Dish… wine buff Mark Turner recommends the perfect vino to complement spicy food Generally, when talking about wine to match spicy food, the assumption is that one is talking about Indian style curries.
On a recent Air China flight from Beijing, the only wine on offer was Chinese-produced Great Wall – white or red – both served at room temperature. I declined to try the white but intrigued enough to look at Great Wall’s website where they are confident that the wines are good matches with Chinese food. I have yet to put this to the test but know from experience that the complex flavours of say, Cantonese cuisine, respond particularly well to aromatic off-dry whites like GewÜrtztraminer or Torrontes, Argentina’s answer to Malvasia or Fiano or Greco di Tufo from around Naples in Italy. I have never found that red wines work particularly well with Chinese food - somehow the tannins, even in softer reds like Beaujolais tend to conflict with spices like ginger and anise in the food. I am always surprised at how many Chinese restaurants in London push the dry whites at the expense of these aromatic whites I have listed.
6 dish… taster
My local Thai restaurant has recently addressed the problem of wines to match their cuisine by offering a wholly-Thai produced range from the Siam Winery. Monsoon Valley Blended White (grapes: Malaga Blanc and Colombard) is an excellent match to Thai food and works particularly well with flavours like lemongrass and dried shrimp paste. It has reasonably good acidity with hints of citrus fruits on the nose and melon and lychee on the palate. Siam Winery also produces a delightful rose and a quite fruity red, both of which include Pokdum, a local grape variety, in their blends.
Although the Indian subcontinent has a long tradition of winemaking (possibly dating back as far as 3000BCE), domestic consumption is still extremely low. The Star of India stocks a range of wines from India and I recently tasted two from the restaurant’s list. Both were from the Indage vineyard in the Sahyadri Valley near Narayangaon in Pune. The first was a white wine, The Grey Count Chenin Blanc 2008 Medium dry, in
fact a little too much for my taste, it had a good nose with a honeyed palate which was however a little short on the finish. I would recommend it served very chilled with really spicy food but, be warned it has a 14.5% alcohol content. The second, from the same producers, The Grey Count Reserve Zinfandel Rose 2008 had a lot more to offer. Soft tannins give it a backbone and there is a hint of strawberry on the palate. It would go well with more subtly spiced foods or, as it is really very pleasant, just drunk on its own as an aperitif.
What to drink with Szechuan or Korean food? I am at a loss to recommend anything here. An experience in a Szechuan restaurant in Hong Kong last year has convinced me that beer, green tea and water (preferably all three) are the best choices. It is easier just to submit to the chilli rather than try to complement it!