Hold The Cheese

Holiday parties are often filled with sweets, cheese and all things highly caloric. To avoid repetition and, frankly, adding more hours to everyone's 2011 gym time, try something a little healthier in your holiday entertaining routine: nuts.

In their fresh, high-quality form, nuts can pair beautifully with wine. A classic combo is nuts with Port, but to mix things up a little, Team Daily Sip recently held a tasting of wine and gourmet roasted nuts by Oren's Kitchen. They're available online here, as well as at Foodzie and Whole Foods. Here's what we discovered in the tasting:

• The Indian Ajwain Cashews matched well with a juicy Pinot Gris — with ripe grapefruit flavor — from Washington. The wine complemented the cedar, cumin, and ghee in the spice. So consider drinking Pinot Gris when you have Indian food in general.

• We got the most out of the Coconut Chili Macadamias with a Gewurztraminer. Because of its ability to pair with the coconut and chili flavors of these particular nuts, it shouldn't come as any surprise that Gewurztraminer is also great with Thai food.

• With the powerful Smoked Paprika Pecans, a Rhône Syrah seemed to work best. In general, Syrahs pair beautifully with hearty Spanish dishes laden with paprika.

Everyone has their own preferences, so if you have a unique food-wine pairing you like, tell us about it below.