Ask A Sommelier: What's the Best Wine for Pizza?

By
Maggie Hoffman
Maggie Hoffman is a contributing writer at Serious Eats.
Maggie Hoffman
Maggie Hoffman is a longtime food and drink expert whose recipes and cocktail-making tips can be found on her newsletters What to Drink and The Dinner Plan. She is the author of  The One-Bottle Cocktail and Batch Cocktails, both published by Ten Speed Press.
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Updated September 13, 2020
Light Bodied, High Acid Reds

"If you're waiting for pizza delivery, I suggest using those 30 minutes to relax—grab your lightest bodied red wine available, be it a reasonably priced Chianti, Pinot Noir, or Gamay. Light body, low tannin, and high acid is the key to weaning yourself off of the impulse of a half-rack of beer.

What I am truly loving lately—Frappato from Sicily. Light and floral and fruity and absolutely stunning pizza. I have a stash of the 2011 Occhipinti Frapatto as well as the 2010 Valle dell’acate Frappato for these sorts of situations."—Chris Horn, Purple Café (Bellevue / Seattle)

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How do you make pizza—a near-perfect food—even better? By drinking the right wine with it. If you think of wine as a sauce for your food, you'll want to make sure it's a sauce that works with the dish: complementing the earthy flavors of mushrooms and sausage, or contrasting the richness of the cheese, standing up to the bright acidity of tomato sauce and countering the spice of pepperoni. A tasty bottle of wine—and it doesn't have to be a pricey one—can bring your pizza experience into an elevated realm of deliciousness.

But which wines will work? Reds, whites, bubbles...we gathered pizza-pairing tips from 11 top sommeliers from around the country. Check out their drinking advice in the slideshow above »

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