The first time I went to a New Orleans boil, I was 16. I do not know why anyone's parents let three adolescent girls travel to visit an older sisters at Tulane, but they did. We went to The Boot. We went to Upperline.We went to Felix. We went to Café du Monde. I saw boobs on Bourbon Street. It was glorious. We also went to a sorority crawfish boil. A 16-year-old girl from Ohio calls crawfish "crawdads" (sorry, sorry, sorry) and deeply understands the merits of corn on the cob and potatoes. The rest was a magical lesson in spice and cracking etiquette. To this day, if there's a boil, I'm there. Even better, now I have a husband who peels everything for me (invite us! he'll peel for you too) while I pour the wine.
At that first sorority boil, there was no wine, let me tell you, but there was a lot of cold beer (truthfully, the best boil pairing that exists), and though we do sell beer at the shop now, we are here to send you off with all the crisp, cooling wine for that spicy after burn. Come down and collect your boil wine. —LP
Patois "Readymade" Perry, Crozet, Virginia
Let me get this out of the way. When the bugs are spread over the Clarion Ledger in my backyard, there’s always a large cooler full of cheap, ice-cold beer on hand. No IPAs, no strawberry lagers, no pastry stouts. Cold, cheap, and canned is the order of the day when the first batch is up. In truth, it’s really more of a ritual that serves to cool the palate as I tend to prefer my crawfish hot enough to swell the tonsils. (Reminder, dear reader, we do sell beer at Patron Saint. Birra Castello “Dolomiti” Pilsner is crisp and fresh and would pair remarkably well with your next pot of crawfish.)
However, if you were inclined to elevate your experience, I’d reach for cider. With effervescent fruit and a clean finish, Patois’ "Readymade" perry is the perfect pairing to cut the spice and brighten the fat from that Conecuh sausage (unpaid advertisement).
Patrick Collins and Danielle LeCompte have been foraging wild/abandoned orchards in and around Crozet, VA since 2019. Their focus is highlighting the diversity of the fruit available to them while harnessing minimal intervention, ethical agriculture, and expression of terroir.
“Readymade” is a blend of seedling pears from two separate “orchards” in Rapidan and Albemarle County from clay and granite soil. After wild fermentation, juice is pressed into multiple vessels before blending to finish fermentation in bottle.
We carry multiple cuvée from the fine folks at Patois, so grab a few bottles and enjoy around a table of our favorite native crustacean. Feel free to extend an invite. I’m off most Sundays. I’ll bring beer. —Drew Clowney
Teutonic "Boil Sauce" Willamette, OR 2023
It's a wonderful time of year when small talk with perfect strangers touches on who has the best crawfish around town, the price per pound, one's favorite fixins.
My favorite fixin was totally new to me this year. My husband’s birthday often falls right after Mardi Gras, and we like to have a boil in the front yard to purge all our carnival sins with all that spicy goodness. When our friend Emily came through with packets of ramen, I was skeptical, but let me tell you, those noodles, when dumped on the table alongside the bugs, was a revelation. It gave us the starch we needed to sober up and cure what was ailing.
The next best fixin is a drink. While Modelo is my favorite pairing for a boil, sometimes I need another flavor. Enter: Teutonic "Boil Sauce." A touch on the nose, this wine is designed with boil seasoning, in mind. Winemakers Olga and Barnaby Tuttle are boil enthusiasts and host communal crab boil in the parking lot of their winery. Inspired by German and Alsatian wines, they are not afraid of juicy aromatics and off-dry styles, with zingy acid perfect for calming boil spices.
The Tuttles began their winery in 2005 with a philosophy summed up on their label: "Old & Cold, High & Dry, Wood & Wild- Old vine and cold climate, High elevation and Dry farmed, Neutral oak and Wild fermentation." Also, entirely Oregonian.
Boil Sauce is 50% pinot noir and 50% gerwürztraminer. It appears white with the tiniest hint of pink, with a lovely red apple nose, melon notes, and rich texture, meant to stand up to the muscle of a boil. —Allison Whittinghill
Früg "Orange" Burgenland, Austria 2024
No smell in New Orleans makes me stop in my tracks like a boil. I can grab it out of the air a mile away. The spice, the citrus. As soon as it jets into my sinuses, my Pavlovian
drool starts, and I must be satisfied. Whether I’m joining friends in a backyard or grabbing a sack from Clesi’s, I can’t find peace until I get that first tail. When fortunate enough to be invited to a home boil, it is imperative that you bring an
offering. Preferably a beverage that can be passed around to put out the salty fire on your tongue.
Cue a cold juicy liter of Austrian Kool-Aid, better known as Früg (froog). A collaboration between importer Jenny & François and Austrian winemakers Josef and Pia Wurzinger, this wine was made to party. Their grünerveltliner and roter traminer grow in the sandy clay, gravel, and chalk soils of Tadten, a small town in Burgenland known for sunflowers and sunsets. After fermenting in steel for eight days on the grape skins, the free-run juice goes through malolactic fermentation and rests for four months on its spent yeasts.
Drippy peach, earthy apricot and a hint of rose + wild flowers flood the palate. The skin contact keeps the fruit grounded while the minerality keeps the party going. There’s
a reason why they named it after one of the '60s hip shaking dance crazes. Throw a couple bottles in an ice-packed cooler as soon as you arrive to the boil. Thirst will be quenched, you’ll be a hero. Another hot tip for those new to the boil game; bring a bag of frozen dumplings or a few packs of ramen to toss in that perfectly seasoned water. It's a pro move that will clinch your next boil invite. —Beth Altenbernd
Arnot Roberts "Rosé" Lake County, CA 2023
The perfect season has hit: sunshine warmth, breezy days, cooler nights. For me, growing up in Michigan, this meant racing down the docks to the pontoon boat with my siblings to see how many crawfish we could scoop up before the boat was loaded. Here, in New Orleans, it's big boil pots, backyards, courtyards, and, if you’re lucky, rosé.
Arnot-Roberts is the dream winery of two childhood friends Nathan Roberts and Duncan Meyers. They grew up in Napa as the region evolved into the wine hub we know today. In 2001, they made their first barrel of wine, a field blend from Dry Creek Valley, which grew into many barrels filled with a wonderful diversity of wines. Sourcing from all over northern California, they seek out epic vineyard sites and myriad varietals, crafting precise expressions of both. The rosé you have today is a blend of mostly touriga nacional with a little trincadeira, grenache, and tinta cao. This Portuguese grape-heavy cepage is lush with fresh strawberry and tart lemon, finishing with a savory bay leaf note.
I have to be honest with y’all. I don’t eat seafood, I let those crawfish go up north, but I stand by this wine as a boil companion, especially the potatoes and corn part, sturdy enough to handle the starch and tussle with spice, just like a good sibling or friend. —Cassandra Vachon
Domaine Sauveterre "Montbled" Burgundy, France 2020
Would one realistically pair Burgundy with crawfish? When one is me, quite so. Especially this idiosyncratic Maconnaise moment whose natural funk and acid is a happy friend to the mouth burn of an afternoon boil.
To peel crawfish is to meditate: The intricacy of a body dissembled, concentration mingled with extroversion, the rhythm of cracking, crunching, sucking, digging. OnJerome Guichard's wines are a meditation in chardonnay, a worthy match to the spiritual ritual of removing flesh from shell. Working two and a half hectares of ancient vines bequeathed to him by his former boss Guy Blanchard, Guichard's