What Wine Goes with Shrimp Scampi | Shrimp Scampi Wine Pairing

Shrimp Scampi is a delicious meal and, with the right recipe, can be easy to make. But a meal like shrimp scampi deserves a good drink pairing, a wine pairing, to be exact. The question is, what wine goes with shrimp scampi? What is the perfect match?

Trying to figure out what wine goes with shrimp scampi isn’t tricky. But knowing why can help you make the best shrimp scampi wine pairings decision. The first thing to do when finding the perfect pairing option for your shrimp scampi is to find an easy shrimp scampi recipe.

Then there is the fresh or frozen decision to make with seafood dishes like shrimp scampi. You could go with fresh shrimp for a fresher-tasting dish. But there is nothing wrong with using frozen shrimp.

Either option will provide succulent shrimp that pairs perfectly with your pasta. However, that brings us to another decision: noodles. Shrimp scampi uses spaghetti noodles, but there are a few different ways to go about spaghetti.

You could use angel hair pasta for a lighter dish, or maybe you want something heavier as the main course, like classic spaghetti noodles. Both options are delicious and easy to make. But some of us are watching what we eat.

Spaghetti is a common food that is removed from healthy diets. Not that pasta is bad for you, but they are carb-heavy, and that’s not great. Using zucchini noodles is a popular choice for replacing pasta and still gracing taste buds with Italian dishes.

Zucchini noodles are spiralized zucchini with a very similar mouth feel to pasta, but none of the carbs. You will still get the richness of the dish even without the classic shrimp scampi spaghetti.

There is no right way; just pick the best way to go for your nutrition plan. The shrimp scampi is cooking, you’ve got fresh parsley to garnish, and the pasta is perfectly al dente.  But now we’re considering food pairings.

A side salad is a great option for a side dish with some crusty bread for soaking up all that delicious buttery sauce. But we can’t just open up the closest bottle of wine to go with our perfectly laid-out dinner.

Of course, personal preference does play a role here. But we want to enjoy the flavors of shrimp scampi, especially after putting in all of that work. That is when we start wondering what wine goes with shrimp scampi.

What Wine Goes with Shrimp Scampi | Shrimp Scampi Wine Pairing

There are a variety of wines that we can pair with a variety of different dishes. But understanding how food pairings work can help you pick the best wine for shrimp scampi.

Wine does a lot for food, but maybe not in the ways you think. Wine pairings are done to heighten the flavor and texture of the food we’re eating. Luckily, wine pairings are a bit subjective.

This means your personal preference for flavors and textures factor into each wine pairing. However, there are a few things you want to consider before you start learning how to make pairings everyone will love.

We want to consider taste, texture, and even aroma because smell plays a role in how we taste things. Knowing that personal preference plays such a big role takes a lot of stress out of the decision-making process.

But there are a few different pathways you can choose from that have become popular. Those paths include congruence, balance, and narrative.

Narrative Wine Pairings

Finding out what wine goes with shrimp scampi requires us to decide which path we want to take. The narrative path is more artistic for those who want their meal to tell a story.

Remember, all wineries have stories behind them; even their location could play a role in your meal’s story. For example, maybe you picked pasta from the Loire Valley area of France. You’d also want to pick a wine from that area to complete the story.

You most likely won’t be finding pasta that comes from a region in the United States. But maybe you want to tell a story about traveling from a wine country in the US to Italy or France.

Clearly, the narrative route is for those who love cooking and can put the time and energy into planning the meal in this much detail. Picking the right wine for a narrative pairing is all about the story your meal tells.

This is an excellent choice for dinner parties if you want to impress your guests. Tell the story like they would at a Michelin Star restaurant as you pour a glass of wine for each guest. 

Congruent Wine Pairings

An easier route to go with is the congruent wine pairing. Congruent wine pairings have us picking out a specific ingredient in the meal and finding similar tones in the wine pairing.

For example, a buttery shrimp scampi sauce will pair well with a dry white wine like Chardonnay or Pinot Gris. These wines often have buttery notes that will compliment the flavor profile of shrimp scampi.

In fact, white wines are often paired with shrimp. A good option here is to pick out the fresh herbs used in the scampi and pick a wine that has similar flavor profiles. However, you could also take a completely different route and contrast the meal with a Beaujolais Nouveau or a Pinot Noir.

Contrasting the meal is an ideal choice for keeping the overall dining experience on its toes. The classic choice will always be to go with a congruent pairing. A trick to congruency in wine pairings is to use a similar wine, if not the exact same wine as the cooking wines you use.

You can even include the wine you use in a white wine sauce to make for the ultimate congruent wine pairing.

Balance Pairings

The last route you can take when finding what wine goes with shrimp scampi is the balanced route.  Balancing a meal can be complicated for beginners. The easier route will always be congruent.

Balancing requires us to know the flavor profiles of the meal and the wine. For example, a heavy, fatty pasta sauce would require picking a wine that is not very acidic.

The crisp acidity will break down the creamy sauce on the palate, making for an unappetizing experience. The goal is to ensure the wine doesn’t overpower the flavor of the delicious shrimp scampi dish.

Balancing the flavors of a meal requires a deep knowledge of flavors. We have to factor in things like high acidity, citrusy notes, fruit flavors, and even creamy texture. As you can see, the world of wine is vast and filled with opportunities to impress.

White Wine Pairings

White wine is often the best choice for pairing with seafood dishes or pasta dishes with a white sauce. These wines usually comes with a dry, crisp flavor that is light enough to compliment the garlic and butter in a shrimp scampi dish.

They offer a balance of sweetness with the garlic in the dish that simply can’t be beaten. Chardonnay is the obvious choice because it’s well-known, people enjoy it, and then there’s the acidity.

Shrimp scampi comes with a buttery sauce that is packed with flavor. The acidity in white wine balances out that richness while adding some herbal flavors that make the entire meal complex.

Ultimately, white wine is used not to overpower the seafood flavors. Instead, it is used to showcase the flavors of the shrimp and enhance the overall experience.

Red Wine Pairings

You may think that white wine is the only option the next time you make seafood. But white wine is not the only choice. In fact, a few red wines that go perfectly with shrimp scampi.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you want to reach for the nearest bottle of Merlot. In fact, there are only a few red wine options that professionals agree to pair with shrimp scampi. So, what wine goes with shrimp scampi?

We want red wines that offer a slight sweetness and softer flavors, complimenting the shrimp scampi’s savory buttery flavors of the dish. This can be a risky option to freestyle unless you want to go with the already-known red wines.

Luckily, there are a few to choose from so that you don’t have to do all of the work.

Classic Shrimp Scampi Wine Pairing

Understanding the ins and outs of wine pairings will help you freestyle your choices. But there is another way to discover what wine goes with shrimp scampi. There are professionals out there who have already decided what wine and wine types go with shrimp scampi.

Most of these suggested pairings use the congruency path, meaning they showcase one or more ingredients in the shrimp scampi. Most shrimp scampi recipes require olive oil, lemon zest, jumbo shrimp, and a garlicky butter sauce.

But the easiest ingredient to pair with is the light-bodied white wine. This wine is the cooking wine and is often dry. So we will go with Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, or Riesling.

But dry white wines aren’t the only option here. We can also go with something like Pinot Noir, which is a light-bodied red wine that pairs with the rich shrimp scampi. We could also use a Rioja with a warm, fruity flavor that goes perfectly with the lemon zest in the shrimp scampi.

Pairing Wine with Food

We now know what wine goes with shrimp scampi. However, we have also learned that wine pairing is not exactly easy. Sure, we can search for the answer online and get it done.

But knowing the intricacies of an act like this makes the experience more fulfilling. It is more rewarding to take a bite of shrimp scampi and then wash it down with a wine that makes the flavor even better, especially when you picked the wine and cooked the shrimp scampi on your own.

However, it is a complicated process requiring a relatively deep knowledge of flavors and wine. Most of us just enjoy shrimp scampi; we aren’t pulling it apart mentally, figuring out which flavor is which and how they work together on our tongues.

The same could be said for wine. When was the last time you said this wine was dry with smoky, subtle flavors and a fruity aroma on the back end and actually meant it? Chances aren’t high it was recently.

But we do know that we like white wine over red wine or vice versa. However, we can always learn as we grow, and all of this information serves as a good starting point for that journey.

The trick is to do it as often as possible so that we can make mistakes and correct them. Those mistakes are where we learn the most. Don’t be afraid to make them; just be prepared to ditch the pairing if it doesn’t work out well enough for your liking.

More Shrimp Recipes to Try

Slow Cooker Shrimp Scampi Recipe | Make trial and error even easier by using a delicious slow cooker recipe.

Instant Pot Shrimp Recipes For Summer | Summer is the perfect time to start using more wine pairings in your cooking. Mostly because there is nothing like a cold glass of white wine on a summer day.

Can You Put Frozen Shrimp In Slow Cooker? | Frozen shrimp makes the entire process easier and more affordable. However, using a slow cooker may not be viable if you’re using frozen shrimp.

Best Crockpot Shrimp Pasta Recipes | These pairings we’ve learned about today are perfect for almost every shrimp pasta dish. Unless it uses a red sauce instead of a white sauce.

Shrimp Head On Vs Head Off Cooking Process | Cooking shrimp with the head on is an entirely different experience than with the head off. Which one is right for you and your meal?