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Is Koshu the best match for Japanese food?

Posted by Fiona Beckett (Google+) on January 14 2010 at 13:37

I suspect you’ll be hearing a lot about Koshu this year. No, it’s not some unfamiliar aspect of Japanese cuisine but a white wine made from a grape of the same name. A campaign to promote it in the UK was launched at a lunch in London yesterday by a VIP line-up of Japanese goverment officials from the Yamanashi prefecture where most of the winemakers are based.

So what’s it like? Well, I think it’s fair to say it wouldn’t stand out in a large consumer tasting. The wines - well, the unoaked ones at least - are fresh and clean with a fierce aciidity - not particularly to the current British - or American taste. For nearest comparison think Aligoté, Muscadet-sur-lie, bone dry Riesling. and young Chablis which the Japanese have always liked with food. The oak-aged examples are slightly fuller and rounder but nothing like as rich as a barrel-aged Chardonnay. Viura was the nearest comparison that came to mind.

Apart from a couple of wines which I’ll mention later there weren’t any stand-out examples or perhaps it was simply a question of adjusting ones palate to a new wine style. But it was with Umu’s kaiseki menu*, with which we tasted them in flights of three, that their virtues really became apparent. The cooking at Umu, which has a Michelin star, is in the opinion of many, the best Japanese food in London. I’ve certainly not tasted better outside Kyoto and the chef Ichiro Kubota certainly excelled himself yesterday.

The meal started with the most spectacular array of Iwaizakana (above right) a special New Year selection of dishes which was as beautiful as it was delicious. - a riot of different colours and textural contrasts. With ten components in all, each intricate, each unfamiliar, it’s hard to recall let alone describe each element accurately, but it included a amazing dish of squid and sea cucumber, a prawn, a tiny poached mandarin and I think, stuffed kelp with herring and extraordinary black beans topped with poached carrot and gold leaf. (Each element had some relation to water whether it was the river, pond or ocean) No flavour was intrusive but it encompassed a complete range of tastes - salty, sour, sweet, bitter and umami. And the koshu was as good an accompaniment as you could have chosen, refreshing the palate between each bite and allowing you to appreciate each new texture.

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