What Wine Goes With Rabbit?

A light Pinot Noir or Gamay; a Chenin Blanc if there is mustard. The sauce matters more than the animal.

Rabbit is often filed under game and behaves nothing like it. The meat is pale, very lean and mild — closer to a good free-range chicken than to venison — and because it is so lean it is almost always braised or cooked with fat, mustard, cream or bacon. Whatever it is cooked with is louder than the rabbit.

Lean and mild, so keep it light

Two consequences follow from the leanness. Tannin needs fat and protein to bind to, and rabbit supplies very little fat, so a firm red tastes drying. And the meat is delicate enough that a powerful wine erases it entirely.

What works is a wine with good acidity, low to moderate tannin, and some savoury character — and it can as easily be white as red, which is unusual for something that arrives looking like a meat dish.

By preparation

Lapin à la moutarde — braised with mustard and cream — is the classic, and the classic answer is white: a dry Chenin Blanc from the Loire, or a Vouvray sec. The acidity cuts the cream and the mustard’s pungency needs no tannin to fight it.

Braised in red wine, with bacon and mushrooms — essentially coq au vin with rabbit — takes a light Pinot Noir or a Beaujolais cru, for the same reasons.

Roasted or grilled plainly, or with herbs, it is the mildest of all: a Vermentino or a light Sangiovese, depending on which way the herbs lean.

The Italian and Spanish versions

Coniglio alla cacciatora — rabbit with tomato, olives and rosemary — is a tomato dish first, so the usual rules apply: high acidity, moderate tannin, Sangiovese or Montepulciano.

Rabbit in a paella is the traditional Valencian version of that dish, and the pairing follows the rice rather than the meat.

What to avoid throughout: heavy oak and firm tannin. There is nothing in rabbit rich enough to need either, and both will bury it.