News of an interesting new website from Korean-born food and wine writer Jeannie Cho Lee, the first Asian to become a Master of Wine, who is obviously looking to do for Asian wine lovers what Jancis Robinson and Robert Parker have for Western ones.

She and her Hong Kong-based team will be offering tasting notes and advice on drinking on wines that are widely available in the Asian market but - probably of more interest to readers of this site -  insights into how Asian cuisines work with wine. “I fell in love with the pleasures of eating and everything about food before I fell in love with wine.” she says.

She sets out her approach in this section which is that is impossible to think of matching one wine with one dish in a culture where it is traditional to put several dishes on the table at once and that there are four key considerations - versatility, umami character, intensity and quality - which will determine how well a match works

There’s also a very useful couple of pages here and here on the effect the 5 basic tastes - sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami - have on wine and the impact sweetness, acidity, tannin and maturity in wine have on food. (There’s a more extensive wine pairing guide for members of her Club Rouge which currently costs $50 a year*)

She also has a book called Asian Palate you can buy through Amazon - though at the time of writing at the somewhat daunting price of £62. There are also two other titles ‘Wine with Asian Food: new Frontiers in Taste’  by Patricia Guy and Edwin Soon (£20.99 Tidemark) and Pairing Wine with Asian Food by Edwin Soon (£17.99 Monsoon Books) if you’re interested in finding out more about the subject.

* You might also enjoy this interview with Jeannie by David Pilling in the FT which expounds more of her food and wine matching philosophy