Connoisseur’s Guide to Matching Wine with Indian Cuisine by Karen Anand
From my experience over the last twenty years or so, wines pair favorably with Indian dishes as long as you pair a single wine with a single dish. Of course there are some drastic clashes. Excessive chilli doesn’t pair with anything except water or maybe a very cold light beer. However, pepper is a fabulous flavor with a full bodied Shiraz. Any sour notes, in any cuisine for that matter, whether it is lemon, lime, tamarind or vinegar, should not be in a wine pairing menu. Ditto with deep fried foods. Herbs and spices, as opposed to chilli are absolutely fine.
When asked to pair wines with Indian dishes. I generally choose a menu with dishes taken primarily from the north Indian/old Delhi or original Mughlai repertoire. I have found that most of these dishes are less challenging to pair and in general go very well with wines. The spices “marry”, they don’t over power the wines. I pair seafood and vegetarian dishes generally with a sauvignon Blanc like Good Earth’s Aarohi which is crisp with notes of gooseberry and citrus and not overtly “tropical”.
