Chilli with your cabernet? In Asia, sure
What wine should be drunk with a spicy, silky green Thai curry, accompany a Korean stew laden with fiery chillies and garlic, or, perhaps, a delicate sliver of raw sea bream dipped ever-so-lightly into soy sauce?
As economic growth brings more Asians into the middle class and the ranks of wine-lovers, sampling the fruits of the vine — mainly for prestige — has become more widespread, purely as something to drink because it tastes good.
But the question of pairing with food is far less pressing than for wine devotees in places with a longer history of wine drinking, said Jeannie Cho Lee, a Hong Kong-based wine expert and author of Mastering Wine for the Asian Palate.
“The reality of how people drink wine and enjoy it is very casually, without a pairing concept in mind,” she said in a telephone interview. “But if you really want to show off a wine, you obviously don’t want a food that kills it. If you are presenting some exquisite delicacy and you want to show off that dish, or a particular special meal, you won’t want to choose a wine to spoil that.”
This means taking into account personal tastes and tolerance levels for basic Asian flavours such as the spice of chilli, the savoury tang of umami present in soy sauce.
“Umami as an ingredient in general — it really brings out the depth of dark berry flavours, it also brings out any leather or mushroom notes in the wine,” she said. “If the chef gives you the soy dip to use with fish, it’s probably going to taste better if you have it with a Pinot Noir, with a bit of tannins, a bit of depth and spices and herb notes, because there are gentle layers of flavours.”
Thai curries with both coconut milk and spice, such as a green curry, are a relatively simple match with Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon blended wines — a combination of roundness, depth and crispness. With chilli, Lee recommends a red wine with enough fruit to stand up to the chillies and their strong heat.
“Chilli has, I would say, a very confrontational effect with tannins. When you have tannins and chili together, they accentuate each other,” she said.
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