A Hedonist in the Cellar_ Adventures in Wine - Jay McInerney [65]
To begin with, let me make a blanket generalization and declare that Champagne goes very well with sushi and most other Japanese food. According to Richard Geoffroy, wine-maker for Dom Pérignon, it’s a marriage based, in part, on the compatibility of the yeast in the Champagne and the yeast in the soy sauce; plus, the wine’s high acidity cuts through the saltiness—as with caviar. For similar reasons, Champagne works well with dim sum. It’s more difficult to make generalizations about other Chinese cuisines, given the many regional styles, but most of us are familiar with a hybrid of Cantonese and Szechuan cooking.
I recently celebrated my birthday at Canton, my favorite Chinese restaurant, located in New York’s Chinatown. One reason I chose the place was that it allows me to bring my own wine. On the other hand, Cantonese food is not exactly a slam dunk when it comes to wine matching. But I had more hits than misses.
One intuition, increasingly confirmed by experience, is that the white wines of Alsace and Germany often make great companions for Chinese and South Asian dishes—Riesling being especially companionable with Cantonese cooking, as the ′99 Barmès Buecher Hengst grand cru proved in conjunction with the minced squab wrapped in lettuce leaf. The most exciting match of the birthday dinner was a Zind-Humbrecht Pinot Gris with Peking duck. (Several Alsatian winemakers, including Olivier Humbrecht, had tipped me off to this one. The slight smokiness of the Pinot Gris is amplified by the smokiness of the long-cooked duck.) One thing that makes these wines so successful with somewhat sweet, somewhat spicy food is their residual sugar. Anyone who is horrified at the idea of sweetness—who thinks that the words dry and sophisticated are synonymous—should get over it. Or drink beer. A touch of sugar, which many Alsatian and German wines have, is the perfect counterpoint to spice; these wines are also inevitably high in acidity, which balances out the sweetness of a sauce like hoisin. When going German, choose a Spätlese, a late-picked wine with good body and ripeness.
I also had a red wine success, pairing a ′96 Martinelli Jackass Hill Vineyard Zinfandel with the Cantonese beef and onions. I have since had almost unerring satisfaction with (red) Zinfandel and Chinese food, especially Ridge’s Lytton Springs (a 70 percent Zin blend), which is widely available. I have no idea why Zinfandel works with such a wide variety of feisty Chinese dishes—like sesame chicken and orange-flavored beef—though I suspect it has to do with the natural exuberance and sweetness of the grape and its low tannins. Try it.
I have always loved Viognier, especially from the Condrieu region of France, but I never really knew what to drink it with—it seems too floral and assertive for most white wine dishes—until I took a suggestion from a waiter at Chiam, a Chinese restaurant in midtown Manhattan. The 2000 Copain Viognier from the Russian River region of California seemed to distinguish itself with every dish—shrimp dumplings, spicy prawns, and sesame chicken—and I have since been converted to Chinese with both French and domestic Viogniers. Indian food is, if anything, even trickier than Chinese. Vindaloo, anyone? (Again, there are many cuisines in the subcontinent, but on these shores generalizations can be made.) I have often drunk Gewürztraminer with Indian food—it’s almost a cliché at this point that Gewürz, with its wacky rose-water and lychee nut character, goes with hot food like curries. The principle of balancing sweet and hot serves as a guideline—think of the wine as serving the purpose of a sweet chutney. A slightly sweet Gewürz, even a Vendange Tardive, can stand up to a hotter curry.
I was introduced to a more offbeat partner for Indian flavors by Richard Breitkreutz, the former wine director at three-star Tabla, which specializes in the cuisine of