Match of the week

Korean Bulgogi and Mencia

Posted by Fiona Beckett (Google+) on March 24 2025 at 12:38

Given the overall punchiness of Korean food, you might think pairing it with red wine was a lost cause but as it’s often beef you’re dealing with, especially in a Korean barbecue restaurant, don’t let that put you off.

As part of my researches into wine pairings for Korean food I tried bulgogi twice last week, once at a London restaurant called Chung’dam and the other at an excellent local Bristol restaurant called Dongnae.

It’s a dish of thinly sliced meat marinated in soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, garlic, ginger and Asian pear then grilled on a tabletop burner or over a barbecue. So it’s deeply umami rather than hot but accompanied by sides and condiments including, typically, a soybean paste dipping sauce (ssamjang), raw garlic and chilli and kimchi and other pickles which you would think would be challenging.

Surprisingly the bulgogi marinade is powerful enough that they don’t throw the wine - in the case of Chung’dam a basic South African red from Journey’s End and at Dongnae an organic, low intervention 2022 Mencia from Bierzo in northern Spain called Quite from an impressively widely travelled woman winemaker called Veronica Ortega. It was definitely the more interesting wine of the two although the good news is that most full-bodied reds will go with bulgogi.

You can buy it from The Whisky Exchange online for £25.75 and from Cave in Bristol for £27.40

For other mencia pairings see here.

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