April 11, 2009 Pairing Wine With Chinese Food By JEN LINLIU BEIJING . The red, Sichuan peppercorn-spiked gravy that covered the tender slices of beef served as a warning: This was going to be no easy task. .This is where most people reach for the beer,. said Campbell Thompson, a Beijing-based wine importer. .Or maybe just a glass of water,. said another guest. .Or maybe just white rice,. chimed in a third dinner partner. On a recent Tuesday evening, I gathered a group of eight wine and Chinese cuisine experts in my courtyard kitchen in central Beijing to taste a broad range of 10 Chinese dishes with eight wines. The goal was to test the common perception that it.s challenging . or downright impossible . to pair wines with Chinese cuisine. The Chinese have a dinnertime tradition of drinking baijiu, a high-grade Chinese grain alcohol, but in recent years, more international wines have begun to appear on restaurant menus in China, from the most traditional state-owned Chinese restaurants to trendy ones like Lan and Da Dong in Beijing. But even as wine lists have emerged at restaurants in Beijing and Shanghai, some wine experts argue that little thought has gone into putting those wine lists together. Burgundies, costly bottles of Lafite, and anything labeled Bordeaux are often served at lavish Chinese meals meant to impress important guests. But some wine experts say that those wines clash with the spice and complex flavors of Sichuanese food and are too heavy to go with the delicate seafood dishes of Cantonese cuisine. .The young nature of the local wine market is what inhibits creative wine pairings,. said Gabriel Suk, the senior representative in Asia for the Chicago-based wine auction house Hart Davis Hart. .Chinese restaurants are told what to purchase by the local distributor, who might be making decisions based on sales margins rather than a concerted effort to find the best pairing.. Another challenge in pairing wines with Chinese cuisine is the complexity of sauces and ingredients that go into the dishes, said Fongyee Walker, who owns the Beijing wine consultancy Dragon Phoenix Wines with her husband, Edward Ragg. In Western cooking, she said, .you can almost think of the wine as a sauce that goes with the dish.. .In Chinese cooking,. she continued, .the dishes are already balanced and complete in themselves. For example, a touch of sugar goes into almost every savory Chinese dish.. The upside is that because pairing wine with Chinese cuisine is a relatively new concept, .it.s a blank slate,. said Mr. Ragg. I figured my kitchen, where I hold cooking classes and private dinners, would be a good place to discover what works. Joining me for the dinner were Mr. Thompson, Mr. Ragg and Ms. Walker; Melissa Wong and Robert Chu, a Chinese-American couple living in Beijing who are avid wine drinkers; Fiona Sun, the editor of the magazine Wine in China; and Vicky Lok, a Guangzhou-based wine broker. For the occasion, Mr. Thompson, who owns a wine importing company called The Wine Republic, donated four white wines, one pinot noir rosélend, and three red wines from the New and Old World that retailed from 170 yuan to 520 yuan, or $25 to $75, in Beijing. Mr. Thompson chose light to medium-bodied wines, and reds with lower tannins, too much of which can clash with salt and spice. Dishes were served in order of their complexity of flavors, beginning with lighter dishes and ending with two dishes loaded with Sichuan peppercorns and dried chili peppers, before moving on to a dessert of candied .basi. apples, a common Beijing dish. One definite winner of the evening was a semisweet riesling. The 2007 Mount Difficulty Target Gully Riesling from Marlborough, New Zealand, stood up to spicy, more complex dishes, including kungpao cashew chicken with its sugar, black Shanxi vinegar, chili peppers, and faint hint of Sichuan peppercorns. With a medium body and high acidity, the riesling balanced the sugar, salt, and even the pickled flavor of the wok-fried bamboo shoots. By contrast, a 2007 Seresin Estate Sauvignon Blanc also from Marlborough, New Zealand, while slightly effervescent and zingy on its own, was too light to retain its identity when awash with other flavors. .I love rieslings; they go well with Chinese cuisine because the mouth-feel is quite refreshing,. said Ms. Sun, the magazine editor. .The range of dry to sweet rieslings can match all types of Chinese food, plus it.s never too heavy, but rather fresh and fruity.. We also discovered two other versatile wines: a 2007 grüeltliner from Nigl, an Austrian winery, and a 2006 Yering Station pinot noir rosérom the Yarra Valley in Australia. The light pepper and fruity aroma of the grüeltliner, a lesser-known white grape that is almost exclusively grown in central Europe, complemented the steamed sea bass and the stir-fried cabbage hearts with shiitake mushrooms. The soft texture, subtle tannins and floral notes of the extra-dry pinot noir roséade it go well with nearly everything from the pan-fried pork and pumpkin dumplings to the sweet and sour pork (which turned out to be one of the hardest dishes to pair). One surprise was that the 2006 Te Tera pinot noir from the Martinborough Vineyard in New Zealand worked quite well with several dishes, including twice-cooked pork. The spice, sugar and lightly fermented sauces of the pork dish amplified the pinot noir with light tannins, making it taste more like a full-bodied merlot. Two wines that did not find a place on the table were the 2006 Miss Harry blend of grenache, shiraz and mourvèe from Hewitson in South Australia and a 2005 red Burgundy, the Hautes Cô de Nuits from A.F. Gros. .I can see these going with something heavier, like red-braised pork,. Mr. Ragg said. We also found it difficult to match any of the wines with two dishes laced with Sichuan peppercorns, the oil-braised beef and the Chongqing spicy chicken. They clashed with each sip of even the more elegant wines, like the light-bodied 2007 Chablis Premier Cru from Jean-Marc Brocard and the red Burgundy. Each taste set off an echo chamber of numbing spice in my mouth. .It.s a lovely dish on its own,. Mr. Ragg said, almost apologetically. He suggested that perhaps a palette-cleansing sparkling wine might be interesting to try with Sichuan peppercorn dishes on another occasion. The evening demonstrated that pairing wine with Chinese cuisine wasn.t as difficult as it seemed, save a few Sichuan peppercorns. Mr. Suk, the wine auction house representative, suggested that if a Chinese restaurant doesn.t have a decent wine list, bringing your own bottle is usually an option. Corkage fees at Chinese restaurants in China and abroad are typically low, ranging from $5 to $10, while many hole-in-the-wall eateries may allow you to bring wine for free. The evening also showed the enthusiasm the Chinese have for wine. Winemakers should be heartened by the conversion of Ms. Lok, the wine broker from Guangzhou, who had primarily consumed baijiu before tasting her first imported wine in 2006. She soon learned about the difference between New and Old World wines and became an avid drinker of the wines of Spain, Germany and Argentina. But she still vividly remembers her first sip of an imported wine: .It was a south Australian shiraz. It was so much better than the Chinese wines I.d had in the past, and you didn.t have to add Sprite to it.. Jen Lin-Liu is the owner of the Black Sesame Kitchen cooking school in Beijing and the author of ..Serve the People: A Stir-Fried Journey Through China... -- ------------------------------ * Dr. James Ellingson, jellings(a)me.umn.edu * * University of Minnesota, mobile : 651/645-0753 * * Great Lakes Brewing News, 1569 Laurel Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104 *