The scariest wines for Halloween

Halloween is approaching, and it’s time to step into the dreary November weather with a glass of wine.

Spooky food with wine

In just a few minutes, something terrible can be called from the pantry. There is no limit to your imagination in the preparation or naming of your designs. Already at snack time, you can teach your guests to be fearful with a delicious wine spritzer peppered with lychee eyeballs and puff pastry fingers.

Scraps of a self-carved pumpkin face can be used in a starter soup. A strong Gewürztraminer from Alsace goes well with this. An aromatic Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand is a good choice for the exotic variant with coconut milk and ginger because of its mature tropical flavor.

For the main course, we recommend an uncomplicated, fruity red wine without aging, such as a Gamaret from Geneva or a Gamay from Valais. These wines are quite light and not very hearty. They still leave room for a succulent Halloween cake for dessert.

bloodthirsty screams

If you’re open to an afterlife taste experience, you can enjoy a wine with a subtle meaty-bloody flavor that doesn’t have to be a bad thing! Some blue grape varieties naturally have this aroma. These types of wines are well suited as dinner companions as they absorb and complement the flavor profile of the food.

For example, wines made from the Mencía grape often have notes of undercooked steak. There are also floral and mineral notes. Typical representatives of these wines come from Bierzo in the north-west of Spain. Wines made from the Croatian grape variety Teran also have a bloody character. Their color is also often described as blood red.

Brettanomyces yeast strain (Brett for short) can also produce fresh meat or leather flavors in wine. This happens during cellar winemaking and is mainly a problem with red wine due to higher fermentation and storage temperatures. In small concentrations, Brett enriches because it supports complexity. But above a certain amount this harmful yeast is clearly classified as a wine defect.

Using blood to clarify wine sounds like an anecdote from the horror closet. For a long time it was common practice to use blood or proteins derived from it to remove turbidity. In Europe and the USA this method was only banned in the late 1990s as a result of the BSE (mad cow disease) crisis.

Creepy Stickers

Not only the contents of the bottle, but also the things that stick to it can decoratively enhance your Halloween celebration. Provocative, eye-catching designs are very common on wine racks today. To suit the occasion, you can get a skull-labeled bottle, for example, from the winemaker duo Karel and Pablo. The Demuerte collection carries the promising slogan “worth dying for”.

Alternatively, you can serve a wine from Australian producer 19 Crimes. Each of their wines is dedicated to an English villain who became a criminal and was exiled to Australia in the 18th century. The 19 Crimes app lets you listen to the story of the bandits and get into a spooky mood.

If you don’t have time to hop in the shop or tour the Frankenstein winery in Offenburg (D), Baden, you can unleash your creativity and design your own label. There are countless templates for this on the internet.