The JarMix Guide to Pairing Wine With Cookies

Wine and cheese get all the attention. But wine and warm, fresh-baked cookies? That deserves a little more consideration. A great cookie and wine pairing isn’t about acting like you have a sommelier badge tucked into your apron. It’s about pulling warm cookies from the oven, pouring something delicious and discovering that the two are even better together.

And there’s actually some logic behind it.

Sweetness, acidity, fruit, chocolate, spice, salt and texture all affect how a wine tastes alongside food. Chocolate can become richer beside the right red. Citrus can come alive next to a bright white. A salty cookie can make the fruit in a wine seem even more pronounced. Fortunately, you don’t need to memorize wine regions or own twelve kinds of stemware to figure this out.

Bake. Pour. Taste.

JarMix can handle that. ♥

The Easy Rule for Pairing Cookies and Wine

As a general rule, your wine should be at least as sweet as your cookie or have enough fruit and acidity to keep the pairing balanced. A very dry, high-tannin wine beside a sweet cookie can suddenly taste sharper or more bitter than it did before dessert showed up. A wine with ripe fruit, some sweetness or refreshing acidity usually plays much more nicely. Texture matters too.

Rich, buttery cookies benefit from acidity. Nutty cookies can be terrific with wines that have toasted or caramel-like characteristics. Chocolate likes fruit and richness. And salt is particularly interesting because it can make fruit flavors pop while softening the perception of tannin. You also don’t need a dozen bottles to have a cookie-and-wine tasting. Pick two or three wines, bake a few noticeably different cookie flavors and keep the pours small. Suddenly Tuesday night has a theme.

JarMix Chocolate Chip Cookies + Zinfandel, Merlot or Beaujolais

Classic chocolate chip cookies are wonderfully flexible, especially when made with semi-sweet or milk chocolate. A fruit-forward Zinfandel brings ripe berry flavors and enough personality to stand beside melted chocolate. A juicy Merlot can contribute plum and dark-fruit notes without becoming overpowering. Even a lightly chilled Beaujolais can be a surprisingly fun partner. One wine to approach more carefully is a very dry Cabernet Sauvignon. Firm tannins combined with a sweet cookie can sometimes make the wine seem more bitter. If Cabernet is what you love, pair it with a darker, more intensely chocolate cookie - or one with a salty component that can stand up to the wine.

JarMix Brownie Bash Cookies + Ruby Port

When the cookie gets more intensely chocolate, the wine should probably come along for the ride. A fudgy chocolate brownie cookie and Ruby Port are natural partners. Port has enough sweetness to stand beside the cookie rather than tasting thin after a bite of chocolate, while its concentrated berry and dark-fruit flavors complement cocoa beautifully. This is not the pairing for restraint. This is dessert meeting dessert and deciding they’re perfectly happy together.

JarMix Kokoloko Spicy Chocolate Cookies + Ruby Port or Brachetto

Chocolate and spice need a wine with some personality of its own. Ruby Port provides enough sweetness and dark fruit to balance both cocoa and heat. Another interesting option is Brachetto, a lightly sparkling, sweet red wine with berry and floral characteristics. The goal isn’t necessarily to make the spice disappear. It’s to give it something fruity and sweet to play against. Be cautious with highly tannic dry reds here. Alcohol and tannin can make chile heat seem even more intense. If the cookie says spicy and actually means it, give it a wine that can keep up.

JarMix Summer Nights S’mores Cookies + Tawny Port or Moscato d’Asti

S’Mores cookies already bring three fairly substantial personalities to the party: chocolate, graham cracker and marshmallow. Tawny Port works beautifully because its nutty, caramel and dried-fruit characteristics complement those toasted flavors. For something lighter, try Moscato d’Asti. It’s sweet, gently sparkling and usually lower in alcohol. Served cold, those bubbles provide a refreshing contrast to the richness of chocolate and marshmallow. Warm S’Mores cookies and cold Moscato? That’s a pretty good night.

JarMix Sugar Cookies + Moscato d’Asti, Riesling or Sparkling Wine 

A simple sugar cookie gives aromatic wines plenty of room to shine. Moscato d’Asti and off-dry Riesling both bring peach, citrus and floral characteristics without overwhelming the cookie’s buttery vanilla flavor. Sparkling wine can work beautifully too, but pay attention to sweetness. A very sweet or heavily frosted sugar cookie beside bone-dry Brut may make the wine seem unusually tart. For sweeter sugar cookies, look toward Moscato or a demi-sec sparkling wine instead. Sometimes sweet likes sweet. Orange and Citrus Cookies + Off-Dry Riesling Citrus cookies practically ask for Riesling. A slightly sweet Riesling has enough acidity to echo orange or lemon while bringing fruit and sweetness of its own. It’s bright, refreshing and doesn't compete with the citrus. Orange cookies are also fun with a chilled sparkling rosé. Berry fruit, bubbles and orange make an especially festive combination for brunch, showers, birthdays or a cookie-and-wine table at a party.

JarMix Buried Treasure Coconut Macadamia Cookies + Late-Harvest Riesling or Moscato.

Coconut and macadamia bring tropical flavor, nuttiness and richness, so they pair particularly well with wines offering ripe fruit and enough acidity to keep everything lively. Late-harvest Riesling is an excellent choice. Moscato works beautifully too. For a cookie that isn't especially sweet, a rounder Chenin Blanc can also be interesting, particularly one showing apple or pear characteristics. The sweeter the cookie, though, the more important it becomes for the wine to bring some sweetness of its own.

JarMix Bee Bites Salted Honey Cookies + Sparkling Rosé.

Honey and salt create an interesting pairing problem in the best possible way. You have floral sweetness on one side and a little savory edge on the other. Sparkling rosé handles both beautifully. Red-fruit flavors complement the honey, acidity keeps a rich cookie from feeling heavy and bubbles clean up the palate between bites. A lightly sweet rosé can also work particularly well when the honey flavor is pronounced. And salt has another trick: it can make the fruit in the wine seem even brighter.

JarMix Oatmeal Cookies + Pinot Noir

Oatmeal brings a warm, toasted character that can be surprisingly good with a lighter red. Pinot Noir offers acidity and red-fruit flavor without the heavier tannins of Cabernet Sauvignon. And oatmeal gets particularly interesting because the pairing can change depending on what else is in the cookie. Raisins can echo the wine’s fruit. Semi-sweet chocolate adds richness. Butterscotch introduces caramelized sweetness. Put all three into one loaded oatmeal cookie and you've suddenly created a pretty entertaining tasting experiment.

JarMix Cinnamon Porch Pecan Cookies + Tawny Port

Cinnamon, toasted nuts and Tawny Port seem like they were waiting for somebody to introduce them. As Tawny Port ages, it can develop nutty, caramel and dried-fruit characteristics that work beautifully with pecans and baking spices. It’s warm, rich and decidedly cozy. Fireplace optional.

Build a JarMix Cookie-and-Wine Night Without the Kitchen Chaos

The best tasting party is the one you’ll actually host. You don’t need ten wines and ten kinds of cookies. Choose three or four noticeably different cookies and a few wines that can overlap.

For example:

Chocolate → Ruby Port
Citrus → Riesling
Coconut → Moscato
Salted Honey → Sparkling Rosé

Start with lighter sugar and citrus cookies and work toward richer chocolate and spicy flavors. Serve whites and sparkling wines chilled. Fruit-forward reds can often benefit from being served slightly cool rather than warm from the kitchen counter. Port belongs in a smaller pour. Put some water on the table, break the cookies into pieces and let everybody experiment. And disagreement is completely allowed. The technically “correct” pairing doesn't matter very much if everybody keeps going back to a supposedly incorrect one.

A JarMix Wine Flight

This is also where things can get particularly fun with JarMix.

Because JarMix cookie mixes require only water before mixing and baking with no need to add eggs, butter, oil or vanilla to add (because it's already in the jar) it’s easy to put several different fresh-baked cookie flavors on the same table without turning your kitchen into a disaster zone.

Try building a JarMix tasting flight:

Chocolate Chip - Zinfandel, Merlot or Beaujolais
Brownie Bash - Ruby Port
Kokoloko Spicy Chocolate - Ruby Port or Brachetto
Sumer Nights S’mores - Tawny Port or Moscato d’Asti
Birthday Bash Rainbow Sugar - Moscato d’Asti or demi-sec sparkling wine
Blossom Orange Sugar - Off-dry Riesling or sparkling rosé
Buried Treasure Coconut Macadamia - Late-harvest Riesling or Moscato
Bee Bites Salted Honey - Sparkling rosé
Cinnamon Porch Pecan - Tawny Port

Bake three or four flavors, open a few bottles and see which combination disappears first. That’s scientific enough for us.

A Few Pairings That Usually Miss

Very dry, heavily tannic reds are probably the biggest risk with sweet cookies. They aren't bad wines. They just tend to be happier beside savory foods, rich meats or cheese than beside a frosted sugar cookie. Extremely oaky Chardonnay can also overwhelm delicate vanilla, citrus or coconut cookies. And don't assume that every sparkling wine automatically works with dessert. Bone-dry Brut can be fantastic with salty, buttery or less-sweet cookies, but very sweet cookies generally play better with Moscato d’Asti, demi-sec bubbles or another wine with a softer, sweeter finish. When in doubt, going slightly sweeter with the wine is usually safer than going too dry.

The Most Important Rule? Have Fun With It.

There is no need to memorize wine regions, study tasting charts or make any of this complicated. Wine preferences are personal. Cookie preferences are personal. Put the two together and there is absolutely no reason everyone at the table has to agree. Warm cookies, a bottle you're excited to open and one thoughtful flavor match are enough to make an ordinary evening feel like an occasion.

So let the wine chill while the cookies bake.

Then pour a glass, break open the first warm cookie and see which pairing earns the last one on the plate.

Add water. Mix. Bake. Pour.

Apparently, there really is a brand-new way to cookie. ♥