Poached egg dishes

Poached egg dishes

Assuming a poached egg over greens, toast or hash, with a buttery dressing or hollandaise.

Egg carries its own sulphur, and a wine that carries a struck match or flinty character of its own stacks on top of it: two faint smells that are fine apart and unpleasant together. That rules out a whole fashionable category in one stroke. Past that the yolk and the butter want acidity to cut them and a little texture to meet them.

Pairs Perfectly. Dry Riesling from Alsace, France. Alsace Riesling is high in acid and mineral rather than reductive, so it cuts the yolk and the butter cleanly without adding any smoky note of its own. Lime and white peach over wet stone, with just enough weight to sit alongside a soft egg rather than under it.

Pairs Well. English sparkling, Sussex. Bubbles physically disperse the sulphur in egg, which is why sparkling wine flatters a breakfast plate. Chalk, green apple and a biscuity lees note from the same soil that runs under Champagne.

Pairs Well. Godello, Valdeorras, Spain. Stone fruit with a faint cream through the middle on a slate line. The creaminess mirrors the yolk and the acid handles the butter.

Worth Seeking Out

Hárslevelű from Tokaj, Hungary. Grown alongside the more famous Furmint and usually blended into it, and quietly excellent on its own. Pear and honey with a ginger lift and high acidity, and the honeyed texture is a gift to a soft yolk.

Avoid

Heavily reductive or flinty wines, and anything oaked. The smoky struck match character compounds with the sulphur in the egg, and oak flattens a delicate plate.

Failing That

A Pinot Blanc from Alsace, France.

If All Else Fails

Vermentino, Sardinia.

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