More often than not, the wines that work best with a particular dish are those that complement the predominant flavors in the recipe. Meats of all kinds are usually the dominant flavors that grab the taste buds, so the palate needs something that softens them, enhances them or stands up to them. Throw in spices and you add another level of complexity to the dish, and a higher degree of difficulty to the food-wine pairing.

So, how to pick a wine for a dish that may not be vegetarian, but that features vegetables as the lead ingredient? By looking at the whole dish.

It's no accident that the foods signaling a traditional Thanksgiving are such late autumn staples as pumpkin, apples, Brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, turnips and cranberries. Root vegetables and all kinds of squash – from acorn to butternut – are found on the menus of diverse restaurants around the country but are especially prominent in those restaurants where the produce is locally sourced and follows each season’s bounty.   

Here we are in fall and you’re probably scratching your head thinking, “why are we talking about white wines as the foliage is in its full Technicolor splendor and the temperatures are dropping about as quickly as the leaves?”

You’d be hard-pressed to find any item of food or drink that has more variety than wine. Just look at the number of different labels found on a large retailer’s shelf, and then think of all those wines that never get to those shelves, that are sold only in their own countries, regions or even only at their own wineries.  I recently read that there are over 10,000 different grape varieties grown on every continent, except Antarctica!