Pairing wine with Chinese cuisine

I’ve written before about pairing wine with Chinese food - and so have some of my contributors but here’s a slightly different way of going about it that may help you decide which bottle to choose and make your pairings more successful. It involves deciding which flavours are predominant in a dish or selection of dishes.

Of course dishes of different types tend to be put on the table at the same time but they tend to be grouped together. You rarely find a delicate seafood dish served alongside a stir fry of beef in black bean sauce, for example, so it makes sense, as it does for a Western meal, to open more than one bottle. Be guided by the most intensely flavoured dish you’ve cooked or ordered - this is the one that’s going to dominate any wine that you’re drinking.

Delicate seafood flavours, typical of Cantonese cuisine as in steamed dim sum, scallops, steamed whole fish: Minerally Sauvignon Blanc e.g. Sancerre, young Chablis and other young white burgundy, dry German or Austrian Riesling, Champagne

Deep fried dim sum and other snacks: sparkling wine.

Spicy noodles: Viognier

Sweet and sour dishes: Fruity rosé e.g. Merlot-based Bordeaux, Australian and Chilean rosés, Australian Semillon-Chardonnay blends

Duck dishes such as crispy duck with pancakes: New World Pinot Noir, Merlot and Merlot blends

Dishes in which ginger is a dominant note e.g. crab or lobster with ginger: Gewürztraminer

Black bean sauce: Rich, velvety but not too tannic reds e.g. Chilean or other ripe New World Cabernet, fruity Zinfandel

Barbecued dishes such as spare ribs: As above

Rich braised dishes, hotpots: More tannic reds such as Syrah or blends of Syrah, Grenache and Mourvèdre

Hot, fiery dishes typical of Szechuan cuisine: Wines with a touch of sweetness especially Alsace Pinot Gris and Gewürztraminer - even sweet wine - see Margaret Rand’s article on Tokaji

For further reading:

Heavenly Match: wine meets Chinese cuisine by Lau Chin Sun published by Moët Hennessy Diageo Hong Kong. Some interesting insights although all the wines are from the Moet Hennessy portfolio.

Wine with Asian Food: new frontiers in taste. Patricia Guy and Edwin Soon. 2007 Tide-Mark Press . A more comprehensively thought-out Pan-Asian approach with Old World and New World recommendations. Some intriguing suggestions e.g. Rioja Gran Reserva or Grange with stir-fried beef and peppers but an odd bias in favour of Italian wines (Guy lives in Italy)

Image by Elena Eryomenko at shutterstock.com

Must grouse wine matches be classic?

I’m always in two minds about whether to write about the beginning of the grouse season. After all only a tiny number of people will be sufficiently interested - or well-heeled - to bag the first birds that arrive on restaurant tables this evening.

However grouse will feature on menus over the next few weeks and I’ve been rethinking my recommendations. Up to now my view has been that grouse is such an expensive luxury that it deserves a venerable bottle of top red burgundy or Bordeaux. "I'd go for a burgundy like a Chambolle-Musigny but a mature red Bordeaux or a Côte Rôtie would be equally delicious" was what I wrote a couple of years ago.

But the fact is that most chefs now cook grouse as rare as roast beef and I’m not sure that a younger bottle of the same type of wine mightn’t be better with the season’s first birds. And that could easily be pinot from less traditional areas such as Central Otago and Martinborough in New Zealand, Australia’s Mornington Peninsula or Yarra Valley, Oregon or from California’s Anderson or Russian River Valleys whose wines often outperform mediocre burgundies. Or a vivid young syrah rather than a venerable one. Just because you’re paying a fortune for your bird doesn’t mean you should necessarily pay over the odds for your wine, especially if you're eating out.

Later in the season when grouse gets gamier you might want to reach for more complex wines - the Domaine Tempier Bandol I wrote about a while back would be fabulous but younger less expensive southern French mourvèdres would be fine too. And last year I successfully paired it with a dark brambly Georgian Saperavi.

I found restaurateur Tim Hart of Hambleton Hall in Rutland was with me on the mature mourvèdre front but was still basically a burgundy man "The same whether it’s August or November" So is cookery Rowley Leigh who used to offer a special selection of burgundies 'at prices way below normal margins' at his former restaurant Le Cafe Anglais because, he said, 'we heartily believe in drinking Burgundy with grouse'.

Henry Harris, formerly of Racine in Knightsbridge was prepared to concede "there might be some difference in a couple of weeks as the birds get more fragrant and the heather seems stronger" but was still inclined to stick to France. "Day one an elegant Bordeaux, as the season progresses a Rhône."

So, there you go. Maybe I’m now out on a limb but if you’re lucky enough to be having grouse more than once I’d try it both ways.

If you want to have a go at grouse yourself there's a great recipe here from Bristol chef Stephen Markwick with whom I collaborated on A Well-Run Kitchen.

Photo © Robin Stewart at shutterstock.com

In search of the perfect steak wine

This report on a steak and wine tasting I did at Hawksmoor Spitalfields back in 2007 is now over 10 years old but the advice still holds good. It's quite a long read though so for more concise steak and wine matching advice head to The Best Wine Pairings for Steak.

"When my son Will was born in 1977 I couldn’t have imagined that 30 years on we’d be sitting together in his restaurant discussing food and wine matching. But as co-owner of an award-winning American-style steakhouse and cocktail bar, Hawksmoor, he and his restaurant manager Nick Strangeway (now with Hix restaurants) were the ideal people to help me decide what makes the perfect steak wine.

The plan was to see what impact cooking steak for different lengths of time had on the bottles you choose. Nick was also of the view that we should see what effect different cuts made which, fascinatingly, proved as significant as the cooking time.

Ironically Will and I started from unexpectedly different standpoints: Will being of the opinion that more mature, classic wines such as Bordeaux and Rioja were the best match for steak while I favoured younger New World reds with firmer tannins. We both had cause to revise our views.

Fillet

Meat at the restaurant is sourced from one of London’s top butchers The Ginger Pig from Longhorn cattle raised in North Yorkshire so even the fillet was exceptionally full flavoured, but its smooth, soft texture made it the subtlest of the steaks we tasted - “the kind of steak to serve with a salad for a light lunch” as Nick put it.

I don’t normally think of Pinot Noir as a match for steak but the best pairing by far when it was cooked rare, was the most elegant of our wines, a classically silky, seductive 2001 Daniel Rion Vosne-Romanée. A 2002 Au Bon Climat ‘Knox Alexander’ Pinot Noir tasted slightly too sweet but worked better when the flllet was served medium-rare and had acquired more caramelisation (at which point it slightly overwhelmed the Vosne-Romanée) It was also good if you served the fillet with béarnaise sauce (see below). The medium-rare fillet also went particularly well well with a Guidalberto 2005, the second wine of Tenuta San Guido, again a beautifully balanced wine with a marked level of acidity, a much more important factor in matching fillet than tannin, at least when the meat is unsauced.

Bone-in sirloin

Sirloin, in Nick’s view, is the ideal cut for serving blue because it has so much flavour of its own it doesn’t need to rely on caramelisation. This was where I thought our most tannic wine, a blockbuster Montus La Tyre 2005 Madiran from Alain Brumont would score. It was a fair match, but the barely cooked meat had the effect of unbalancing the wine and making it taste slightly sweet, as it did a 2003 Châteauneuf-du-Pâpe from Château La Nerthe. The two outstanding matches were a 2000 Ridge Monte Bello and a 2001 Pichon-Longueville, both still quite youthful so the barely cooked meat had the effect of making them taste at their peak.

The Pichon-Longueville and Ridge also showed well when the sirloin was cooked medium-rare, as did a very attractive 1996 Château St Pierre St-Julien which surprisingly turned out to be one of the star wines of the tasting. We both found a 2004 Catena Alta Malbec and a 2004 Turkey Flat Barossa Shiraz tasted slightly too sweet.

Rib-eye

Rib-eye has more fat than other cuts so Nick advises his customers to go for a slightly longer cooking time to allow it to integrate with the meat. It makes for a juicier and more flavourful steak. Here it was fascinating how much difference the cooking time made. When it was served rare it paired best with a 2003 Champin Le Seigneur Côte Rôtie from Jean-Michel Gerin and a 2003 Collazzi Toscana (a ‘cut price super Tuscan’ according to Nick), both generous, ripe and full-bodied.

Once it was cooked medium-rare both those wines showed more youthful angularity and the smoother Châteauneuf-du-Pâpe and Catena Alta Malbec became the better matches. When it was medium/well done, the longest cooked steak we had in the tasting, it changed again, tuning in with the riper, more fruit-driven wines from an inexpensive 2004 Hawk Crest Cabernet Sauvignon to the Ridge Monte Bello. The Vosne-Romanée we’d enjoyed with the fillet, by contrast, didn’t taste as remotely as good.

Hanger/bavette

Severely steaked out by this stage, we only tried one serving of hanger (served rare) just out of interest to see what the chewier texture of this favourite French cut would do. We liked it best, appropriately enough with two of the more inexpensive wines, a 2005 I Bastioni Chianti Classico and a gutsy 2004 Domaine de la Renjarde Côtes du Rhône Villages the one for its acidity, the other for its rusticity.

Overall conclusions

This tasting was a real eye opener with both Will and I revising our cherished opinions about wine and steak. In a nutshell - and it is a gross simplification because it doesn’t fully take into account different sauces and sides - if you like your steak rare stick to leaner, more classic wines whereas if you like it better done (and therefore more heavily caramelised) go for riper, more fruit driven ones. If you like fillet, try red burgundy, Pinot Noir or a modern Italian red, with sirloin drink cabernet or merlot, especially red Bordeaux, and with rib-eye go for a Châteauneuf, Côte Rôtie or other Syrah or Shiraz or a top Tuscan red.

Of course it doesn’t quite work out like that in a restaurant, as Nick pointed out, as people order different cuts and want them cooked different ways so you need to find wines that perform well overall. Our most consistent bottles proved to be the ‘96 Château St Pierre St-Julien (Will’s favourite), the Collazzi (Nick’s favourite) and the Ridge Monte Bello (mine). The Catena Alta Malbec also showed well though it wasn’t our favourite wine with any of the steaks.

Disappointments were the much lauded 2004 Turkey Flat Barossa Shiraz which tasted too simple and sweet with many of the steaks (a bit of bottle age would have helped) and the Rioja in our tasting, a Marques de Vargas 2002 (much to Will’s disappointment, being a big Rioja fan). The cheaper wines, while pleasant, were largely out of their league leading us to the conclusion - and this is something that Will and I can agree on - that it’s not worth drinking minor wines with steak. At least that’s going to be our excuse from now on . . .

This tasting was based at the Spitalfields branch of Hawksmoor at 157 Commercial Street, London E1 6BJ Tel: 0207 247 7392. They have since opened branches at Seven Dials in Covent Garden and Guildhall in the City.

Sauces and sides - what difference they make

• Béarnaise - a new world Pinot Noir or even an oaked Chardonnay if you prefer white wine to red

• Creamy mustard sauces - red burgundy usually hits the spot especially with fillet

• Peppercorn sauce/steak au poivre - southern French or other blends of Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre, Malbec, modern Tuscan reds like the Collazzi

• Red wine sauces e.g. marchand du vin - top red Bordeaux and other Bordeaux blends

• Ketchup - better not but if you must, a modern, young Chianti Classico or Zinfandel

• Rich potato dishes e.g. gratin dauphinois - tips the balance towards Cabernet or Cabernet blends

• Creamed spinach - depends on the amount of cream. Spinach is slightly bitter which will accentuate sweetness in a wine but cream will counteract that. Should be relatively neutral in its effect compared to the flavour of the steak.

This article was first published in the October 2007 edition of Decanter.

Chablis at Nobu

Sometimes you go to a wine dinner with some trepidation wondering if the wine will stand up to the food but I was pretty optimistic that Domaine Long-Depaquit’s Chablis would survive at Nobu (the original Metropolitan hotel restaurant in London, not LA, sadly!)

Not that it’s always an easy ride. As habitués of Nobu will know this is powerfully flavoured food with an exotic twist on Japanese staples like sashimi and a lot of richly smokey meat dishes. I have drunk fruitier whites like Sancerre (Jolivet's) and more full-bodied ones like Smith Haut-Lafitte with some success with Nobu’s food before, along with softer styles of red Bordeaux. Would even mature Chablis stand up to the bigger dishes?

We kicked off with three 2009 premier crus, Les Beugnons (a sub-division of Les Vaillons), Les Vaillons itself and Les Vaucopins, an impressive trio and the first vintages for which winemaker Matthieu Mangenot was completely responsible. Apart from the terroirs, the main difference was the oak treatment - les Beugnons had none, Les Vaillons 10% and Les Vaucoupins about 15%. All were brilliant with the oysters, as you’d expect, but I found the structure and minerality of the Vaucoupins made it the best partner for the three sashimi dishes, yellowtail sashimi with jalapeno, new style salmon and scallops and seabass sashimi with dry miso.

We had two grand crus with the next couple of dishes, the Les Blanchots 07 and a Les Clos 08. The latter went particularly well with a lobster salad with spicy lemon dressing but was thrown slightly off-track by a dish of rock shrimp tempura with three quite challenging dips including jalapeno again. The Les Blanchots worked better with that.

Two bottlings of Moutonne next which is part of the Vaudesir and Preuses crus - a magnum of 2006 and an ‘02 which I thought stole the show with an umami-rich dish of poussin with truffle teriyaki (like other aged white burgundy mature chablis has its own umami notes) It also handled a challenging dish of dover sole with red chilli shiso.

The poussin also went really well with a lively, graceful 2008 Gevrey-Chambertin 1er cru Lavaux Saint-Jacques from Bichot which was wheeled out with the final meat dishes. A good move with a meal of this length, it has to be said (there was an insane amount of food). Both the poussin and a dish of beef toban yaki had markedly smokey notes that were particularly well suited to the wine.

There were puddings at this point which were served with a mystery bottle which turned out to be a 2000 Tokaji Oremus 5 puttonyos but by this point no-one was up to much matching.

So what might you take from all this? Well if I were eating in Nobu or similar modern Asian restaurants like Zuma or Roka I wouldn’t be worrying overmuch about individual terroirs. The key factors in the success of these matches was minerality, weight and age. With the richness of Nobu’s food I think a little oak helped but in a more conventional Japanese restaurant you could happily do without it. The older vintages, especially the ’02 were lovely with the richer fish and poultry dishes but then they’re not going to be available or affordable on the average restaurant winelist - certainly not Nobu’s.

Personally I’d be more than happy to drink premier cru Chablis through half to two thirds of a meal of this type then switch, as we did, to red burgundy. What you don’t want with this type of food is aggressive tannins.

Incidentally there are some other good suggestions on the Albert Bichot website for food matches for these wines.

I ate at Nobu as a guest of Domaine Long-Depaquit