Meal · order of wines · glasses
In what order should you serve the wines at a meal?
White before red, light before powerful, young before old, dry before sweet; sparkling at the start or at the end. Enter your menu wine by wine: the tool says whether the order works, what temperature to serve each wine at, in which glass, and how many bottles to open.
Your menu, in order
Set for a meal for twenty guests with five moments. Put “no wine” where there isn't any. To know which appellation to put with each dish, see the food and wine pairing by menu.
The four rules
White first
After a red, a dry white tastes thin and sharp. It is served with the starter, the red with the main course.
Build up in power
Each wine should seem bigger than the one before. An old Pauillac before a young Bordeaux Supérieur makes the young one taste hard; the other way round, both are in their place.
Sugar at the end
A Sauternes makes everything that follows taste sharp. With dessert, or with a blue cheese at the cheese course, and nothing dry afterwards.
Champagne
As an aperitif, it whets the appetite; with dessert, it goes with the toast. It can be drunk mid-meal too, but it doesn't go down well after a red.
The exceptions that work
- Sauternes with foie gras, as a starter. It is the Bordeaux pairing, and it breaks the sugar-at-the-end rule. It works if the next wine is a red for laying down, served after a glass of water. A dry white afterwards, no. See what wine with foie gras.
- A dry white after the red, with goat's cheese. Goat's cheese crushes red and goes very well with a crisp white. Serve the white well chilled, and nobody will find the order odd. See what wine with cheese.
- A single wine for the whole meal. A champagne from start to finish, or a rosé all through a summer lunch: no order to respect, and a single glass.
- Two reds from the same château. The second wine before the grand vin, the youngest vintage before the oldest: the finest order a Bordeaux meal can offer.
Glasses and temperature
At a served dinner, one glass per wine: you don't mix the Graves from the starter with the Saint-Émilion from the main course. At the very least, three glasses per guest: a flute, a white wine glass, a red wine glass, and two reds can share the same one, youngest to oldest, if it is empty. Add the water glass, and 5% for breakages. The count is on how many glasses per person.
The temperatures in the table are those from the serving temperature page, which explains how to hold them in a room at 24 °C. For wine to open in advance or to decant, see should you decant the wine.
For a seated meal at several tables, the number of bottles to put out is counted table by table: how many bottles per table.
In what order should wines be served?
White before red, light before powerful, young before old, dry before sweet. Champagne is served at the start or at the end, and sweet wine last.
Can you serve a white after a red?
At the cheese course, yes, with goat's cheese: a well-chilled dry white works better than the main-course red. Elsewhere in the meal, the white tastes thin after a red; serve it before.
What to serve after a Sauternes with foie gras?
A red for laying down, Pauillac, Saint-Estèphe or Saint-Émilion, with a glass of water in between. No dry white or light red: after the sugar, they taste sharp.
How many glasses per guest for a meal with several wines?
One per wine at a served dinner. At least three: a flute, a white wine glass, a red wine glass, serving the reds youngest to oldest in the same glass. Plus a water glass.