The Ideal Wine To Serve With Lamb Chops
If you're having guests over for a dinner party where the main course is a tasty lamb chop recipe, such as Greek-style lamb chops, serve wine alongside it to make your meal fancier and more delicious. For an optimal combination, pair your lamb chops with a medium or full-bodied red wine whose flavor matches the strength or lightness of your meat. This will ensure that your drink will not taste underwhelming alongside your lamb chops or overwhelm the flavor of your meat. The intensity or subtlety of your lamb chops' flavor will depend on how they are prepared. That, in turn, determines the best red wine to pair with the dish.
Lamb chops seasoned with strong spices and very flavorful sauces will pair well with a bottle of Syrah. A Northern Rhône Syrah has a smokey and gamey flavor that harmonizes with the smokey and meaty flavors of oven-roasted lamb chops or pan-seared lamb chops. Anthill Farms Sonoma Coast Syrah has an earthy flavor that matches the taste of grilled lamb chops.
Lamb chops also pair well with Pinot Noir
When you sip a glass of Pinot Noir alongside a plate of lamb chops, its flavor will blend well with the taste of your meat, and it will make the flavor profile of your overall dish more complex. Pinot Noir matches the lamb's gaminess while adding complementary fruity and acidic notes to balance the meat's savory flavor. 2013 Vidon Vineyards 3 Clones Chehalem Mountains is an Oregon Pinot Noir with an acidic and earthy flavor that can combine well with lamb chops while adding complementary spicy and cherry-strawberry flavor.
Another Oregon Pinot Noir that can match the strong flavors of lamb chops is Westrey Oracle Vineyard Pinot Noir (2012), which hails from the paradise of Pinot Noir in Willamette Valley. It has notes of pomegranate, red cherries, and vanilla along with an earthy flavor that will stand up to the intense taste of lamb chops. If you'd prefer a Pinot Noir with less fruitiness and more earthiness that smoothly matches the flavor of your lamb chops, opt for a Burgundy Pinot Noir.
You can also pair lamb chops with white wine
If you don't like red wine, you're not out of luck if you want to enjoy wine with lamb chops. Although white wines are generally considered to lack the strength of flavor to blend nicely with the intense flavor of lamb chops, white wines that are rich, weighty, and a bit smokey will pair well with lamb chops. If you want to pair white wine with your lamb chops, choose a white wine with a complex flavor profile that can match the bold flavor of your lamb chops so your drink will not be overwhelmed by your meat.
An acidic and dry white wine is a great choice to pair with lamb chops for a balance of flavor, such as Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Grigio. Just make sure you know the difference between Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Grigio (the former is more acidic and can taste tarter than the latter). A gewürztraminer also pairs well with lamb, namely Gundlach Bundschu Gewürztraminer – an acidic white wine with notes of honeysuckle, Anjou pear, and lychee. A lamb chop dinner will also taste great paired with a white Bordeaux, such as Chateau Guiraurd's "G." This dry and acidic white wine has a strong grapefruit flavor that will complement a lamb dish.