How to pair wine with insects (yes, insects)

Insect wine pairing: is this set to be a trend in 2022?

What drink goes best with the grasshoppers, crickets or giant water bugs you plan to consume on New Year’s Eve? Don’t panic, we have some suggestions for what to imbibe with these edible insects.

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Insects rank high on New Year’s Eve menus this year

Tempted by grasshopper tacos or a nice mealworm risotto for the new year? You wouldn’t be off-trend for this New Year’s Eve. Especially since, according to a 2017 UN report (The future of food and agriculture: Alternative pathways to 2050) insects are a viable solution for helping us reduce our meat consumption while maintaining protein intake. This year, the FAO followed up with a report “Looking at edible insects from a food safety perspective.” A boon for every one of us, as well as the other people who will populate the planet to the tune of 9 billion by 2050. According to fans, they are delicious. It would therefore be wrong to deprive ourselves of them.

How to pair wine with insects

To accompany your choice, the Food & Wine website took it upon themselves at the time to look into the matter and asked Aly Moore, a graduate in Public Health from Yale, for her opinion. According to the specialist, “wine pairing allows for a brazen display of insects in their full form, and it allows for us to treat them as a delicacy.” We agree.

So take care in choosing your accompaniment. For a weaver ant, with a tangy taste, opt for a white chenin, with floral and fruity notes. For grasshopper, with a taste closer to meat, look to a cabernet sauvignon. For mealworms, with an earthy, nutty taste, a lighter, fruitier red, such as grenache, will bring out the flavors. According to Aly Moore, cricket has a nuanced flavor that can be tricky to detect. A semi-dry white wine is preferable to a dry white wine, which would tend to make the cricket taste drier than it is. Finally, for the crustacean taste of scorpions or giant water bugs, she goes for a sauvignon blanc. Our mouth is watering.

This article is published via AFP Relaxnews.