 It’s obvious even to those whose sole exposure to Chinese cuisine is the occasional take out dim-sum, that European and Chinese attitudes to the dining table are as different as table salt and soy sauce; aesthetically completely dissimilar but ultimately there for the same reason.
In pairing wine with Chinese food -- something every winemaker from Champagne to Central Otago seems keen to do these days – it’s important that we do not just assume that the same rules of pairing apply.
As part of this year’s Vinexpo Academy, we held a master class intended to introduce an experimental approach to pairing different from the one typically employed for European cuisines. According to European matching principles (to generalize the practices of an entire continent – something we hate when people do it to ours – but we need some generalizations to get by!) wine is usually matched to the protein of the dish.
Chinese cuisine, which tends to be more sauce-driven, calls for a sauce-based pairing system. It may be steamed fish, but if it’s drowned in chopped scallions, fried shallots and soy sauce, you don’t necessarily want a light white wine to go with it.
In general, we’re not big believers in courses that demonstrate how well a specific wine matches a specific dish – is it likely you’ll ever have this exact dish again, or this wine? Giving people the tools to determine how elements combine to produce flavor and how those components react with wine seems more practical.
To support this idea, we decided to work exclusively with sauces. In order to avoid demolishing our palates after the first swig of soy, we also had plain rice, steamed chicken and steamed shrimp, which are fairly typical components of a Cantonese meal and also contribute texture, a key factor in pairing no matter where the dish comes from.
We chose sixteen sauces and garnishes to represent Chinese, particularly the Cantonese cuisine. These included light and dark soy, red and black vinegar, shrimp paste, oyster sauce, and other Chinese favorites that occasionally made those students who were not yet lovers of the cuisine, squirm. The course outlined the production methods and chemical makeup of these ingredients to help predict how they would interact with various wine styles.
On the other side of the ring, we had six wines chosen together with the Vinexpo team. Vinexpo being a French fair, our only new world selection was a Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc and Italy didn’t even get a single wine in the lineup.
And thus, we braced our tongues, popped open our sauce containers and got tasting to see what held true in practice. With 96 possible combinations, it was a long slog. Some combos were an obvious “yuck” – red Bordeaux with red chili, for example, was one moment in Chinese culture where red with red did not equal double happiness.
 Unsurprisingly, white had a much easier time of it, with Riesling and Gewürztraminer taking the lead. However, the Gewürz in particular was less versatile than expected, totally overwhelming any sauce that might conceivably be described as subtle. The Savvy made a surprisingly appealing match with plum sauce, bringing out something high-toned, and ethereal in both; good news since this sauce is used to douse roast or barbecued fowl of all feathers, plus the ever-popular spring rolls and fried dumplings.
Ultimately, we’re not hoping to write a new rule book from this. The aim of the project was more about giving Chinese drinkers the comfort levels required to experiment; something akin to the one about teaching a man to fish vs. giving him a fish.
“Give a country a pairing menu and it’ll drink wine for a day, teach a country to make its own pairing choices and it’ll drink wine forever.”
Debra Meiburg MW
 A resident of Hong Kong for nearly 25 years, Debra Meiburg MW is a celebrated wine journalist, TV personality, wine educator and in-demand speaker who holds the top honour in the wine world – Master of Wine.
Along with producing the Guide to the Hong Kong Wine Trade, Debra is presenter in the wine television series Taste the Wine, delivers one-minute video wine tips called Grape Moments via China’s metro-city taxis and has developed a chic suite of “edutainment tools" for wine students and aficionados. In 2011, she was one of “seven people to watch” in Decanter’s Power List and recently was recipient of the highly-regarded 2012 Vinitaly International Award. |