What Sets Cooking Wine And Drinking Wine Apart?

For thousands of years, wine has been a source of imbibement and continues to garner popularity and interest today. On the contrary, it's also fun to experiment with cooking wine to bring out bold flavor profiles in dishes. Now, you might be flipping through your recipes on Pinterest to try it out yourself, but you should know a critical factor before you start: Cooking wine and drinking wine are very different from one another and should be treated as such.

Like drinking wine, cooking wine comes in various options, from dry to sweet, reds and whites, and is sold at different price points, but that's where the similarities end. Cooking wine usually has a higher alcohol content as alcohol burns off during the cooking process. Cooking wine also contains added salt and preservatives (to extend shelf life) and is often much sweeter. If you tasted it, you'd immediately notice it is just as sweet as salty. Because of the saltiness, you might want to hold back on adding the usual amount of table salt; using too much alongside cooking wine will oversalt the dish.

Even though there are noticeable differences between cooking and drinking wine, cooking with drinking wine is still prevalent. For those moments when you don't have a cooking wine to pair with a dish, consider reaching for that bottle of red you already have. Cooking with dry red or white wine is often best paired with savory dishes like a hearty stew or as a braising component for meat. 

Also, avoid wine that gives off an "oaky" flavor, like Chardonnay. While it might seem like a good idea to use this wine type, once added to a dish, it'll likely turn it bitter, and not in a good way. If you're looking to use drinking wine in a sweet dish, consider a Rosé or similar sparkling wine, like a cheesecake. Because these wines are already sweet and carbonated, they should pair nicely and give your dish a subtle tart or citrus flavor.