Food and Wine


 

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Chinese food

As in our comments on ethnic fare in general, Chinese food can be tricky to match with wine for two reasons: It's a cuisine that evolved in a society that didn't cherish wine, so it wasn't invented with wine in mind; and its wide variety of meats, seafood and vegetables on a single table - along with some exotic spice flavors - make it tough to come up with a single match.

The conventional wisdom dismisses all Asian foods with a single wine choice: Gewurztraminer. Gewurz will work, but despite tradition, it's not so much because Gerwurz is "spicy" - in fact, it's not - this is folklore based on the fact that "Gewurz" means "spicy" in German - but because it's rich and usually slightly sweet. For similar reasons, don't overlook Riesling, particularly the German style, with your Chinese menu.

Finally, if you're careful about selecting wines to match single Chinese specialties rather than trying to make one bottle fit every dish on the table, you'll find that most dry European-style table wines do work. Pinot Noir with Peking Duck, Cabernet with stir-fry beef dishes (if they're not too hot), rich Chardonnay with Lobster Cantonese and so on down Columns A and B.

For an old but still valuable report on a large Cantonese banquet and the array of wines that one group of wine fanciers chose to match it, see our report on Chinese Food and Wine.

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