Entertaining: Wines under $20 that taste great with pork shoulder

With nippy November days ahead, the wine panel sought wines to match with a rustic fall dish: Cider-Braised Pork Shoulder with Caramelized Onions. This tender pork dish boasts several practical advantages. It's incredibly simple, inexpensive and can be made ahead.

The Dallas Morning News Wine Panel tastes with roast pork shoulder with caramelized onions. Best of all, it requires only 30 minutes of prep time, after which you just ignore it for two to three hours as it braises. The result is a savory, fork-tender pork shoulder. It's even better made a day in advance and reheated. We found ourselves passing the salt grinder at the dinner table, so be bold and salt the meat liberally before cooking.

As with previous dishes tasted by our panel, matching wine to the sauce proved the key to successful pairing. Although the braising liquid is apple cider, plentiful pan juices render the sauce only slightly sweet. And although it's loaded with meltingly tender caramelized onions, the sauce retains a fairly light character. As for the juicy, garlic-studded pork, it's a relatively neutral meat that welcomes the sauce's light apple sweetness and a wine that's not overbearing.

Finding the right wines proved more difficult than we thought. We sampled 16 wines under $20 and one wine outside of our budget. More than a few were too heavy-handed for the sauce. Out of 13 whites, which included chardonnay, viognier, riesling and pinot gris, only three made the cut. And although half the wines sampled were in the $10 to $15 range, all of our winners were closer to $20.

Our panel favorite was a citrusy chardonnay – from New Mexico, surprisingly. Only one of four reds sampled had the right soft, fruity profile to mesh with the dish. Just for grins, at the suggestion of guest panelist and master sommelier Barbara Werley we tried an elegant craft beer that came out a winner.

Here's what we learned from this tasting:

•Overly oaked whites delivered a bitter finish when tasted with the dish. A light amount of oak worked well in two of our fruity white selections.

•We passed on whites that were too light in weight compared with the heft of the dish.

•We had high hopes for a German riesling kabinett, but it lacked the acidity to stand up to the dish.

•Among reds, we dismissed wines deemed either too grapey, too oaky, or too earthy. The winning red had ripe pure fruit, and a hint of oak.