Dominic Holden – Dinner at Dave's

Why You Should Cook With Wine

Posted on July 17, 2026July 21, 2026 by Dominic Holden

Harold McGee’s books on cooking and booze are famous for challenging the myth that alcohol all evaporates when you cook with it – it turns out that some of the alcohol, or a lot, lingers. But the chapter that sticks with me from his 1984 book on culinary science, On Food and Cooking, is specifically about wine.

Humans didn’t choose grapes arbitrarily. “The grape turned out to be uniquely suited to the development of a diverse family of alcoholic drinks,” he writes. “A given wine contains several hundred different kinds of volatile molecules,” adding that the “same molecules are also found in temperate and tropical fruits, flowers, leaves, wood, spices, animal scents, cooked foods of all kinds, even fuel tanks and nail polish remover.”

So when people say snobby-sounding stuff like, “It has flavors of blackberry and tobacco,” they may be 100% correct; fermented grapes actually create those exact chemical signatures.

Wine adds a complex flavor that no other ingredient can

I’d always assumed you could press cherries or apricots or whatever, and the wine would be just as good. Instead, McGee explains, the grape’s combination of acids, sugars, and compounds turn plain grape juice into “by far the most sophisticated” of all the wines out there, he explained in Nose Dive, his 2020 exploration of scent.

Other plants can create great wine, like rice for soju and sake, but nothing beats grape wine for intensity and flavor variation.

The problem is that there’s a lot of wine to choose from. If you make a chicken marsala or risotto with sweet California zinfandel, it’ll be nasty. You have to pick the right wine for the job.

“COOKING WINE” vs. COOKING WITH WINE

Don’t buy stuff at the grocery store labeled as “cooking wine.” They’re packed with salt and other preservatives, and they taste bad. There are plenty affordable, perfectly decent regular wines to choose from. But what to pick, exactly? If you’re in a giant chain supermarket with a zillion wines on the shelf, my recommendation is to leave. The cheap wines in those aisles tend to be mass produced and low quality. Go to a wine shop with a table for good wines under $15. Or better yet, go to a shop that carries inexpensive European wine. In many US states, Trader Joe’s has a wine section that slaps for the price. Don’t be afraid of telling the staff your looking for a cheap, simple wine appropriate for cooking.

RED WINES

Red wine is made from red grapes (you knew that), and as the juice begins to ferment, it macerates on the dark skins, taking on the color and other flavorful compounds like tannins. This gives boeuf bourguignon its richness, and it’s perfect for other stews and syrupy deep red desserts (like prunes stewed with red wine and a cinnamon stick). Classically, a pinot noir or another dry, medium bodied red that’s dry is what you want. Too many tannins, too much residual sugar, or too much oak (like Bordeauxs or California Cabernets) can take a dish in odd directions.

WHITE WINES

White wines give you the most flexibility when you cook because many are exposed to little or zero oak, so they don’t overpower a dish, and tannins don’t dominate the lighter ingredients like seafood or cream. Bolognese sauce, that meaty Italian staple, is classically made with white wine, not red, despite it often being considered a powerhouse dish. Plenty of sauvignon blancs are affordable and great choices. We used almost an entire bottle in our recipe for coq au vin blanc with biscuits for the first episode of Dinner At Dave’s!

FORTIFIED WINES

Unlike that dish, though, one challenge with wines is that you rarely use an entire bottle, and if you don’t finish it, the wine is exposed to oxygen and typically spoils in a few days. Wines fortified with hard alcohol last much longer. With an alcohol by volume (ABV) of around 17-22%, they make for a more stable bottle that’s less prone to oxidation, turn into vinegar, or lose its flavor. Many can keep for a month or more in the fridge. It’s important to note that fortified wines can range from sweet to bone dry (for a very literal example, sweet or dry vermouth).

Some examples to know about: Sherry, a white fortified wine from Spain, brings a nutty oxidative body along with briney, dry notes. Madeira is also a white, from Portugal, and known for its high acid and tendency toward sweeter, caramelized notes. From Sicily, you have Marsala. It tends to be quite shelf-stable; the dry ones are key to chicken marsala and the sweet ones are known in dessert sauces like zabaglione or in tiramisu.

The great thing about cooking with wine is that you don’t have to break the bank and it can take a dish from homey to sophisticated and sensational. Even more sensational? You can pour yourself a glass as you cook and let the chemistry in the bottle do the rest.

Biscuits For Dinner?

Posted on May 25, 2026July 17, 2026 by Dominic Holden

I once stayed at a Holiday Inn for a week in Morehead, Kentucky. This was back when I was a reporter covering Kim Davis, the county clerk and self-proclaimed Christian who was refusing to issue marriage licenses. To her, Jesus was very clear about his objection to gay weddings.

The hubbub around her exploded and my quick work trip got extended day after day. And while parts of the trip were nice, like watching Davis get arrested by US Marshals, the food nearby — I want to be diplomatic here — was not great.

The “fancy pizza in town,” as described by the front desk guy, was Papa John’s. The sit-down Mexican place served chile rellenos stuffed entirely with Kraft singles. And the hotel put out a complimentary breakfast of cereal and crumbly wet eggs — but the buffet also had one of the best things I’ve ever eaten: perfect, warm biscuits.

It turned out, unlike the other pre-fab feed in the breakfast trough, every day one of the employees made biscuits from scratch in a little room off the lobby.

“Oh, honey, they’re easy,” she told me.

That lady saved my trip, and as a kid from Seattle, eating a fresh biscuit with gravy hit harder than getting my first flannel.

But it was honestly intimidating to bake them myself. During the covid lockdown, I was hunkered with friends in the Catskill Mountains, and while everyone was strapped to their laptop, I wanted to try. The fact that one of them was my friend Bryan, a preternatural baker and writer from South Carolina, didn’t help my confidence. But I followed the recipe and, sweet heavens, Bryan approved.

Like a lot of classics, a biscuit can remind you that a simple, unexpected comfort can be the best. That memory drove David and I when we were trying to give a classic French dish a down-home American twist for a crowd.

A simple, unexpected comfort can be the best

In developing our coq au vin recipe, we originally tried the dish over noodles. It turned out to be a handful to make pasta, ladle it at the table, and garnish everything while guests were buzzing about and the food got cold. It also lacked a wow factor. So we thought maybe we could riff on a pot pie and top it with biscuits — an unexpected combo. Plus, pulling up to the table with a piping hot coq au vin with a golden biscuit crust is always gonna be a showstopper.

Naturally, I consulted Bryan, who said he’d do a drop biscuit. “I’d want that slightly rustic vibe,” he texted me back, “and it avoids the complication of rolling out any pastry.”

So here we’ve done that: It’s a simple dough, spiked with cheese and pancetta, that’s scooped onto the coq au vin while it’s ripping hot. We brushed it with butter for a golden finish, and I couldn’t stop eating it. The cheese stretches as you pull apart the biscuit, which then sops up the sauce. You can top virtually any stew or braise to make it a complete dinner for a crowd. It reminded me that as a teenager, I joined a theater company called Anything for a Biscuit, and I didn’t realize it’d be a prophecy. I still would do anything for a biscuit, because in addition to being good… honey, they’re easy.

Don’t Buy Champagne

Posted on May 25, 2026July 17, 2026 by Dominic Holden

I’d somehow envisioned Champagne like a painting of lush vineyards with adorable little tractors and maybe border collies wearing berets (it could happen), but this was mid-March. I was in my mid-20s, naive, obviously, and sitting on a train next to my dad, and the vines were bare and sad-looking, and the famously chalky soil looked like dirty snow.

A driver blasting Pink Floyd scooped us up and began winding through the moonscape that produces $2.5 billion of the world’s most valuable sparkling wine grapes each year and disgorged us at the gates of Veuve Clicquot, a massive estate (1,000 acres) that’s famous for those iconic orange labels and for keeping Edina and Patsy perpetually hammered on Absolutely Fabulous.

Since my dad had led wine tours for decades across France, we got the red carpet. A white-gloved butler served a five-course lunch paired solely with different Champagnes. I would have thought five bottles of an “appetizer” wine in one meal would be too much. But counterpoint, no. Champagne can go with everything and it’s perfect in every way. Almost.

You shouldn’t actually buy Champagne.

Yes, it can be amazing. And you should absolutely drink it sometimes (I’m not a madman). But decent Champagne is shockingly expensive – drinking vintage bottles at home like we did on that day would cost $1,500 or more. Doing it at a restaurant would be like collecting yachts and sinking them for fun.

For what most of us can afford, Champagne tends to be merely okay. By law, it’s all made from the same few grapes within the same 130 square miles using the same method. This means most of the mass-produced stuff on American supermarket shelves is very predictable and decent, but not exactly interesting. It’s churned out by huge brands trying to turn a profit. There is great Champagne from select vintages and smaller producers; it’s just expensive.

There are just so many other amazing options – different grapes, regions, styles, climates, soil – that you can have exciting bottles that overperform, especially when you’re serving a crowd. And when you’re shopping for a party, you want the wow factor, not buyer’s remorse.

You want the wow factor, not buyer’s remorse

CREMANT

Cremant can’t be called Champagne because it’s made in other parts of France. But cremants typically are made in the same classic way, called méthode traditionnelle, which involves a second fermentation inside of the bottle to charge it with carbon dioxide bubbles. They’re also produced under similarly strict French laws and tend to use the same varieties of grapes. Cremant de Bourgogne, for instance, is typically made with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. The ones from the foothills of the Jura are also mainly made with Chardonnay.

And then there are fun variations. Cremant d’Alsace is often made with Riesling, which can pop with citrus and acidity. Limoux, an ancient sparkling-wine-growing region in the south, produces delightful sparkling wines. One of the greatest values in French bubbles is Blanquette de Limoux, a zippy little sucker made from the grape Mouzac.

My absolute favorite cremants, though, come from the Loire Valley, where many are made with Chenin Blanc, a grape known for its balance, acid, and notes of dry orchard fruit. Sometimes they’re not sold as a “cremant,” per se. I’m particularly into sparkling Vouvray, an appellation in the Loire known for sensational Chenin.

The big takeaway: These bubbles are elegant, packed with character, and punch above their weight dollar-per-dollar. When you’re shopping, be sure to look for wines that are “brut.” As counterintuitive as it may seem, “dry” or “semi-dry” actually means it’s sweet. I know.

PET-NAT

Go to any wine bar in Paris these days – and most wine shops in the US – and you’ll see pet-nats. Pétillant naturel or méthode ancestrale wines begin their fermentation in a tank (sometimes a barrel), and finish fermenting inside the bottle (so they pump it with CO2 bubbles). They’re produced without additives and unfiltered, and some get a little rustic – which occasionally can be kinda gross. Some are quite cloudy and even gamey.

Before you write off pet-nats as weird or “too natural,” you need to know this: Many are downright fantastic. Fresh, clear, and bursting with flavor. And because they don’t have added sugars for a second fermentation, they tend to be bone dry. Ask the folks working at the wine shop and describe what you like!

PROSECCO

This is a half-hearted endorsement, but thanks to its ubiquitousness on shelves, here we are. Prosecco does not taste like Champagne – even to thieves. It’s made in northern Italy from the grape Glera using the Charmat Method. This involves aging it in a pressurized steel tank, which amps up fruity flavors and mutes complexity and bubbles. If you like simple, fruit-forward sparkling wine, Prosecco might be ya boy. If that’s your only option (or preference), look for “brut” varieties – again, because the gods are against us, “dry” or “semi dry” actually means sweet.

CAVA

Spain’s most famous bubbles are made the same way as Champagne (méthode traditionnelle) but with indigenous grapes like Macabeo, Xarel·lo, and Parellada. You don’t need to remember them, but do remember that when you’re in a store stacked with mass-produced sweet American bubbles, sugary Proseccos, and pricey Champagne, there will almost always be a respectable Cava if you look for it.

Major brands like Freixenet (in those unmistakable matte black bottles) and Segura Viudas often have a brut on the shelf for around $13, and once more, you want a brut, and they are reliably crisp, balanced, and versatile. Almost any wine shop will have outstanding Cavas from smaller producers to choose from, too.

Cava is often the most bubble for your buck

In any case, find one you like and buy a case! Cava will often have the most bubble for your buck.