'White Wine With Seafood' Rule Is No Fish Story

Researchers conducting intensely necessary studies have confirmed what connoisseurs have always told us: Red wine doesn’t go with fish. Tasters tried 38 red wines and 26 whites while noshing on scallops. They discovered that wines with higher iron content—meaning most reds—unpleasantly accentuated the seafood's “fishy” taste. If researchers added a substance to the wines that masked iron, the taste diminished.

“Red wine clashes with fish, creating a ferrous taste, fishy and metallic odors, and bitterness in the mouth,” one researcher tells the Telegraph. As for what you should drink with fish, some suggest sherry, though that’s “not based on scientific understandings of wine and food combinations.” (More wine stories.)