Rory Craig from WineStation shares his top tips for the perfect food and wine choices to pair with each type of Christmas movie, from cringe-but-fun flicks made bearable with a Mimosa to timeless classics with a glass of Beaujolais and a turkey & ham leftovers sandwich…
The last thing we need is another article talking about what wines to match with Christmas dinner. The top tip for matching wines with Christmas dinner is open stuff people will be excited about, and if they don’t care, then open something you’re excited about (in the spirit of always be selling, our festive boxes are always super popular and amazing, stuffed with everything from Champagne to Chateauneuf, available HERE).
I want to talk about something much, MUCH more important….matching the perfect wine to the perfect Christmas movie, with various foods and leftovers that you always have lying around the house at this time of year.
Like matching wine and food, you want both sides of the match to reach a higher plain by working together. As with wine and food, there are great complimentary matches, where the elements work in tandem, there are great contrasting matches, where they rebound off each other, and then there are great matches based on a particular element in the wine or film. External factors like the time of day apply, just as they would in a culinary situation.
These matches tend to work best with movies you have seen before, but really, who watches new movies at Christmas? Some are not traditional Christmas movies, but some of the most Christmassy movies don’t contain Christmas!
Right at the top, we have a couple of perfect Sparkling Wine matches, and very Christmassy movies.
My favourite Christmas movie of all time goes on with Champagne; National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
I tend to drink Grower Champagne out of the best possible glassware I can find, with elegant but decedent snacking like duck pate or foi gras. This is all a terrific contrasting match – stylish sophistication in the glass and on the palate is a wonderful counterpoint to the epic imbecility on screen, also I’m the only one in the house who likes it, so Champagne is a bribe too!
The other sparkling film-match is Love Actually, for quite different reasons. I used to hate this film, but given how badly it has aged and how inappropriately it is in parts, it’s now a bit of a laugh riot, and a cringe-watch. For all this frivolity we need Prosecco or any sort of basic sparkler, Prosecco Mimosa is great too. This kicks off the season nicely. Bubbles, fun, laughs.
One of the ultimate Christmas Movies for me (without featuring Christmas) has always been Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory – the 1971 Gene Wilder version – but this match will work with either of the new Tim Burton ones too. We are talking white wine here, specifically Gruner Veltliner from Austria. These wines are known to have a fresh spiciness, and most importantly re-appearing acidity. The first time I heard this about Gruner my mind went to the ever lasting gob-stopper scene in Willy Wonka.
Lovely cool, cold fresh Gruner along with a collection of sweets, not chocolate, sweets
I’m talking cola bottles, nerds, bags of sherbet. The little wrapped fruit salad sweets are particularly amazing matched with Gruner Veltliner.
We dial back up the silly again next…
Possibly the greatest Christmas Eve present wrapping Christmas movie is ELF with Will Ferrell
We are going for a complimentary mix here, it’s easy watching and fundamentally and deliberately unserious, fun, bright and uncomplicated. Pinot Grigio is Italian Pinot Gris, but picked earlier to retain more acidity and freshness, a people friendly offering. For wrapping, pour in stemless glasses as there’ll be moving, knocking and chaos.
This wine/movie match can be rolled out again after Christmas and put with Home Alone, but served in traditional stemware, trade in the wrapping of presents for a cardboard box of Tayto, sit back, howl and enjoy.
Orange wines are pretty amazing for Christmas. An Orange wine is a white wine made like a red wine, where the skins of the grapes are added back to the juice (not generally done with whites). The results is a more densely coloured and flavoured wine. These wines can be quite challenging and even disconcerting – marmite wines, you either love em or loathe em!
Orange wines are the Christmas ‘movie snooze’ match
Think of the afternoons where people are pretty full and pretty tired but also very content, warm and relaxed! The big snooze movies are the oldies that nobody gets through, like It’s a Wonderful Life, or the war genre like River Kwai or the Great Escape. Orange wines are sipping wines, they go with any food but they’re like a meal themselves at times so food isn’t essential, swirl, sniff and sip.
There may be only one or two glasses poured in a house of ten, but by the time people start waking up, the teapot is empty and Steve McQueen has been thrown his baseball mitt, people will be ready for a taste of some orange wine and maybe a bit more craic!
After Christmas we are all about turkey and ham sandwiches and a light red
My T&H sandwiches are pretty large, I try to fit absolutely every left over in the fridge into the sandwich and as such, it’ll take about the length of a movie to get through them. Sandwiches are not a very serious culinary proposition, but Christmas sandwiches are a different level.
We need fun and entertainment, but with bigger underlying themes, in other words, we need Spielberg. Whether it’s Indiana Jones, E.T. or Close Encounters, you are in good hands with this match.
In truth, matching these to wine is pretty easy. You want wines that have plenty of fruit, but not much tannin at all. The lunchtime/afternoon sandwich movie is very bright and light like Beaujolais (especially Nouveau) or even something like a Montepulciano d’Abruzzo.
As the day gets along you could go up a gear but try to avoid too much oak, a young and fresh Rioja or Rhone would be good.
Finally we get to the movies that go on later at night when little eyes are long since shut. The fire starts raging, the house becomes very quiet and movies become more serious, more complex, sometimes darker and deeper! The cheese board comes out. The decanter comes out.
James Bond films demand something dense, a Bordeaux, Barolo or a big, bold Rioja
Decant the wine before time. You know what you’re getting with James Bond, so once the wine opens up, sit back and enjoy. If your are watching something which is a little more hard work, you want the wine to keep you company and go on a journey with you.
Pinot Noir, particularly Burgundian Pinot Noir changes and evolves in the glass and after a while can be so good it’s just like it’s showing off, get lost in a glass!
The ideal match for cheese is actually bubbles, and technically white is probably better after that, but who doesn’t love red wine and cheese? Technically we are drinking our red wine too warm and our white wine too cold, technically.
Forget all that noise, drink wine the way it makes you happy, if that’s a tepid red with a mountain of gorgonzola then do it
If you want to drink Barolo and watch Love Actually, or Chardonnay with James Bond then do it. Drink your wines with good movies, good food, good friends or all of the above. It doesn’t need to be taken too seriously. Wine is there for enjoyment and to make us happy, so just let it be, especially at Christmas!
BY RORY CRAIG
Rory’s previous company Station to Station Wine joined with Richie Byrne and Ronan Farell’s Winelab to create WineStation, Ireland’s newest online wine disruptor. Rory and WineStation aim to make wine consumption and wine buying brighter, more interesting and fun.
Whether you’re a first-time shopper or a seasoned expert, WineStation has something for everyone. Their Bottle Project offers curated boxes with the best value and variety at different price points. Once you know what you like, there’s the A to Z of Wine, which is a six-pack focused on a grape or region—C is for Chardonnay, R is for Rioja.
They’ve also got events planned with their friends at Bootleg and other exciting venues —Mix Tape Wine and Wine Riot, so stay tuned!
