Today is my birthday.
I celebrated by having dinner with good friends. Guiseppe and I took a bunch of our friends to my favorite Chinese restaurant, Hop Kee, in Chinatown. It's a BYO king of place and I brought the wines for the evening. My good friend, Lucille, brought a red wine from Cinque Terre -- the five towns in the Liguria region of Italy. My selection of wines consisted of a rose sparkling wine, white and California pinot noir.
But here's the question I get asked all the time: how do you pair wines with food?
Here is my answer:
It doesn't always have to be sweet to work! Yes, riesling and gewurztramer work just fine, but think outside the box.
Asian food has layers of flavors. It's true, it is one of the harder foods to pair wines with. Put it simply: when in doubt a sparkling wine pairs amazingly well with Asian cuisine. The acidity cuts through fat and the lemon flavors in the sparkling wine 'accents' the multitude of flavors in the cuisine. Also, I find that if you pair a spicy wine with spicy food, that works well too. Like a Rhone red. Or this Vino Rosso from Campogrande. It's a red table wine that has lots of spice, berries and is quite smooth. It tasted so washing down my lo mein and beef. Tried it with the fish with vegetables and it tasted equally as good.
I find that full bodied wines work with full bodied foods -- think big chardonnay or cabernet sauvignon with filet mignon. Steak au poivre? What about a Rhone red? Lots of pepper in that wine to complement that pepper-crusted steak.
Lemon Chicken? Fish? What about a white with acidity and lots of flavors of citrus rinds, lemon juice, white pepper? What about an Austrian Gruner Veltliner, Italian soave, pinot blanc or even a sauvignon blanc? Think of it this way: if you were to put lemon juice on that fish, why not just sip the wine for the juice?
If you are at a total loss, here's my advice: chardonnay for white, pinot noir for red and champagne baby! Always the bubbly for any occasion.
Jennifer
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