White wine

White wine used as a cooking ingredient means a dry, unoaked or lightly oaked table wine — the crisp, high-acid kind — rather than any single grape or vintage. In the kitchen it is prized less for its own drinking pleasure than for what its acidity and fruit do to a dish: it deglazes a hot pan, lifts and brightens cream and butter sauces, braises fish and chicken, cooks down into risotto and mussels, and forms the acidic backbone of a beurre blanc. As it simmers most of the alcohol boils away, leaving behind a clean, fruity tartness and a whisper of green apple, citrus and white flowers.