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Why the Chinese prefer to drink red wine with food
To most westerners the idea of drinking young red Bordeaux with Chinese food seems bizarre. Especially with delicate Cantonese dishes, the most widely available of the Chinese cuisines in the west . Clearly though the Chinese who are paying stratospheric prices for first and second growths - and presumably drinking them - think differently. They don’t turn to riesling and other aromatic and off-dry whites for a reason.
The most common explanation is that it’s not a question of taste but of face. Bordeaux labels impress according to wine writer and MW Jeannie Cho Lee of Asian Palate but it’s not only about the status of the host. “Ordering an easily recognised wine label shows an acknowledgement of the importance of the relationship with the guest, sending a clear message to the recipient that says, ‘This is how important you are to me’. This is not limited to wine but has always existed in our food culture - high grade abalone can cost over US$200 for a single small serving.”
But why Bordeaux, rather than the more food-friendly burgundy? “Because the Chinese have a strong love of prestigious luxury brands and Bordeaux is the most prestigious accessible wine brand” says Doug Rumsam, managing director of Bordeaux Index in Hong Kong. “Burgundy is much more difficult to get your head around. It’s much less about food and wine matching than the best they can offer of each.”
“There’s also an element of masculinity involved in business transactions. It used to centre around hard liquor. Bordeaux would be seen as a more masculine drink.”
Such an attitude is of course is not restricted to the Chinese. “We have a lot of Bordeaux on our list because of the area we’re in” says Michael Peng of Hunan in Belgravia, one of London’s longest established upmarket Chinese restaurants. “People who love Bordeaux want to drink it with everything. We have a lot of 2nd and 3rd growths at prices that appeal to bargain-hunters.”
The colour red also has a much greater resonance in Chinese culture than it does in the west. “The red for luck thing is certainly true” says cookery writer Fuchsia Dunlop who acts as consultant to the Sichuanese restaurant Bar Shu. “Red is the colour of celebrations such as weddings and New Year's festivities. At a festive dinner table you would try to have red-coloured foods such as lobster and red grouper. So red wine would fit in with that. By contrast white is the colour of funerals in China - traditionally, mourners wear white, while brides wear red.”
Red wine also has a positive association with health, points out Jeannie Cho Lee, which would increase its prestige. “One of the key factors that popularised wine in the mid-1990s was the connection between red wine and health. If one looks at expensive, highly sought after Chinese ingredients such as bird’s nest, shark’s fin and sea cucumber the most common factor is their purported health-enhancing properties.”
There’s also the issue of language, according to Hong Kong journalist and MW Debra Meiburg. “One problem for a white wine producing region such as Alsace, is that the classic Chinese character depicting wine is a catch-all character for any alcoholic beverage. Thus when one mentions ‘white wine’ it is easily confused with domestic white spirits. Chinese newcomers to white wine find them tart and insipid compared to Chinese distilled, high alcohol ‘white-lightening’ beverages.”
White wines are also less appealing than reds because of their serving temperature. “With hot tea the traditional drink of choice for Chinese diners, migrating to a super cold white seems a much bigger step than switching to a room temperature red.” says Meiburg.
Even the tannins of young Bordeaux don’t seem as offputting as one might assume. Again the Chinese are used to tannin from drinking tea and, in some cases, stronger liquor like whisky and cognac. Michael Peng from Hunan also points out that there are dishes that positively benefit from a tannic wine. “Ingredients like jelly fish, sea cucumber and abalone tend to be quite glutinous, chewy and even slithery. When you drink a wine with tannin it cuts right through. Chinese people like those textures.”
And far from turning to an off-dry white to deal with hotter dishes the Chinese enjoy the cumulative build up of tannin and spice on the palate according to Cho Lee. “For those who are not used to the heat of Sichuan pepper for example, the tannins in red Bordeaux can exaggerated the burn. However, this is precisely what spice-lovers enjoy — prolonging the heat and spiciness of chillies, not neutralising the flavours with a jarring sweet wine."
“I’m always cautious about promoting sweet wine with spicy food” agrees Meiburg. “Sweetness has the effect of mellowing spice. For the regions that love spiciness, such as Hunan or Sichuan, diners want their spices cranked up, not toned down.”
There is a generational factor at work however. The questions of ‘face’ and preference for tannic reds is more marked among older more conservative Chinese consumers than among their younger, more widely travelled counterparts who may have been educated in the west. Bryant Mao assistant head sommelier at Chez Bruce is a Taiwanese-Canadian who finds many of the ingredients in Chinese cooking unsympathetic to red Bordeaux. “If I think of my mum’s cooking it uses a lot of sauces and condiments like vinegar and oyster sauce that clash with red wine. And white’s certainly better than red with seafood. If I’m going to drink red I tend to go for pinot noir or Italian reds or Bordeaux with a higher proportion of merlot. White bordeaux can often work better than red.”
“It does depend which region you’re in” admits Charles Sichel of Chateau Palmer. “While I would say that consumption is still 90% red the feeling we get is that white wines are becoming a little more fashionable on the east coast below Shanghai and further south where there’s a lot of fish and shellfish.”
No-one’s putting their money on whites though, least of all China’s homegrown wine producers. “At the moment, all signs seem to indicate that the Chinese are perfectly happy with red Bordeaux and full bodied Cabernet blends with their meals, regardless of how outsiders perceive their preferences” says Cho Lee. “The enormous amount of new vineyard land being planted with Cabernet Sauvignon is a clear indication that even the giant domestic wineries are continuing to bet on full bodied reds.”
This article was first published in the June 2011 issue of Decanter.
Photograph © michaeljung - Fotolia.com
Food and Bordeaux: What they served at the gala dinner at Mouton Rothschild
I make a point of not going to Vinexpo, the biennial wine fair in Bordeaux (too hectic, too noisy) but it does mean you miss out on the occasional treat like the gala dinner that was held at Château Mouton Rothschild to celebrate the opening of their new chai.
A colleague* who went told me about it though and the menu and wines sounded so extraordinary I thought I must share them with you.
Guests were apparently served glasses of Baron Philippe de Rothschild champagne when they arrived then treated to a foie gras trolley that was wheeled around with terrines of foie gras, walnut biscuits and fig jam. (Even though I don’t eat foie gras I must admit that sounded amazing)
The first course was equally show-stopping: soufflés de brochet (pike) served in a copper pans - some feat for 600 - with 2005 Mouton-Rothschild and 2005 Clerc-Milon: an unconventional but apparently successful pairing.
Then blanquette de veau (a creamy veal stew) with imperials of 1975 Mouton-Rothschild (see above). An interesting - and wise - choice for an old wine, avoiding an intense jus that might have fought with the wine - and definitely more flattering than cheese with which I gather the same wine was also paired (correct me if you were at the dinner, and I’m wrong on that)
Finally a cherry clafoutis (batter pudding) which was served with a 1989 Château Coutet, apparently also an admirable match. It sounds like quite some feast.
I gather Bordeaux leading chateaux always vie with each other to put on the best spread during Vinexpo, even if not normally quite on this scale. My colleague Jane Anson, who reports from Bordeaux for Decanter, told me about this meal at Chateau Pavie (excuse the rather loose translations):
Saumon Mariné, avocat pilé, perles d'oeufs de saumon avec Champagne Egly Ouriet 2003 en magnum (marinated salmon, crushed avocado and salmon roe)
Homard en cote de Romaine, petits légumes juste croquant, vinaigrette au piment d'Esplette avec Monbousquet Blanc 2010 (lobster in lettuce, possibly? with just-cooked vegetables and a spicy hot pepper dressing)
Agneau en file rôtie, frotté aux herbes, carotes fane et marmelade d'aubergines fumées, jus d'agneau tandoori with Pavie 1998 in Imperiale (this sounds pretty wild: Herb-crusted roast lamb with a smoked aubergine compote and tandoori lamb jus)
Food for thought here: the Bordelais don't necessarily stick to conventional accompaniments and seasoning with their best wines.
If you went to any of the other dinners during Vinexpo this year do let me know what you ate and drank.
*Charlotte Hey who works on the marketing for this website
Photograph © Lucy Shaw of The Drinks Business.
Pairing cheese and claret
I’ve always had a bit of a problem finding cheese matches for red Bordeaux. Cheddar is often suggested but I find mature versions have too much ‘bite’. Stilton slays it and so do most washed rind cheeses, oozy Camemberts and Bries . . .
The most successful match I’ve found so far is Mimolette so maybe it was auto-suggestion at work when I tasted a deep orange Red Leicester at The Fine Cheese Co’s Cheese Fair in Bath at the weekend and immediately thought of red Bordeaux.
It was the Sparkenhoe Red Leicester from David and Jo Clarke of the Leicestershire Handmade Cheese Co. a revival of an old recipe and a lovely mellow, typically English cheese. Extraordinarily it hasn’t actually been made in Leicestershire for 20 years and for even longer - over 50 years - on a farm in the county.
It has more flavour than milder cheeses like Caerphilly and Wensleydale which are better suited to a white wine in my opinion but lacks the intensity of a farmhouse cheddar which can sometimes throw a medium to full-bodied red. I tried it with a bottle of André Lurton’s 2004 Chateau La Louvire Pessac-Lognan from Bibendum, a mature Bordeaux of exactly the sort you might bring out with the cheese over Christmas and it was perfect.
Coincidentally I tried another aged Bordeaux (a 1999 Chateau Tour du Haut-Moulin which was drinking quite beautifully) with cheese the following day and found that although it was again overpowered by a ripe Brie it went really well with a Vacherin Mont d’Or, a combination I’d never have expected. I think it was probably because the cheese wasn’t that mature and the wine was. The problem with reds and cheese is mainly about unintegrated tannins. Older vintages seem to survive better.
- You can buy Sparkenhoe from The Fine Cheese Company and other stockists listed here.
Photo by Ray Piedra
What food to pair with mature Margaux
The other night I was lucky enough to go out with a wineloving friend of mine and his wife who brought along a bottle of Château Palmer 1990 with them. It was a lovely wine but, as any 20 year old vintage would be, quite delicate so immediately created the dilemma of what to eat.
The dishes we chose - braised partridge, seared breast of duck and cassoulet were all fine with it - but none of them was perfect. Wines like this are better with unsauced dishes - simply roast partridge would have been better. The seared duck was accompanied by caramelised chicory which really needed a younger, more vibrantly fruity wine and the cassoulet would have been better with a more rustic red like a Marcillac. The Palmer also struggled with the cheese, as is inevitable if you offer a selection.
It underlines a point I’ve made before that treasured bottles like this are really better served at home. No chef can really afford to serve the sort of plain, unadorned food that suits fine wine, especially Bordeaux, best. Customers would regard it as dull and take the view (quite rightly, really) that they could do the same at home.
The ideal dish would have been a simply roast leg of lamb with possibly a gratin dauphinoise (cream and potatoes flatter most old reds). Resist the temptation to serve lots of vegetables or condiments alongside because the more flavours you add the greater the risk of taking the edge off your treasured bottle. (This doesn’t apply so much, of course, to younger wines.)
So far as cheese is concerned it also pays not to offer too much choice. If you’re going to serve cheese at all a hard sheep’s cheese like a Manchego or Berkswell is going to be the best kind of foil for an old wine and again leave aside compotes and particularly chutneys. Mature parmesan can also be delicious though I’d suggest no more than two years old.
The great advantage to this strategy is that this is not difficult food to cook, you’ll enjoy your wine more and you’ll pay a fraction of what you would pay in a restaurant for it. Which is quite a result.
For more inspiration for mature Margaux, see this Match of the Week from 2017: Margaux and Turkish Chicken with Walnut Sauce
Image result: jacqueline macou from Pixabay
What to drink with a TV dinner?
This month’s issue of Observer Food Monthly hasa special on TV dinners featuring celebrities talking about their favourite snacks. Very few beverages are mentioned so I thought I’d suggest a few pairings ;-)
Indian takeaway
Amanda Holden is pictured eating pasta with pesto but actually says her regular TV supper is an Indian takeaway. Lager would be the obvious bevvy of choice for most but personally I’d go for an IPA (India Pale Ale) or a strong fruity rosé
Spag bol
A bit of a messy TV snack from Observer restaurant critic Jay Rayner but who wouldn’t be tempted by Angela Hartnett’s 3-4 hour ragu which deserves a good bottle. Like a Chianti Classico riserva. See my 6 best pairings for spaghetti bolognese.
Fish fingers
(Or equally, fish and chips.) Mentioned by novelist Julie Myerson who also admits to enjoying a glass of Sauvignon Blanc. They’d rub along fine together but I must confess to a secret vice which is that I love fish fingers and champagne. Cava at a pinch.
Tapas
Newsreader Mark Austin says he likes tapas and a glass of wine (unspecified though I suspect it might be a Rioja). He should try a well-chilled glass of fino or manzanilla sherry. See also my 6 best Spanish wines to try with tapas.
Cheese on toast
We also don’t know what wine his colleague Julie Etchingham drinks with her cheese on toast made with “strong cheddar, always with Worcestershire sauce” Could quaff a Cabernet but I’d personally be reaching for a bottle of Timothy Taylor Landlord.
Home-made burgers
The fondly remembered childhood treat of X Factor presenter Dermot O’Leary. Adults should try them with a good bottle of Bordeaux: as fine a match with a burger as a steak - provided you don’t overdo the relish.
Chips
Perfect TV food, according to the BBC’s Alan Yentob - and he should know. Personally I think this is beer food again. Or a mug of builder’s tea, which would certainly be a good match for his other favoured snack, fried-egg sandwiches . . .
Fish pie
Mentioned by Property Ladder’s Sarah Beeny. Her version, which includes smoked haddock and a cheesy sauce, is quite rich which would make me reach for a fairly full-bodied (but not ridiculously oaky) Chardonnay. See also my 4 top drink pairings for fish pie.
Image credit: Andres Ayrton
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