Burgundy with donkey burgers? Advice for the 37 people who care about food and wine pairing in China…

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By Jim Boyce

My December “Made in China” column for magazine The Beijinger looks at food and wine pairing, a topic about which the vast majority of consumers in China — and the world — do not care. The wine trade, on the other hand, cares immensely given the number of books and videos, blog posts and tweets, thus underscoring how niche is the audience being served. Anyway, there is a niche — both of people casually or “passionately” interested in this topic — so my take is below (you can also click the image above to make it bigger).

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An air of irrelevance surrounds the practice of pairing food and wine. We see a steady flow of books, columns and videos, providing everything from “expert advice” to “perfect pairings”, with the cuisines of China attracting growing attention over the past few years. What matches spicy hotpot? How do the onion slivers or plum sauce served with Peking duck affect a wine? Red or white with that late-night donkey burger?

Beyond the wine trade and a small niche of consumers, few people care. Most wine here is bought for reasons of status, price or health, and not taste, thus how well it goes with the dimsum is irrelevant. Drinking is typically done “bottoms up” a.k.a. “ganbei” style, leaving little chance to appreciate if a wine — poured down your gullet at 150 milliliters per shot — “lifts” the Yunnan truffle flavors in a given recipe. And dinners where the wine flows freely usually feature a dozen or more dishes that are served simultaneously and run the gamut from sweet to sour to salty to bitter. Those foods not only tend to pair well with each other but also present a myriad of flavors that make fitting one wine to them all virtually impossible.

Finally, there is the simple fact that people’s tastes differ. Some have a “sweet tooth“, others a savory one. Some like spicy Sichuan dishes, others can’t even handle the fumes. Red bean desserts can be delight or disaster, depending on your taste. The same goes for wine, with preferences that extend from so cloying as to be a candidate for a coffee sweetener to so dry and mineral that it is like licking a piece of slate. Rather than “perfect pairings” for all, it seems more accurate to say that exceptions are the rule.

Does that make food and wine pairing fruitless? No. The point is not to deny it is enjoyable but to note that the vast majority of drinkers do not care and those that do should trust their own tastes. Wine teacher Tim Hanni stresses this personal aspect well by saying the wine should match the diner, not the dinner.

With Chinese New Year coming, many of us will soon face those tables loaded with a dozen or more dishes. For those interested in pairing them with wine, here are a few ideas:

• See what the experts say. It might seem like I dismissed them earlier but only in terms of deference. Expert opinions can be a good starting point for determining your own preference. With Beijing duck, for example, most recommend Pinot Noir over Cabernet Sauvignon. See if you agree.
• Order several different wines. If a big night is in the cards, you will drink plenty of bottles, so split them between a red and a white — or even more options if possible. That means more wines to try against all those dishes.
• Experiment. I recently went for spicy hotpot with a small group. We had a wine typically recommended for spicy food, a semi-sweet German white wine, but also a half-dozen Napa reds. Our initial skepticism disappeared as the sense of sweetness from those fruit bombs, especially the Merlots, helped handle the heat.
• Have an opinion. People will argue endlessly about the best burger, duck, pizza or dumpling in Beijing. When it comes to wine, they tend to go along with the “wine guy” in the group. There is no need to be shy, it’s only fermented grape juice at stake.

Finally, if you have a special bottle, consider drinking it near the beginning of the meal, even if it is a heavy red wine. Yes, common practice puts white and lighter reds first, but why delay the star attraction until your taste buds have been vaporized by peppercorns or your brain is so numbed by booze you can barely see straight. Wine rules are made to be broken and the only perfect pairing is between the bottle and you getting the most out of it.

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