A wine to stand up to a burger's complexity

Before your grill begins to sizzle with the best burger of the summer, pour yourself a red that's as big and beefy as the burger itself.

Save your Grand Cru Bordeaux, Riserva Chianti and high-priced Napa Cab for a hoitier-toitier meal.

These refined flavors will get lost in a burger's ketchup-mustard-onion-pickle-relish complexity.

Choose instead a wine with full-volume fruit, such as red Zin (Dancing Bull, $12) or Petit Sirah (de Bortoli, $10) to enrich any condiment you pile on the bun.

For an extra dash of pepper, select a Rhone-style red, whether from France (Guigal Cotes du Rhone, $15), the U.S. (see Ross' choice), Spain (Castano Monastrell, $12) or Oz (Peter Lehmann's Clancy's, $15.) For more meaty flavor, turn to southern Italian styles, such as Donnafungata's Nero d'Avola ($12.)

This is one meal you needn't worry about a wine's high alcohol or tannin; they'll simply serve as a gustatory paper towel and sop up your burger's drip-down-the-chin juiciness.

If you must dress up the meal, serve the American classic Brown Derby Hamburger with a well-crafted yet exuberant red like Clos du Val's Cabernet Sauvignon ($35.)

I can almost taste it now.

I'll fire up the grill. You open the wine.

• Advanced Sommelier and Certified Wine Educator Mary Ross writes Good Wine. Contact her at food@dailyherald.com.