Cooking Wine Selection
Cooking with wine is a realitively cheap way to spice up your meals. Most wines in the 8-12 dollar range are fine to cook with and a bottle of cooking wine will last for many meals to come. You can cook with virtually any wine selection and the most important thing is that you like the wine you are going to cook with. There are a few guidlines to keep in mind.
For cooking, most any dry or sweet fortified wine would be a good cooking wine selection. For a dry wine selection, a nice sherry is probably the best choice. Sherry is very popular to cook with. For a sweet fortified wine, a good port wine will do nicely. Below is a table of the five major wine cooking groups and the wines that fall into those groups.
| Cooking Group | Wines |
| Dry White Wine | Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc |
| Off-dry White Wine | Riesling |
| Rose | White Zinfandel, White Merlot |
| Lighter Red Wine | Pinot Noir |
| Heavier Red Wine | Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon |
A good strategy would be to buy an inexpensive bottle of wine from each group and test them out one at a time. When you discover a flavor you like, move up to a more expensive wine and taste the difference.
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