Here’s Why Spicy Food Tastes Best With Wine

Choosing a wine to go with a specific dish is usually all about flavor. But when it comes to pairing wines with spicy food, you need to consider more than your taste buds. The foods we tend to categorize as spicy don’t just impart flavor — they cause a physical reaction. 

Whether it’s mapo tofu with its tingly heat, sushi with a dab of nose-zapping wasabi, or tacos liberally doused with Cholula, deciding which wines work best with spicy dishes depends on what type of spiciness you’re working with.

Chiles gain their heat from capsaicin, a naturally occurring chemical compound. Numbing spiciness — think Szechuan peppercorns — comes from an entirely different source. And the pungency you encounter in ingredients like mustard and horseradish comes from yet another compound.

Each elicits a different physical response, which in turn impacts what kind of wine will work best with the experience. One overall rule: Avoid tannic wines like red Bordeaux and Napa Cabernet Sauvignon, which can taste bitter and astringent and feel thin on the palate in combination with any of the types of spiciness below.

Pairing wine with chile spice

The heat from capsaicin in chiles isn’t really a flavor; instead, our nervous system reacts to capsaicin as if we took a sip of something boiling hot. Because capsaicin is mostly insoluble in water, a tall glass of ice water won’t provide much relief, but a bit of sugar can.

To temper that heat, pair a chile-hot dish with an off-dry white wine, says Michael Dolinski, wine director at Junoon in New York City. To take the edge off the restaurant’s bracingly hot chile-marinated chicken tikka, he recommends a lightly sweet Chenin Blanc. “I pour Champalou Vouvray with our Ghost Chili Murgh Tikka,” says Dolinski. “The wine has a tiny touch of sweetness, and it’s just the right amount to pin the spice of the tikka.”

To amplify the heat of chiles, on the other hand, look for a high-acid, peppery option like a Cabernet Franc-based red wine or a cool-climate Syrah.

Pairing wine with wasabi or horseradish

Wasabi, horseradish, and hot mustard all have a chemical compound in common — allyl isothiocyanate — that binds to receptors in our nose, making our eyes water and our sinuses tingle without lingering on the palate (unlike capsaicin).

Look for fruity wines to brighten up the dish’s flavors while chasing away the eye-watering heat. Nelson Harvey, co-owner of Annette in Aurora, Colorado, likes to pair a chilled, light-bodied Grenache rosé with floral and red-fruit aromas with shrimp dipped in horseradish-and-hot-mustard cocktail sauce.

A fruity, off-dry Riesling is also a good partner for pungent spice, says Jeff Cleveland, sommelier at Birch in Milwaukee. “The touch of sweetness tames the heat, and the minerality and stone-fruit character of the wine makes the pairing great.”

Pairing wine with numbing spice

The buzzing sensation you feel on your palate from eating foods with Szechuan peppercorns is your nerves reacting to a compound called hydroxy-alpha-sanshool. No wine can mute the feeling, but you can balance the numbness with a silky, rich white.

Harvey pairs Szechuan peppercorn–dusted fried chicken with the Weingut Emmerich Knoll Loibner Grüner Veltliner Federspiel. “Grüner has a roundness that coats your mouth and softens the tingly, numbing heat,” he says.

Want to lean in to the numbing spice? Choose a Champagne: The effervescence doubles down on the tingling sensations, says Ronni Heard, wine director at Zoé Tong in Austin: “The combination of bubbles, acidity, and bready notes cuts through the spice and enhances all the flavors.”