Pairings | Viognier
Wine and Indonesian food: which wine pairs best with Rijsttafel?
I posted this last year after trying Rijsttafel - the Indonesian speciality that’s widely available in Amsterdam. Translated literally as ‘rice table’, it’s an elaborate array of curries, salads and pickles which present a tough challenge for any wine.
The one we had was at Blauw, a restaurant strongly recommended by foodie colleagues and in the immensely useful Where Chefs Eat and couldn’t have been a better introduction to the genre.
The curries are hot but also sweet which tends to strip the flavour out of drier wines including the Gruner Veltliner we ordered, a normal go-to with south-east Asian food, although it matched a couple of lighter introductory dishes. Several also had a rich peanut sauce. The wines I thought would make the best pairings for Rijsttafel itself were off-dry whites though I came up with a couple of other options you might enjoy:
Viognier
Actually we tried a sip of this and it did work
Gewurztraminer - it wouldn’t match all the dishes but would be a good all-rounder
Off-dry Pinot Gris from Alsace or New Zealand
Barossa semillon would work well with the peanut sauces
Torrontes (a suggestion from Blauw’s own list)
Off-dry Clare or Eden Valley riesling like this Grosset riesling which was my match of the week a while back with a Chinese New Year feast
New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc with a dash of tropical fruit
Off-dry strong rosé such as those you get from Portugal and South America
Chilled New Zealand Pinot Noir - the favourite of the chef Agus Hermawan. Or Chilean Pinot Noir, for that matter. You need a touch of sweetness.
Ripe but not over-alcoholic Shiraz and similar GSM (Grenache/Syrah/Mourvèdre) blends
Dry wines with fresh fruit
One of the welcome reminders of this long hot summer (in the Languedoc at least) is just how well dry wines go with fresh fruit. I’ve been happily drinking whites, ross and even reds with fruit such as peaches, apricots, melons and figs. Sweet wines, of course, go well with all of these but sometimes sweet wines seem too intense, particularly if, like me, you don’t have a very sweet tooth.
The ideal wines to pair with fruit are young unoaked - or subtly oaked - and fruity themselves. I particularly like rosé with peaches and melon, slightly aromatic wines like Viognier with both peaches and apricots and fruity lightly chilled reds such as Cinsault with strawberries, peaches and fresh figs. Riesling works well too: For reasons too complicated to go into we happened to have a bottle of Australian Tingletip Riesling to hand which went particularly well with some grapes.
I’ve also noticed how much more frequently the French offer fresh fruit for dessert than we do. Obviously they have better quality, riper fruit but also a taste - in simple restaurants at least - for less rich puddings. On our way down through France we were offered fresh peaches in verveine (lemon verbena) syrup, peaches and mint granita and fresh pineapple with basil. Any accompanying herb or some young goats' cheese will make it more likely that a dry wine will match but if the dessert includes a sweet accompaniment such as ice cream or a parfait or semi-freddo you’re more likely to need to reach for a sweeter wine.
Image by Jordan Feeg at shutterstock.com
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