What Wine to Drink with Stephen King

Pairing wine with horror sounds like a joke until you notice that the two trades work the same way. A scary story is a slow build of pressure toward release; so is a structured red. Here is how we pair Stephen King — novel by novel, dread by dread.

The Shining — Nebbiolo, and do not rush it

The Overlook does its work slowly: weeks of isolation before the axe. Nebbiolo — Barolo or Barbaresco — is the same wine. It closes up behind a wall of tannin and only opens after long air, and what it reveals underneath is beautiful and faintly alarming: tar, dried rose, old wood. A wine that turns on you beautifully is the novel in a glass.

'Salem's Lot — an inky Malbec

A vampire story set in small-town Maine wants the darkest pour on the list. Cahors or Argentine Malbec: nearly opaque, dense with black fruit, and grown in high, thin air — a wine from a place where the sun feels farther away. Drink it with the lights on anyway.

Misery — a high-acid white that will not let up

Annie Wilkes is a captor who never stops talking, and Paul Sheldon never stops suffering. Pair it with a searing, saline Assyrtiko from Santorini: electric acidity that grips the palate and simply does not release. Refreshing in a wine, terrifying in a plot.

The Green Mile — a generous old-vine Grenache

King's most tender novel needs a wine with warmth to spare. Old-vine Grenache — from Châteauneuf-du-Pape or Australia's Barossa — carries sun and sweetness of fruit, and its age shows up as silkiness rather than decay. It is a wine about kindness lasting longer than expected, which is the whole point of John Coffey.

Pet Sematary — a deliberately unsettling natural wine

Sometimes a pairing should argue with you. A lightly funky Jura Savagnin or a Pét-Nat — wines that smell faintly of earth and something you cannot name — make beautiful sense with a novel about ground that gives back what it takes, changed.

It — a blend with something living underneath

Derry's horror hides in the sewers beneath an ordinary town. So: a Bordeaux-style blend whose components are pleasant on the surface but reveal something darker on the finish — a savory, almost meaty note you cannot quite place. Well-made Left Bank claret does exactly this.

Type your King novel — or any book, quote, or mood — into the pairing tool and we will pour you a style plus three bottles, one at every budget.