What Wine to Serve at Christmas Dinner: From Salt Cod to Turkey, with Mexican Wines

The Nochebuena (Christmas Eve) dinner brings together on one table dishes that almost never meet the rest of the year: bacalao a la vizcaína, salt cod stewed with tomato and olives, romeritos (a leafy green) in mole with shrimp fritters, the roast pork leg that perfumes the house from mid-afternoon, the turkey, the apple salad. That is why the question of what wine to serve at Christmas dinner worries more than one host: no wine goes with everything. The practical solution is to serve two or three styles and let everyone pair their own plate, or to choose one flexible wine if you are only buying one bottle.

We go dish by dish, with the styles worth looking for among the wines of Mexico, how many bottles to buy and how to serve them. The underlying rules are those of our guide to pairing wine with Mexican food: the sweetness and heat of a dish harden the wine, salt and acidity soften it, and fat calls for freshness.

01What wine should you serve if you are only buying one bottle?

A dry rosé with body, or its sparkling version, a brut sparkling rosé. It is the most flexible bottle of the night: it has acidity for the oil of the salt cod and the fat of the pork leg, fruit for the sweetness of the mole and the stuffed turkey, almost no tannin to clash with the chile and, if it is sparkling, it also works for the midnight toast.

What to avoid, if there will be only one bottle, is the most powerful red in the shop. A lot of alcohol, a lot of oak and a lot of tannin shine next to a grilled cut but turn harsh beside the mole of the romeritos and heavy against the salt cod.

If meat rules your table, the alternative is a young red with ripe fruit and little oak, served cool. And if what you want is to welcome guests with bubbles, a white brut sparkling wine goes well with starters, the salt cod and snacks. Among the wineries of Querétaro there are houses devoted to them, like Cava 57, in San Juan del Río, and Finca Sala Vivé, which makes them in the Champagne style. What brut, extra brut or semi-dry mean is in our guide to Mexican sparkling wines.

02What wine goes with bacalao a la vizcaína?

Bacalao a la vizcaína is salty, fatty from the olive oil, acidic from the tomato and carries the touch of heat of güero chiles. The salt and acidity work in the wine's favor. The challenge is the oil and the chile. These work well:

• A dry rosé: the safest companion, with freshness for the oil and fruit for the tomato.
• A white with body, such as a Chenin Blanc, that will not get lost against the intensity of the stew.
• A light, cool red, such as a Grenache or a young Tempranillo, served at 54 to 57°F (12 to 14°C). The tomato and olives welcome it.
• A brut sparkling wine, especially if the salt cod is served in tortas (sandwiches) or as a starter.

Avoid very tannic reds with a lot of oak. With fish, tannin can leave a metallic or bitter aftertaste, and high alcohol sharpens the heat of the güeros. Among the profiles in our directory, Finca La Carrodilla, in Guadalupe Valley (Valle de Guadalupe), in Baja California, Mexico, makes a single-variety Chenin Blanc, and Las Nubes planted Grenache and Tempranillo among its first acres for commercial production, in 2009.

03What wine goes with romeritos?

Romeritos are a dish of contrasts: the quelite (wild green), green and slightly salty, the mole, with its sweetness and chile, the dried-shrimp fritters, fried and salty, and often potatoes and nopales (cactus paddles). The mole decides. Its sweetness and heat harden the wine, and next to them a very dry red, a tannic one or one high in alcohol turns harsh. Better:

• A red with ripe fruit and soft tannins: a Grenache, a young Merlot or a Tempranillo with little oak.
• A rosé with body, the safest bet if the mole really has heat.
• A brut sparkling wine for the fritters, if you serve them separately as a snack: the bubbles cleanse the frying and the salt.

If your family prefers friendly reds, in our guide to soft and sweet red wines we explain which grapes have little tannin and how to tell a soft wine from a sweet one, which are not the same thing.

04What wine goes with the pork leg, the loin or the turkey?

Roast pork leg or loin

The marinated or larded pork leg is the most red-wine dish of the night: fat, oven, spices and often a marinade of dried chiles. It calls for a medium-bodied red with fruit and friendly tannins, such as a Tempranillo, a Merlot or a Syrah. If the marinade has heat, lower the alcohol and raise the fruit. A loin stuffed with prune or bathed in fruit sauce welcomes a fruity red that matches the sweetness without turning bitter.

Turkey

Turkey is a lean, discreet meat, so the stuffing and the sauce choose the wine. With a stuffing of ground meat and dried fruits and a sauce made from its juices, a light or medium-bodied red works, or a white with body and some oak. With sweet sauces of prune, apple or cranberry, look for fruit: a young red or a rosé.

For the pork leg, look to the wineries of Coahuila. There, Casa Madero, which has made wine in Parras since 1597, works with Shiraz, the name many labels use for Syrah, and according to the house two of its Shiraz wines have won international medals. A red like that, with dark fruit and spice, talks well with the marinade and the oven.

05What wine goes with the apple salad and the desserts?

The apple salad with cream and walnut, the Christmas Eve salad with beet and orange, and the desserts change the rules: the sweetness of the dish makes a dry wine seem sour. Here the rule is strict, and the wine must be at least as sweet as the dessert.

• Sweet salads: a semi-dry sparkling wine or a white with a touch of sugar.
• Buñuelos (fried fritters) with piloncillo syrup, sweet potato candy or nougat: a late-harvest wine or a sweet Muscat.
• Desserts of chocolate, nuts or dried fruit: a Port-style red.
• Ponche (hot fruit punch): better with no wine beside it. It is sweet and aromatic, served hot, and it beats any glass. Serve it in its moment and leave the wine for the table.

There are Mexican options for each case, according to the profiles in our directory. L.A. Cetto makes a Passito, a sweet wine from Muscat grapes. Bodegas de Santo Tomás has its late-harvest Tardos line. Vinícola San Patricio, in Tequisquiapan, includes in its Santiago Apóstol line a Blanco Amable and a Tinto Tipo Oporto, and Bodegas Ferriño, in Cuatro Ciénegas, makes Muscat- and sherry-style wines.

06And if your family's Christmas dinner is something else?

Not every family eats salt cod and romeritos. For other December classics, the same rules give these pairings:

• Red pozole: a light red or a rosé, served cool. With white or green pozole, a white with lively acidity.
• Tamales: those with salsa verde, with a fresh white. Those with rajas (roasted chile strips) or mole, with a rosé, and sweet ones, with a semi-dry sparkling wine.
• Baked fish or fish a la talla (marinated and grilled): a rosé or a white with body. If the marinade is guajillo chile, a light red as well.
• Charcoal-grilled cuts: here a red with structure fits, such as a Cabernet Sauvignon or a Syrah, as long as the sauce is not too hot.
• A meatless dinner, with cheeses, mushrooms and squash: a white with body or a light red with little tannin.

And if the dinner is leftovers and antojitos (snacks), the dry rosé is once again the easiest answer: fresh and fruity, with no tannin to fight the salsa.

07How many bottles should you buy for Christmas dinner?

A 750 ml bottle gives five 150 ml glasses (about 5 oz each). With that, the math is simple: estimate how many glasses each adult who drinks will have, multiply by the number of guests and divide by five. For a long dinner, with toasts and lingering at the table, two or three glasses per person is a reasonable estimate. Round up and buy one bottle extra.

• Example for ten adults, at three glasses each: 30 glasses, that is, six bottles.
• One possible split: two sparkling wines to welcome and toast, two whites or rosés for the salt cod and two reds for the pork leg or the turkey.
• If there is dessert, add one bottle of sweet wine. It goes further, because it is served in small glasses.
• Keep water on hand all night and agree beforehand who drives home.

If you also need to bring a bottle for the hosts or for someone in the family, in the guide to Mexican wines to give as gifts you will find ideas depending on who receives it.

08In what order and at what temperature are the wines served?

The order follows the menu, from light to intense and from dry to sweet:

1. To welcome and toast: the sparkling wine, at 43 to 46°F (6 to 8°C).
2. With the starters and the salt cod: whites and rosés, at 46 to 54°F (8 to 12°C).
3. With the pork leg or the turkey: the reds, at 54 to 57°F (12 to 14°C) for young ones and 59 to 64°F (15 to 18°C) for aged ones.
4. With dessert: sweet white wines, at about 46°F (8°C), and fortified wines, such as a Port-style red, at about 52°F (11°C), according to the recommendations of Spain's Organización de Consumidores y Usuarios (consumer organization).

In December the house warms up from the oven and from the people. Keep the reds away from the kitchen and, if they warmed up, give them a few minutes in a bucket of ice water. Open the sparkling wines at the last moment and return them to the cold between glasses. If you want to understand why a few degrees change so much of what you taste, our tasting guide has the full explanation, with a table by style.

09And for the New Year's toast?

December 31 calls for bubbles. A brut sparkling wine goes with the midnight grapes (eaten at New Year), the snacks and the next day's leftovers, and if someone prefers something sweeter for dessert, a semi-dry one does both jobs. If you want to show off with a bottle that has something to tell, go over the most awarded Mexican wines of 2026, with their scores and medals.

The dishes of the dinner, one by one and with their serving temperature and glass, are in our pairing guide (in Spanish): the bacalao a la vizcaína (in Spanish), the romeritos (in Spanish), the marinated pork leg (in Spanish) and the stuffed turkey (in Spanish).

Before you go to the shop, write down the menu and, next to each dish, the style it gets: sparkling, white or rosé, red or sweet. With that list in hand, buy one bottle of each dry style for every five people who drink, plus one sweet wine if there is dessert. Put the whites and sparkling wines in the refrigerator from the morning of the 24th and leave the reds in the coolest corner of the house.