How To Pair Wine With Grilled Fish

If chicken is the blank canvas of grilled foods, fish must be the linen. Delicate, easily ruined, and needing a good eye and a knack for detail to use it well, fish is already unforgiving on the stove, where you have some control over things, but once you get it on the grill, well, it just moves to another level of difficulty altogether.

Grilling fish tests all of your culinary skills. You'll have to be able to cook by eye — and keep in mind carry-over cooking — to achieve perfect results, while also using a gentle hand with seasonings to create a balanced flavor palate. When you manage to pull all of these elements together, however, you will be justly rewarded. Adding the nuances of grilled and smoke flavors to your fish recipes adds depth of flavor that stovetop cooking just can't duplicate.

In general, since most fish are rather delicately flavored, simpler is better with grilled fish recipes. Don't bury the fish under a mountain of seasonings, and don't give up on a recipe if it doesn't come out perfectly the first time. Working on your technique, so that you are highlighting the flavor of perfectly cooked fish with each recipe, is only the first step to perfect summer seafood grilling. Here are a few recipes to get you started.

Click here to find grilling tips for fish, with wine pairings to go with each recipe. 

— Gregory Dal Piaz, Snooth