Which wine with a seafood platter? The question comes back every year at the end of August, when the evenings grow cooler and the first platters reappear on tables. September opens oyster season, and with it a pairing thought to be settled in advance — muscadet or chablis — when it deserves to be reconsidered.

A Chardonnay from southern Burgundy, and particularly a premier cru from Pouilly-Fuissé, offers a different reading on a platter: less incisive, deeper, and often more memorable.

A platter is not a dish, it is a succession

That is what makes the exercise delicate. A cupped oyster, a whelk with mayonnaise, a pink prawn and a clam do not call for the same wine. The oyster brings iodine and a frank salinity; the whelk, a firm flesh and a rich accompaniment; the prawn, an almost sugary sweetness.

A very acidic wine settles the case of the oyster but fails on all the rest. One must therefore seek a white capable of holding the salinity and of accompanying the richness — a balance that the ripeness of the grapes from our limestone slopes allows us to achieve.

The premier cru, a choice of depth

Our Pouilly-Fuissé 1er Cru « Vers Cras » 2022 is the wine we gladly open with a platter. The climat yields a saline, mineral wine whose finish prolongs the iodine of the shellfish rather than cutting it short. A few years in bottle have given it a texture that answers the richness of mayonnaise and butter.

These wines for keeping deserve to be followed over time: our cellaring benchmarks appear in our article devoted to the conservation of white wine.

On a platter, the wine should not cleanse the palate: it should prolong the sea.

Oysters: breaking with a habit

The oyster is the shellfish that divides most. Tradition calls for a very dry, very lively white. It has its reasons — acidity supports the iodine — but it also produces somewhat brutal pairings, where wine and oyster neutralise one another.

A saline Chardonnay, without marked oak, offers something else: a meeting rather than a confrontation. Try, within a single tasting, an oyster with a very acidic white and then with a premier cru; the difference in length is striking. This is the exercise we often propose during our attentive tastings.

The accompaniments matter as much as the shellfish

  • Lemon: reinforces the acidity, allows for a rounder wine.
  • Shallot vinegar: hardens all whites, to be used with restraint.
  • Mayonnaise: brings richness, calls for more freshness.
  • Buttered rye bread: rounds out the whole and eases the pairing.

From summer to autumn: the transition

This platter marks a shift in the year. Meals leave the garden, cooking grows longer, and the wines once opened ice-cold on mussels or a barbecue regain a few degrees. Serve your wines for keeping at around twelve degrees rather than eight: it is at this temperature that a premier cru delivers its substance.

The progression is the same as that of the shellfish seasons, described in our guide to pairings with fish and shellfish and in our pairings between Pouilly-Fuissé and fish.

Composing a platter that leaves room for the wine

An overloaded platter does the wine a disservice. Each additional shellfish adds a flavour, and beyond five or six elements the palate distinguishes nothing more: everything becomes iodine, salt, indistinct. The wine, for its part, no longer has anything precise to accompany.

We advise paring things down: a few oysters, some pink prawns, one or two shellfish of character, and that is all. The generosity of a platter is not measured by the number of species, but by the quality of each and by the time one takes to eat them.

If you are entertaining broadly, split the service instead: a first, simple platter with the aperitif, a second, more complete one at the table. Our advice for a dinner-party aperitif applies to the first, and the premier cru is kept for the second.

Should a white for keeping be decanted?

The question is debated, and the answer is more nuanced than one might think. A Pouilly-Fuissé premier cru of a few years often benefits from being opened twenty to thirty minutes before serving: its aromas unfold, the substance relaxes, the finish lengthens.

The decanter, on the other hand, must be handled with caution on a white. It accelerates oxygenation and can, in a few minutes, cause the loss of the tension that gives the wine all its interest with shellfish. Our practice is simple: open the bottle in advance, let it breathe in the glass, and decant only if the wine seems closed after a first glass.

These fine adjustments are exactly those we address in our article on the attentive tasting of a Pouilly-Fuissé.

Which wine to choose for a seafood platter?

Choose a dry, saline white without dominant oak, with enough substance to accompany the rich accompaniments: a Pouilly-Fuissé premier cru meets these conditions better than one imagines. Serve it at around twelve degrees, and open the bottle a few minutes before sitting down to eat. If your platter is modest and made up mainly of prawns and whelks, a Saint-Véran is sufficient and leaves the pleasure intact.