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

Which foods pair best with high alcohol red wines?

Despite the growing concern about alcohol levels in wine many reds still clock in at 14.5% or more, a level at which they can become an unbalanced pairing for traditional European food. Many traditionalist would say that they are therefore not ‘food wines’ but as with other types of wine it depends how well they’re made and whether overall the wine is in balance. Châteauneuf-du-Pâpe for example rarely hits the shelves at under 14% but wears its alcohol lightly.

In general wines of this power benefit from at least a couple of years bottle ageing - it’s the combination of high alcohol and aggressive tannins that can overwhelm the food you’re eating. I’ve drunk many an Australian Shiraz of 7 to 8 years old that has behaved like a pussycat with food.

The best type of dishes in my view to drink with big reds are:

• Rare meat especially beef - e.g. a chargrilled steak (rare meat softens the effect of big tannins)

• Slow cooked but not heavily sauced meat (lamb and pork as well as beef) Not heavily sauced because if you have an intense reduction and a full-bodied red you can barely taste the meat you’re eating

• Meat cooked with a sweet marinade or baste - e.g. barbecued ribs Sweetness will enhance the acidity in the wine, making it taste fresher.
• Meat or ‘meaty’ fish like tuna cooked with a spicy rub or crust. A touch of spice offsets a big fruity red nicely though not a hot ‘wet’ curry with a lot of spicy sauce which will just create an sense of overload on the palate.

• Haggis! (Yes, really . . . )

• Strongly flavoured vegetarian dishes based on dark Portabella mushrooms or roast or baked aubergines

• Well matured hard cheeses or sheep's cheeses. Cheese can be a minefield for red wine as regular visitors to this site will know. A full bodied red will overwhelm delicate goats’ cheeses and are likely to clash horribly with a well-matured ‘stinky’ washed rind cheese or a punchy blue but should be OK with a dry, clean tasting hard cheese, especially a sheep's cheese (the easiest cheese to pair with red wine)

• Dark chocolate. A controversial pairing but many swear by big jammy reds and dark, not oversweet chocolate. Not for me but try it!

And the dishes that don’t match full-bodied reds?

Lighter fish and vegetable-based dishes, lighter meats like chicken and veal, milder cheeses and dishes with light creamy sauces.

Image © Christian Delbert - Fotolia.com

Possibly the best truffle dinner ever

Did I want to go on a truffle trip to Spain at the end of January? Balmy Barbados seemed like a better option but since that wasn’t on the cards and the enquiry came from an old friend I said yes. The 2 day visit - the annual Viñas del Vero ‘Days of Wine and Truffles’ in Somontano would include an outdoor picnic in the foothills of the Pyrenees (eek), a truffle hunt and - the clincher - a multi-course truffle menu by one of the region’s most talented chefs followed by a gastronomic brunch. “Bring the Gaviscon”. my friend sagely advised.

I’ll be writing about the truffle hunting in due course so let’s concentrate on the dinner at Bodega Blecua which was the best truffle experience I’ve ever had. It kicked off in style with a selection of truffle-flavoured canaps including truffle flavoured macarons, parcels of truffle threads in lambs skein (sic), tartlets of pigs trotters and truffles (awesome) and best of all, truffle flavoured truffles of the satiny consistency of the best chocolate truffles. These were served with Tio Pepe (also owned by Viñas del Vero’s owner Gonzalez Byass) and V de V’s fragrant Gewürztraminer which I’m not sure I didn’t marginally prefer, to my surprise. (The 2009 is currently on offer at £6.49 at Majestic)

The first proper course was a glassful of truffles served with a hot broth which transformed it into truffle consommé followed by ‘Royal de Trufa with egg yolks and passion’. Fortunately this turned out not to be passion fruit as I had feared but a sumptous blend of truffles and pork fat of the consistency of creamy mash, scattered with yet more truffles. (I hadn’t thought of the combination of pork fat and truffles before but it’s a winner, let me tell you). With that we drank the 2010 Viñas del Vero Clarion, a rich, structured white about whose components they were curiously reticent but which seems to be Chardonnay, Gewürztraminer and Chenin Blanc.

That was followed by one of my favourite dishes of the meal, cardoons with oysters and almond sauce topped with a truffle shaving. Again a really imaginative and delicious combination of ingredients. This was served with a 2008 Clarion in magnum which suited the dish better than the younger fruitier vintage would have done.

They then brought on a potato ‘mushroom’ with ceps, a mound of fluffy truffle-infused mash moulded into a ... well, not a mushroom, more like a potato but fantastic anyway and a good match with the Blecua 2004 served in magnum.

Blecua is the flagship wine of Viñas del Vero - a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Garnacha, and Tempranillo from seven different parcels and possibly one of the best wines you've never heard of. It has more warmth and generosity than many Bordeaux and more finesse and complexity than most Spanish reds. The '04 also went perfectly with the next course, a truffle infused risotto topped with an outrageous amount of truffles.

By this stage even I was almost truffled out but just about found room for a mouthful or two of veal shanks with truffle sauce and chestnut purée (particularly good with the richer, more complex Blecua 2005) and some local truffled cheese.

And I didn’t make much impact on either of the two interesting desserts - a semi-frozen cylinder of something faintly ice creamy with amaretti crumbs and ‘snow truffles’ on muscovado cream, a truffle-inspired but, to some relief, not truffle-flavoured finale.

The general conclusion? That truffle dinners could be a lot more inventive than they generally are, that Spanish cuisine, dare I say it, has a lot to teach the French and that truffles can take younger, fruitier wines than you might imagine. Quite an experience.

The event I went to was a private one but If you want to sample chef Carmelo Bosque’s cooking go to his restaurant La Taberna de Lillas Pastia it’s in Huesca. It specialises in truffles and has a Michelin star. Tel: +34 974 211 691.

I attended the dinner as a guest of Gonzalez Byass.

 

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.