What Wine Goes With Empanadas?

Malbec for beef, Torrontés for chicken, cheese or corn. The Argentine pairing, and it holds up on the mechanics.

Empanadas are pastry turnovers, baked or fried, filled with anything from spiced beef to ham and cheese. The pastry is the constant — buttery, sometimes flaky, always starchy — and the filling is the variable, which means the pairing follows the filling while the pastry quietly sets a floor for how much acidity you need.

Pastry sets the floor

Butter and starch both coat the palate: butter with fat, starch by dulling it. Together they mean a soft, low-acid wine disappears after the first one, and that a delicate wine will not register at all.

Fried empanadas make this stronger still, and are the case for bubbles — carbonation lifts frying fat off the palate in a way acidity alone cannot.

So whatever the filling suggests, pick the sharper version of it. That single rule covers most of the ground.

By filling

Beef — carne, usually with cumin, paprika, olives and hard-boiled egg. Malbec from Mendoza is the Argentine answer: plush dark fruit and soft tannin, enough body for the pastry. Serve it cool.

Chicken, cheese or humita (sweetcorn). Torrontés — Argentina’s aromatic white, floral and grapey with real acidity — or a dry rosado.

Ham and cheese, or anything very salty. Salt makes wine taste rounder and fruitier, so a sharp sparkling shows well: a Cava is ideal and inexpensive.

Spicy fillings, or served with chimichurri or aji: acidity and low alcohol. Chimichurri is essentially herbs, garlic and vinegar, and vinegar raises the bar the wine must clear.

The Spanish version

Galician empanada is a different thing — a large flat pie, usually tuna or cockles with peppers and onion, cut into squares. That is a seafood dish, and Albariño from the same region is the obvious and correct answer.

Whatever the version, avoid heavy oak: between pastry, cumin and often olives there is plenty going on, and oak adds weight rather than contrast.