Can You Drink Cooking Wine?

Wine can be an intimidating subject for many people. From choosing a bottle to pairing it with your entrée, there's no shortage of ways to make a misstep with wine. Cooking with wine, however, can be particularly confusing. It can be especially difficult to choose which wine to cook with in general, even more so when trying to figure out the wine that will best complement the ingredients in a specific dish. While all wine could be cooking wine, cooking wine is not exactly the wine you'd want to drink — though it is certainly safe to consume.

Cooking wine is safe to drink, but it has additional additives and preservatives that alter its flavor to be more salty. It's also made from low-quality grapes, which means it doesn't have the best flavor to begin with. While this is fine for some dishes in which the wine cooks down or doesn't have a strong presence in the dish, it's certainly not best enjoyed in a glass. Many people choose to use regular wine when cooking because it has a more enjoyable flavor and more complex notes that typically work well in a dish.

Because cooking wine is made with extra preservatives, it stays good for a lot longer than most wines. An unopened bottle of cooking wine can be stored for up to five years while an opened one will be fine for up to a year. Cooking wine contains alcohol, which typically cooks off, like drinking wine. But instead of primarily using it to drink and enjoy, this variety of wine is used as an acid to break down the dish you're cooking — like cooking with distilled white vinegar.

If this sounds familiar, it's likely because it's so similar to different kinds of vinegar you might keep in the kitchen. And because the two are so similar, cooking wine is often sold alongside vinegar. It might be helpful to think of cooking wine as vinegar — which you likely wouldn't consider drinking either. Whether you choose cooking wine or a regular bottle you would otherwise drink, just be sure to avoid these mistakes when cooking with wine.