What wine goes with paella?

Build the meal around the paella

Paella is preset as the main course, with a salad as a starter, no cheese and a fruit dessert. The balance shown is about 57% rosé, 29% white and 14% sparkling, no red: the selector files the main-course line under rosé, though it works just as well with dry white. For a seafood paella, count it as white instead. Change any line: the appellation, age and price follow, with no château.

Three paellas, three wines

Bordeaux with paella, really?

The honest answer: the most natural match is Spanish. A rosado, a fresh white from the Atlantic coast or a young Tempranillo red go with paella at home, and for a themed evening a Spanish bottle on the table is part of the decor too. We are a Bordeaux wine merchant (négociant): we can offer a selection from other regions on request, but we are not Spain specialists. For an all-Spanish list, a local wine shop or a specialist importer will do better than us.

But paella does not demand a Spanish wine. It wants a fresh, dry, unoaked wine that stands up to saffron, mild paprika and seafood: that is the definition of a Bordeaux rosé or dry white one to three years old. What to avoid is a tannic red or an oaky white, which flatten the rice and give the seafood a metallic taste. For shellfish served separately, the wine with seafood page covers the pairing.

How many bottles for a giant paella

Giant paella is the dish of village fêtes, association evenings and themed weddings: a single dish, served seated, often outdoors, in summer. Allow one bottle for every two drinkers over the meal, half rosé, half dry white.

80% drinkers, 10% margin for a seated meal, rounded to the case of 6 above 18 bottles. With an hour of aperitif and tapas before the paella, add two glasses per drinker: for 80 guests, about 24 more bottles, which the general calculator splits between sparkling, white and rosé. Unopened cases are not taken back.

Keeping it cold on a summer evening

A giant paella is served outdoors, in July, next to a fire. A rosé left on the table at 28 °C is undrinkable within a quarter of an hour. You need a tub, ice, water and salt, and the bottles stay in it between pours; the details are on the chilling 50 bottles quickly page. The advice on the wine with a barbecue page, plastic cups, water, and rosé going twice as fast, applies here too.

For a meal for ten, your local wine shop is enough. We become useful when the paella feeds a hundred people: several cases, a per-case price, delivery on site, the aperitif champagne on the same quote.