Grape & Grain | When pairing wine with Asian food, go straight to the sauce
From chilli crab to char siu, from Thai fishcakes to teppanyaki, when it comes to matching Asian food with wine, the usual rules don’t always apply, as seen at the Hong Kong International Wine and Spirit Competition
Watching a pair of dancers twirl and leap their way through a performance is enthralling.
To be at their peak, dancers must have great chemistry, be in sync, and bring just the right amount of strength to the partnership. The same applies to pairing wine with food. If a wine is too light, a rich dish will throw it off its feet; too heavy and it will weigh down the whole meal, like a ballerina failing to achieve lift.
Asian cuisines, with their complex and varied flavour combinations, dazzle our palates with fancy footwork. Unlike European wine matching traditions, where pairing is based on the key protein of the meal, such as meat or fish, sauce flavours take the lead in Asia. The “white wine with fish, red wine with meat” rules do not always apply, making pairing a challenge, but not impossible – a shoe-slapping Beaujolais can certainly hold its own against a quick-stepping chilli crab.
The best wine pairings add another dimension to the meal and leave no component waiting in the wings. This judging criteria, applied at Hong Kong’s very own Asian food and wine pairing awards (part of the Cathay Pacific Hong Kong International Wine and Spirit Competition), creates intelligent pairs beyond well-known labels.
