back at least to the first millennium BCE, when wealthy members of ancient Greek and Roman civilizations savored their oysters alongside wine made from local grapes. As both wine and seafood globalized across continents and cultures, pairing the two evolved into a sophisticated science that can transform a simple meal into a symphony of flavors.

Today, pairing wine and seafood can be as simple or complex as you want. Our experts will show you how to pair the best wine with seafood, from foolproof fundamentals to dish-specific selections.

• Why Is Wine Paired with Seafood?
• How Do You Pair Wine with Fish?
• Best Wines for Rich and Fatty Fish
• Best Wines for Delicate Fish
• Best Wines with Sushi and Raw Fish
• Best Wines for Shellfish
• Best Wine Pairings for Caviar

Why Is Wine Paired with Seafood?

Historically, wine and seafood have commonly been served together in coastal regions where both are abundant. These millennia-old habits have clearly been hard to kick, as wine and seafood are still synonymous. Scientifically, wine and seafood balance and complement each other like music and lyrics. Wine’s acidity helps to clear your tongue of healthy fats left behind after a bite of seafood. This palate-cleansing effect from wine helps make each bite of seafood taste like the first.

How Do You Pair Wine with Fish?

Pairing wine with seafood is all about using wine’s acidity and boldness (or lack thereof) to balance and enhance the seafood's richness and intensity. When choosing which wine to pair with fish, your cooking method matters as much as the fish itself. For example, a delicately steamed halibut needs a much lighter wine than that same fish blackened with spices or swimming in butter sauce. Understanding this relationship between richness and acidity separates safe pairings from great ones.

Best Wines for Rich and Fatty Fish

Meaty fish with high fat content, like salmon, tuna, and swordfish, can handle wines with more boldness than you think. Some can even handle mild red wines. Lighter seafoods that are cooked with heavy seasonings and oil also pair well with these recommendations.

• Chardonnay is one of the best wines to pair with salmon and rich preparations, where the wine's dry acidity cuts through fish oils and makes for a classy palate cleanser.
• Pinot Noir is arguably the best red wine for salmon, tuna, and other char-grilled fish. The wine's gentle tannins and bright fruit notes complement rich fish oils without overwhelming delicate flavors.
• Côtes du Rhône wines, made with grapes from the Rhône Valley in Southern France, are known for their boldness that can stand up to more intensely flavored seafoods like blackened mahi-mahi or spice-crusted salmon while maintaining food-friendly acidity.
• Off-dry Riesling complements seafood cooked with intense Asian flavors, like those in our Sesame Ginger Halibut Collars recipe. The wine has a touch of sweetness that perfectly balances strong soy and ginger marinades.

Best Wines for Delicate Fish

When pairing wine with flaky, delicately prepared fish, subtlety is everything. Bright, clean, and unobtrusive wines make for perfect pairings with delicately prepared halibut, snapper, cod, sea bass, and more.

• Grüner Veltliner, an Austrian white wine, offers the perfect combination of crisp acidity and subtle spice that enhances fish without overpowering its mild flavors.
• Muscadet is a very dry wine with a mineral finish, a perfect pairing for simple preparations of fish, like cod and snapper.
• Pinot Grigio is a white wine that offers a clean, crisp pairing that lets delicate fish be the star, especially with seafood preparations that include lemon.
• Vermentino, a light-bodied white wine from Italy, brings bright acidity and subtle herb notes that enhance pan-seared branzino or roasted cod without masking their flavors.

Best Wines with Sushi and Raw Fish

Pairing wine with raw fish is more straightforward than pairing with more heavily seasoned or prepared seafood. The best wines for raw seafood are subtle and don’t compete with umami, or savoriness, by being fruit-forward. Here are some of our favorite wines to pair with sushi and raw fish:

• Champagne cleanses the palate with its acidity and bubbles, and is commonly sipped between pieces of raw fish to reset your taste buds without overwhelming the subtle flavors of your next bite.
• Chablis offers mineral notes that some compare to oysters. Chablis’ subtlety and smoothness pair beautifully with rich sashimi like tuna and salmon.
• Dry Riesling is a great white wine pairing that works with both raw sushi and sweeter, even cooked sushi rolls like tempura preparations.
  

Best Sake for Sushi

Many sakes pair beautifully with sushi because both have the same base — rice. Sake is a rice-based alcoholic beverage, most popular in Japan, that is traditionally brewed with seafood in mind. According to Japanese sake experts, brewers across Japan have crafted their sakes specifically to complement their local fish, making sake a uniquely hyper-local, seafood-centric wine.

If you’re lucky enough to experience sushi from Japan, a sake from the same region as the fish is almost guaranteed to be a perfect pairing. In general, the best sake for sushi matches the richness and boldness of the raw fish itself. Here are our favorite sakes for sushi:

• Suigei (Drunken Whale) Tokobetsu Junmai is a sushi chef’s favorite that pairs excellently with fattier fish like bluefin tuna, yellowtail, and mackerel, all local to Suigei’s brewery in Kochi, Japan.
• Hanabura Junmai Ginjo is a smooth, fruity sake that pairs well with all kinds of sushi. While fit for any sushi pairing, this sake especially stands out when matched with the mild yet savory (umami) flavors of raw white fish like sea bream and snapper from Hanabura’s brewery in Akita, Japan.
• Kikusui Junmai Ginjo is one of the best sakes for sushi that you can find in most liquor stores. Inside its light blue bottle is a superbly crisp sake that complements all sushi from the leanest to the richest. Sipping the sake starts with clean and mild flavors, which Kikusui’s home of Niigata Prefecture is known for, before finishing with a dry mouth feel that practically cleanses your palate to prepare you for your next bite of sushi.
  

Best Wines for Shellfish

Shellfish offer some of the most exciting wine-pairing possibilities, with each wine emphasizing unique characteristics of the shellfish. Light wines, especially bubbly ones, pair perfectly with shellfish. Here are our favorite wine pairings for each popular shellfish:

Best Wines for Oysters:

• Sauvignon Blanc is the classic white wine to pair with oysters. The wine's bright acidity and citrus character elevate the briny intensity of raw oysters.
• Champagne is commonly found in celebratory settings where oysters and caviar may be present if you’re lucky. Champagne cleanses and refreshes after each bite or oyster shooter.
• Sancerre is a French white wine that offers elegant minerality, complementing both East and West Coast oysters. Its simple smoothness balances the oceanic brine of all oyster varieties.

Our Favorite Wines for Lobster and Crab:

• Chardonnay handles butter-rich preparations beautifully. Its balanced fruit notes won’t compete with luxury crustaceans like crab and lobster; rather, they serve as a perfect palate cleanser.
• White Burgundy offers the elegance that matches premium shellfish like king crab legs or lobster tails. Its flavor profile is known to enhance the experience of butter-doused seafood.
• Chenin Blanc works wonderfully with crab cakes, offering just enough brightness to complement baked or fried crab preparations.

Wines To Try with Scallops and Shrimp:

• Chardonnay works magic with scallops or shrimp seared in butter or with a lemon seasoning. Chardonnay’s acidity and sometimes gentle fruity flavors refresh your palate of the oils in your food.
• Dry Rosé offers a bright acidity and crisp, refreshing character that’s ideal for shrimp's delicate sweetness. The wine's light body and clean finish also help cut through rich butter sauces or spiced preparations.
• Prosecco, a popular sparkling wine, cleanses your palate lightly with its bubbles. Prosecco’s often mild taste is exceptional for lightly seasoned preparations like shrimp cocktail or raw scallops.
• Montepulciano d'Abruzzo's ripe cherry and spice pair elegantly with shrimp and scallops when prepared with bold flavors like garlic or tomato-based sauces. The wine's juicy acidity complements the shellfish's sweetness, especially when grilled or seared.

Best Wine Pairings for Caviar

Caviar demands wine that can match its sophistication without taking away from this delicacy’s uniquely briny richness.

• Champagne remains the ultimate pairing for caviar, and they’re rarely far apart from one another. Champagne’s bubbles cleanse the palate so that you can enjoy the most flavor from every popping pearl.
• Sauvignon Blanc is also a favorite wine for caviar, with minerality and citrus notes to complement caviar's intensity perfectly. If champagne bubbles aren’t for you, consider a traditional Sauvignon Blanc with your next spoonful of caviar.
  

FAQs

Can you have red wine with fish?
Absolutely! Meaty fish like tuna, salmon, and swordfish pair beautifully with light to medium-bodied reds like Pinot Noir. For lightly seasoned seafood like grilled salmon or shrimp, consider pairing with rosé wines like the Syrah-Grenache Rosé, which offers refreshing minerality without being a classic white wine.

What wine does not go with fish?
Heavy, tannic red wines such as Cabernet Sauvignon often overpower the subtle flavors of delicate seafood dishes. Not all white wines are ideal companions either. Many sommeliers advise against pairing seafood with wines aged in oak barrels, as the oak influence can obscure the clean, briny nuances that define fresh seafood. For instance, while unoaked Chardonnay can be an excellent match with various seafoods, an oaked Chardonnay may overwhelm the flavors of your dish. Similarly, intensely sweet wines like Moscato tend to clash with seafood, competing with rather than enhancing its natural character.

Why white wine with seafood?
Although “any white wine” became the consensus safe choice to pair with seafood, this approach often falls flat. You may have heard "red wine with meat, white wine with fish" as a steadfast rule. A great fish and wine pairing isn't about color, though. Many lighter whites lack character to complement even delicate fish like branzino and cod, yet an overly sweet white wine could produce disappointing flavor notes.

Is sake wine?
Sake is not wine, but rather its own category of alcohol. Sake is brewed from rice rather than fermented from grapes, making its production more similar to beer than wine. That said, sake functions like wine at the table with relatively similar alcohol content and has been crafted for centuries specifically to pair with seafood, which is why sake is considered the standard for pairing with sushi.

Where can I buy wine near me?
At Fulton Fish Market, our wine collection was curated specifically to complement our premium seafood, all delivered right to your doorstep. From bright, acidic whites for delicate shellfish to bold reds that can handle meaty fish preparations, each bottle offers restaurant-quality pairings you can try at home.

Seafood And Wine Pairing Reference Table