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By CHRIS SHERMAN
© St. Petersburg Times,
Even a guy like Neil Hadley, an Englishman who passed years of tests to earn the rank of Master of Wine, can be stumped. He tells it like this: He's working in Sydney for Rosemount Estate, his wife's favorite aunt is visiting, and she wants to go to a curry house. So he looked at his cellar and grabbed a bottle of the winery's semillon to take along, a good grade but nothing fancy. The modest white might work and, if not, it would be no big loss.
"The curry was medium to hot," Hadley remembers, "and the wine was fabulous" because it was easy to drink up front, but had a firm acid backbone that lasted in the mouth as long as the afterburn of the curry. How can the rest of us, the less knowledgeable, sort out that kind of puzzle? Once there was a rule: Red wine with red meat, white wine with fish. It was not inviolate, but it worked. Then no-rules ruled: Pairing food and wine is obsolete; it went down with eight-course dinners and the Titanic. Drink whatever wine you like with whatever you're eating. Who's to tell you what to drink? Now there's a do-it-yourself principle: "Bad" food and wine combinations can be corrected to perfect balance by adding salt, lemon or sugar to the food. That seems to work too. All three approaches made sense for pairing wine with a steak, lobster, a plate of spaghetti or wiener schnitzel. So what to drink with Thai froglegs in basil sauce? Lamb kormas? Pho with seven kinds of beef? Moo shu pork? A Tokyo roll? In a new Pan-Asian restaurant, all those flavors could be served at one table -- or on one plate. The easy answers are beer, sake or tea, but don't give up on wine. We're eating Asian food at lunch and at fancy dinners, and we're drinking more wine too. There's no reason they can't go together. Remember the no-rules rule, and recall that companions are the most important ingredient at any table. Wine can be the perfect drink with a tom yum salad of lemony beef or deep-fried tofu in a Panang sauce of coconut milk, peanut and peppers. Try either one with a crisp riesling, a pinot grigio or, watch out, white zinfandel. Sophisticated foods from the Pacific Rim are as likely as French or Italian dishes to star in the newest fine restaurants around Tampa Bay. Redwoods, Pacific Wave, Island Way Grill, Cafe B.T. and Roy's all have genuine wine lists with dozens of choices, not just the "red, white or plum" of days gone by. And the wineries encourage it, says Joe Chouinard, the chef at St. Petersburg's Pacific Wave. "This is not a new cuisine; in other cities they've been cooking like this for 10 years. The wineries want to be a part of it." Pacific Wave has expanded its wine list, adding more pinot noir and viognier, and has held training sessions with its staff. So which wines do go well with Asian food? All the rules (and non-rules) apply. Certainly if you like a wine and a food, that's good, no matter what anyone says. However, the fact that the foods of Asia and the wines of Europe have long been separate pleasures means that combining them is new to most of us. That may be why we look for others' experience or general principles and clues, if not rules, about how taste works to get us started. Follow the basic red/white division if you wish, just skip the reds and whites you're most likely to pick: cabernet, merlot or chardonnay. "They're horrible," says Sid Goldstein of Fetzer Wines, author of The Wine Lover's Cookbook (Chronicle Books, 1999). Those wines, while the most popular and most familiar to most American drinkers, happen to be full wines, high in alcohol and aged in wood, and the reds are bitter and tannic. Their heavy weight and oaky flavor usually clobber the wild array of flavors -- sweet, sour, salty, fiery, but always delicate tastes -- that abound in Asian cooking. "They (cabernet and chardonnay) don't go with the light, sweet flavors and the peppers of this food" Chouinard agrees. "You want something crisp and fruity. Ultimately, it's about the marriage of the food and the wine.". You needn't despair; almost any other wine, even sparkling bubbly, roses and white zinfandel, will be a better match with Asian foods. "All you need is something fruity, low in alcohol and not oaky," Goldstein said. There are some physiological reasons this is so. When there's more alcohol (which can range from 7 to 14 percent) in a wine, it makes hot dishes taste hotter. Wines with higher acid, including roses, light reds and crisper whites, taste fruitier when eaten with salty foods such as fish sauces, soy and shellfish. Obviously, strong flavors overpower delicate ones. Finally, consider this emotional precept from Randall Caparosa, wine director for Roy's chain of restaurants. He's a native Hawaiian who can smell frangipani in a wine or steer the blending of custom wines in St. Chinian, Baden and Santa Barbara to match Roy's. Ultimately, he says, if you're eating adventurously, drink adventurously. All the more reason to set aside the chard or the cab and merlot for now and try something else: Riesling. Traditional favorites are German white wines, especially riesling. The delicate balance between acid and sugar gives them a racy crispness and a floral scent that refreshes the palate, cools heat and likes to jump in and play with the other flavors. Gewurztraminers, made sweet or dry in the United States and Germany (and tartly dry in Alsace, in France), don't have quite as much backbone but are still light and floral, good fun with Thai and Vietnamese dishes. Sauvignon blanc or fume blanc. This is America's No. 2 white wine, only rarely oaked, and it's great with seafood, sushi and Thai or Vietnamese foods, especially those with lemon grass and other herbal flavors. Pinot grigio or pinot gris is another light, crisp, dry white with good acidity for spicy foods. Viognier. This white grape from the Rhone is gaining general popularity, especially with Asian foods. It can seem as round and heavy as a chardonnay but it's lighter, a touch sweeter with a hint of peaches that tastes great with dishes spiced with ginger. Chenin blanc. Chenin is often bland stuff, but good chenins from France or the United States have a honey flavor and crispness that go well with a meal of widely varying flavors. Semillon. Often the soft partner to sauvignon blanc, Australia knows it can be otherwise. It makes a lot of semillon and has found it can make a good partner to dishes from its Pacific Rim neighbors. Sparkling wine. The liveliness and acidity of Champagne and other sparkling wines are great with sushi and Asian dishes with salty or strong flavors. Rose and blush. Snobs don't like white zinfandel, but Chinese food and other substantial meals love white zin. Roses in general are cool, crisp, fruity and sometimes floral, good with hot stuff and cool sushi. Pinot noir. Sure, red wine goes with Asian food, especially the lighter reds, and the current favorite is pinot noir. It's never as heavy or oaky as cabernet or merlot, and it has a fruity taste of cherries and peppers that stands up to lively flavors. Plus, pinot is good with salmon or duck, both popular in Asian restaurants. Beaujolais, a similar red, is a fine match too, especially with poultry. Rhones. Peppery zinfandels, syrahs and Cotes-du-Rhones can be good matches for the spicy or grilled dishes. Cabernet sauvignon and merlot. Heavier red wines are best when the food is simple, rich and Eurasian, with the emphasis on European, such as steak or a rack of lamb with a Chinese mushroom sauce. -- Chris Sherman, who writes about food and wine for the St. Petersburg Times, is the author of "The Buzz on Wine" (Lebhar-Friedman Books, $16.95). East meets wineThe best wines to pair with Asian food: White
Red and rose
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