Best Pizza and Drink Pairings Loved by Experts in 2025

These pizza and drink pairings represent the combinations that experts — sommeliers, craft brewers, and experienced pizza professionals — recommend most enthusiastically in 2025. Each pairing works for specific, articulable reasons, and each elevates both the pizza and the beverage beyond what either achieves alone.

1. Margherita + Barbera d'Asti

Italy's classic pairing: the Barbera grape produces wine with very high natural acidity and ripe cherry fruit that bridges perfectly with San Marzano tomato sauce. The wine's low tannin prevents bitterness conflict with the pizza's tomato acidity, while its fruit complements fresh mozzarella's mild dairy character. Barbera d'Asti DOCG is consistently the recommended Italian wine for any tomato-based pizza among Italian sommeliers and pizza scholars.

2. Neapolitan Margherita + Falanghina

A white wine alternative from Campania — the same region that produced Neapolitan pizza. Falanghina's bright acidity, citrus notes, and mineral character complement Neapolitan pizza's tomato freshness without competing. The regional specificity here is not marketing: these foods genuinely evolved alongside each other in the same soil and culinary culture. Available increasingly at Italian-focused restaurants and wine shops.

3. Spicy Meat Pizza + Lambrusco

Lambrusco — lightly sparkling, slightly sweet red wine from Emilia-Romagna — is one of pizza's most underrated pairings. Its gentle sweetness moderates spice; its carbonation refreshes the fat-coated palate; its red fruit character complements meat richness. The combination has been popular in Italy for decades and is gaining recognition internationally as Lambrusco quality has improved dramatically in recent years. Seek Lambrusco Grasparossa di Castelvetro for the most wine-serious expression.

4. White Truffle Pizza + Barolo

When price is not a constraint, Barolo's powerful tannin, high acidity, and signature tar-and-rose character harmonize with truffle's intense earthiness in ways that no other wine replicates. Both truffle and Barolo emerge from the Piedmont region of northern Italy — their co-evolution creates genuine affinity. This pairing appears at upscale pizza establishments and special-occasion dinners where ingredient investment is appropriate.

5. Detroit-Style Pizza + Imperial Stout

Detroit's caramelized frico cheese crust and rich, bready base pair extraordinarily with imperial stout's roasted malt, dark chocolate, and slight bitterness. The stout's body matches Detroit's substantial texture; the roast notes echo the caramelized cheese borders; the bitterness cuts through cheese richness. This unconventional pairing is consistently mentioned by craft beer sommeliers as their favorite pizza-beer combination.

6. Anchovy Pizza + Fino Sherry

Fino sherry — ultra-dry, highly oxidized Spanish fortified wine with strong saline, almond, and chamomile notes — creates an extraordinary pairing with anchovy pizza through salt-on-salt resonance and the wine's ability to amplify oceanic flavors. The combination is an advanced pairing that rewards those with broad beverage knowledge. Available at sherry-focused wine bars and Spanish restaurants increasingly integrating pizza into their menus.

7. Clam Pizza + Muscadet

New Haven's white clam pizza finds its ideal wine companion in Muscadet (Melon de Bourgogne from the Loire Valley): a bone-dry, intensely mineral white wine with oyster shell and citrus character that mirrors the ocean flavor of clams. Muscadet sur lie aging adds a slight yeasty creaminess that complements the pizza's garlic and Parmesan. This pairing is taught in serious wine education as the textbook example of geographic and flavor alignment.

These seven pairings represent expert consensus built through extensive professional tasting rather than theoretical calculation. Each is worth experiencing — ideally in a context where you can focus on the interaction between food and beverage rather than the meal as background noise.