Which wine goes with oysters and scallops?

With oysters goes a dry white wine with high acidity and no oak ageing, such as Muscadet Sèvre et Maine sur lie, Chablis, Picpoul de Pinet or a brut champagne.

You eat an oyster raw. What reaches your mouth is salty, briny and very light in structure. A wine with firm acidity and a dry finish holds its own against that, without overpowering the salt.

The appellations mentioned prescribe that character. According to the cahier des charges, Chablis may come exclusively from Chardonnay, with at least 10 percent natural alcohol, and 10.5 percent for premier cru. Muscadet Sèvre et Maine comes exclusively from the melon B grape; the term sur lie means that after fermentation the wine remains on its fine lees and is bottled in the estate's own cellar, between 1 March and 30 November of the year after the harvest. The glucose and fructose content must not exceed 3 grams per litre. Picpoul de Pinet is reserved for still white wine made exclusively from piquepoul blanc, with at least 12 percent natural alcohol and likewise a maximum of 3 grams of fermentable sugar per litre.

If you are looking for something outside France, try Sauvignon Blanc or a Chardonnay that has not been aged in oak. On the shelf in Bathmen there are 69 white wines with the crisp and dry flavour profile, from 52 brands and 11 countries, with alcohol percentages from 11 to 14.

With scallops, choose a white wine with more body than with oysters, for example a riper Chardonnay that has had light oak ageing.

A scallop is sweeter and creamier by itself and is usually pan-fried, with butter, sometimes with a sauce or a crust. That shifts the preparation towards more fat and more roundness in the dish, and then the wine may shift along with it.

Chardonnay is the most widely used grape for this, and in Bathmen also the most common white grape on the shelf: 65 bottles. A Chablis still works with a scallop that is only briefly seared. If butter, cream or gratinated cheese is added, a Chardonnay with some oak ageing holds up better.

If in doubt, let the preparation be your guide: raw or only briefly cooked calls for the leaner side of the shelf, pan-fried and with sauce the rounder side.

An oyster is raw, salty and iodine-like, a scallop is sweeter and creamier and is often fried in butter, and those two starting points call for a different style of wine.

Oysters are rich in salt and in umami. In an experiment with equally intense aqueous solutions, sweet, salty, sour and bitter all turned out to suppress the perception of umami, while umami itself did not change the perception of salt and sourness. That is the core of the classic combination: the acidity in the wine tempers the briny, umami-like side of the oyster, and the oyster leaves the wine's acidity intact.

With a scallop it works differently. The butter and the creamy texture call for a wine with a little more body, otherwise the wine disappears next to the dish. That is why the advice here shifts towards more body and sometimes a light touch of oak.

Red wine often leaves an unpleasant, metallic and fishy aftertaste with fish and shellfish, and the verifiable explanation for this is the iron content of the wine.

Red wine contains more ferrous ions, so iron, than white wine. Wine with a higher iron content can promote the oxidation of the unsaturated fatty acids in fish and seafood, producing an unpleasant smell that you get back through the throat. This was established in controlled research and published in 2009.

In the same trade literature, tannin is linked to bitterness and to the astringent feeling in the mouth, not to this aftertaste. That tannic red wine works badly with oysters and scallops, you will notice at the table; according to the available source, the cause lies with the iron and not with the tannin.

If you still want red with a fish dish, stick to a light, low-tannin wine, and not with an oyster. With oysters, white or sparkling remains the safer choice.

A brut champagne or a blanc de blancs goes well with oysters, because those combine little residual sugar with high acidity and a fine mousse.

The designations for the sugar content of sparkling wine are fixed at European level. Brut nature is less than 3 grams per litre, extra brut 0 to 6 grams, brut less than 12 grams, extra dry 12 to 17 grams, sec 17 to 32 grams, demi-sec 32 to 50 grams and doux more than 50 grams. For oysters, stay on the dry side of that ladder: brut or drier.

Blanc de blancs stands for a champagne made only from white grapes; the cahier des charges of the Champagne appellation describes it that way. Of the permitted main grape varieties, Chardonnay is the one used for this in practice. The same rules stipulate that a champagne may only be disgorged after twelve months in the bottle and sold after fifteen months; for a vintage champagne that is thirty-six months.

Champagne and other sparkling wine together make up 128 bottles in Bathmen, from 57 brands and 9 countries.

November falls within the months with an r, the period regarded in the trade as the oyster season.

The background is reproduction. Oysters reproduce in the summer months, and an oyster in that phase is less pleasant to eat. Triploid creuses can also be sold in summer, and for those oysters the production process shortens from three to two years, so supply continues all year round.

In the Netherlands there are two kinds. The flat oyster, Ostrea edulis, occurs naturally in Dutch waters and is mainly farmed in the Grevelingenmeer. The Japanese oyster, Crassostrea gigas, also known as the Zeeuwse creuse, is mainly farmed in the Kom van de Oosterschelde. Oysters on bottom plots are at least three years old before they reach market size.

For wine, the season changes nothing about the advice: high acidity, dry and no oak.