Perfect Wines To Drink With Casserole

The Summer is officially over....  NOW!

Okay, so maybe I'm a few days late, but I just wanted to wait until the weather turned properly miserable and give everyone some time to start feeling all wintery and in need of comfort food.

It's that time when the white and rosé wine goes into hibernation and the red comes out in force.

Personally, I LOVE winter. I love the snow and crisp cold mornings and wearing 16 jumpers to bed because it costs too much to have the heating on. Most importantly though, I love wintery food; rice pudding, sausage 'n' mash, and casserole. Lots and lots of casserole.

Naturally, when its cold, we need booze. You know, for warmth... but some wines are better for drinking a nice wintry casserole than others.




Sausage Casserole

A classic and a favourite of many red-nosed, shivering, snow-covered folks nationwide. An excellent with something red, not too heavy but with a little bit of spice. This calls for Cotes du Rhone.
E. Guigal is one of the most respected producers in Rhone and although their Cotes du Rhone certainly isn's the cheapest on the market, it is still fantastic value for what you get. This wine is packed full of lovely, juicy dark fruit flavours with a warming hint of spicy white pepper, which is just what a good sausage casserole needs.
Cotes du Rhone 2010 E. Guigal is available from Majestic for £9.99 if you buy two bottles, otherwise its £11.99.



Pheasant Casserole

I bloody love pheasant casserole, to me it is the perfect winter food. Due to the more intense flavour of pheasant, compared to sausage, you need a slightly fuller flavoured wine. Something Spanish is often a good call here, so Rioja would be perfect. Marqués de Riscal, one of the most famous Rioja producers, is on a fab offer in Majestic at the moment. The delicious Rioja Reserva is robust and bold, full of nicely developed fruit with flavours of vanilla and toasted oak.
While it is normally £14.99, Marqués de Riscal 2008 Reserva Rioja is currently on offer at £13.74 HOWEVER, if you buy 2 spanish wines on your order, it knocks it down to £10.99 a bottle - a whole £4 off! Make the most of it...



Chicken Casserole

The staple of a lot of people's winter diet. On this one I am going for a white wine, but something fuller-bodied that still has the nice cosy quality that's essential when you are sat by a log fire.
Too many Chenin Blancs are very light and citrusy but Ken Forrester's 2011 Reserve Chenin Blanc is right at the other end of the scale. This is a fuller-bodied, rich white which has been aged for a year in oak barrels, providing a lovely texture and depth of flavour. At £12.50 a bottle from Winetrust100.co.uk this Ken Forrester 2011 Reserve Chenin Blanc is well worth buying (great new merchant too, check them out!).

So if you aren't as much of a fan of winter as I am, don't worry, make it your goal to try all three of these combos and that should put a smile on your frost-bitten, dry, weather-worn, knackered looking face.

What are your favourite winter wines? We would love to know! Tell us either by commenting below or on our Twitter and Facebook pages.

title image taken from Very Lazy's photostream, under the creative commons license