Match of the week

Thai food and orange wine

Posted by Fiona Beckett (Google+) on March 23 2022 at 08:25

Orange wine wouldn’t have been the first pairing I’d have turned to with Thai food but what I love about this business is that there are always opportunities to revise your opinion

It was actually the theme of a tasting organised by Donald Edwards the head sommelier at La Trompette and a past contributor to this website* who convenes a monthly get together for fellow wine professionals around a food and wine theme. (You can keep track of them via the somemondaysarebetter account on instagram)

This one which took place at Smoking Goat Shoreditch really intrigued me. There wasn’t a single wine and food combination that stood out - there were a lot of wines on the table and dishes were served in rapid succession but overall I thought the lighter wines with shorter skin contact, particularly those made from aromatic grape varieties worked best with the salads and grilled dishes and the deeper coloured wines with longer skin contact went better with the meatier dishes like the smoked brisket and long pepper laab and aged beef sirloin with smoked bone marrow and galangal relish. But orange wine certainly has the personality to stand up to the hot/sweet/sour flavours of Smoking Goat’s food.

Most intriguing wine of the tasting? A 2019 Polish roter riesling from a winery called Winnica Silesian whose site is unfortunately only available in Polish. I’m trying to track it down!

* you can read Donald’s article on orange wine here and more suggestions for orange wine pairings here

If you’d like be able to check out all the food and wine pairings on the site you can buy a bundle of credits here to access my premium content.

And/or for regular updates on what and where I’ve been eating, drinking and travelling sign up for my Substack Eat This, Drink That, Live Well.