French Onion Soup

Slowly caramelised onions in a rich beef stock, topped with a croûton and melted Gruyère; the dish is simultaneously sweet from the onions, deeply savoury and umami from the stock, and rich from the cheese. The Gruyère adds a nutty, slightly salty dairy fat layer that the wine must cut through. The caramelised onion sweetness is the most distinctive challenge: it rewards wines with enough fruit to mirror the sweetness without fighting the savoury depth of the stock. This is one of the clearest cases in the calculator where the regional answer and the analytical answer are identical.