Pairing wine with Chinese cuisine

I’ve written before about pairing wine with Chinese food - and so have some of my contributors but here’s a slightly different way of going about it that may help you decide which bottle to choose and make your pairings more successful. It involves deciding which flavours are predominant in a dish or selection of dishes.

Of course dishes of different types tend to be put on the table at the same time but they tend to be grouped together. You rarely find a delicate seafood dish served alongside a stir fry of beef in black bean sauce, for example, so it makes sense, as it does for a Western meal, to open more than one bottle. Be guided by the most intensely flavoured dish you’ve cooked or ordered - this is the one that’s going to dominate any wine that you’re drinking.

Wine matches for classic Chinese dishes

Delicate seafood flavours, typical of Cantonese cuisine as in steamed dim sum, scallops, steamed whole fish: Minerally Sauvignon Blanc e.g. Sancerre, young Chablis and other young white burgundy, dry German or Austrian Riesling, Champagne

Deep fried dim sum and other snacks: sparkling wine.

Spicy noodles: Viognier

Sweet and sour dishes: Fruity rosé e.g. Merlot-based Bordeaux, Australian and Chilean rosés, Australian Semillon-Chardonnay blends

Duck dishes such as crispy duck with pancakes: New World Pinot Noir, Merlot and Merlot blends

Dishes in which ginger is a dominant note e.g. crab or lobster with ginger: Gewürztraminer

Black bean sauce: Rich, velvety but not too tannic reds e.g. Chilean or other ripe New World Cabernet, fruity Zinfandel

Barbecued dishes such as spare ribs: As above

Rich braised dishes, hotpots: More tannic reds such as Syrah or blends of Syrah, Grenache and Mourvèdre

Hot, fiery dishes typical of Szechuan cuisine: Wines with a touch of sweetness especially Alsace Pinot Gris and Gewürztraminer - even sweet wine - see Margaret Rand’s article on Tokaji

Wine matches for trickier Chinese dishes

Inspired by these recipes from Mark Hix that appeared recently in The Independent:

Tea-smoked duck with egg noodles
I’ve always meant to tackle tea-smoking but Hix’s cautious injunction to “have the extractor fan on full” illustrates the problem. This sounds a delicious recipe though - faintly smoky duck in a clear chilli-laced broth but not one that’s particularly wine-friendly. One of the new wave of drier German Rieslings is probably your best bet though a Gewürztraminer might make a more exciting option.

Ox cheek and mushroom hotpot
I bet Mark wrote this two or three weeks ago when it looked as if we would never have a summer. It’s not quite the recipe for the last few days’ steamy temperatures. The dominant flavours in this meaty stew - apart from the mushrooms - are ginger, five spice and sesame. I’m torn between a fruity Syrah and a full-bodied Pinot Noir. I think the latter just about wins.

Hot and sour cuttlefish soup
A sharp, flavoured clear, slightly fishy broth which really doesn’t need an accompanying wine or anything else, come to that. If that’s all there is to the meal, maybe a cup of refreshing green or black tea afterwards - milkless, of course.

Fried chilli prawns with pea shoots
On first glance I thought this might be less challenging than the other recipes. I was wrong. Apart from the chilli, there’s a lot of garlic and a good dash of oyster sauce and the prawns and peashoots are cooked over smoking sesame oil. A well-chilled fino sherry to the rescue, I think or, if you find sherry a bit strong to drink with a meal, a crisp Kolsch (Cologne-style lager). The Meantime Brewery does a good one for Sainsbury's under the Taste the Difference label.

Note: like most Asian cuisines there’s normally more than one dish in a Chinese meal. Mark doesn’t say what other dishes he’d serve with these recipes, if any but if you start to introduce other powerful flavours, attempting to match them becomes more complicated still. Overall the wine I find most flexible with Chinese food is a merlot-based rosé

For further reading:

Heavenly Match: wine meets Chinese cuisine by Lau Chin Sun published by Moët Hennessy Diageo Hong Kong. Some interesting insights although all the wines are from the Moet Hennessy portfolio.

Wine with Asian Food: new frontiers in taste. Patricia Guy and Edwin Soon. 2007 Tide-Mark Press . A more comprehensively thought-out Pan-Asian approach with Old World and New World recommendations. Some intriguing suggestions e.g. Rioja Gran Reserva or Grange with stir-fried beef and peppers but an odd bias in favour of Italian wines (Guy lives in Italy)

Image by Elena Eryomenko at shutterstock.com

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