What Wine Goes With Vietnamese Food?

A dry Riesling or Grüner Veltliner. Aromatic, high in acid, low in alcohol — and lighter than you would pick for Thai or Chinese.

Vietnamese cooking uses less oil and less sugar than most of its neighbours, and far more raw herbs — mint, coriander, Thai basil, perilla — usually arriving in a pile beside the dish. Fish sauce provides the salt and the umami, lime provides the sharpness, and chilli is generally added by the eater rather than the cook. The result is fresh and delicate, and it is easily overwhelmed.

Delicacy is the constraint

Unlike Thai or Korean food, the difficulty here is rarely heat. It is weight. A pho broth, a plate of summer rolls or a bowl of bun cha are all light, aromatic dishes, and a wine with real body or oak flattens them.

Two things do need answering. Fish sauce is intensely savoury — dense with glutamates, which sharpen tannin — so red is difficult across the cuisine. And lime raises the acidity bar, so a soft wine tastes flabby.

That leaves a clear specification: aromatic, high in acidity, low in alcohol, unoaked, and light.

What to actually open

Dry Riesling. German Trocken or Alsace. Aromatic without being herbaceous, which matters given the pile of raw herbs — a grassy wine doubles the green rather than balancing it.

Grüner Veltliner. Its white-pepper snap suits the herbs and the raw vegetables, and it is one of the few whites that handles a lot of fresh coriander.

A dry rosé or Cava for fried things — spring rolls, banh xeo — where carbonation earns its place.

By dish

Pho is the most delicate thing on most menus and has its own page: a dry Riesling, or a very light Pinot Noir served cool with pho bo.

Bun cha and grilled pork dishes bring char and a sweet-sour dipping sauce, which is the one place an off-dry wine and even a chilled light red both work well.

Banh mi — pâté, cold cuts, pickled carrot and daikon, coriander, chilli — is essentially a sandwich of sharp and rich together. A Crémant handles it better than anything still.

And caramel-braised dishes such as thit kho, cooked in a dark palm-sugar caramel, are the exception that is genuinely sweet: an off-dry Riesling rather than a dry one.