Grilled snapper wings (fins) can be found at Japanese restaurants, but they're an easy dish to make at home. They can be seasoned with anything from sea salt to Cajun blackened spices, but the fins shouldn't be marinated because the flesh is easily degraded by oil and liquids such as onion juice. Grill the snapper wings in a cast iron skillet until crisp and charred in spots. The best wine with this dish should have a savoury edge. There's no point trying to compete with the super-succulence of the fish so stay focused on the brown flavour tones from the grilling and seasoning and look for wine that supports the freshness. You can also play with the texture - tannins will destroy the fish but bubbles and silky glycerol alcohol will add to the pairing.
Krug Grand Cuvee, Reims, France
Krug is a complex wine - in fact, even if you let this champagne go flat, it's still a tasty drop. It's nice to have a few glasses of Krug on its own, but its complexity really shines when paired with food - anything from beef carpaccio to black bean crabs to deep fried intestines. The Krug magic is in perfect synch with salt-baked snapper wings. The occasional crunchy mouthful and brown notes of the crisp wings tie to deep flavours from the Krug's unique barrel fermentation technique. The champagne's bubbles give the silky wings another dimension. A generous amount of finely ground fresh black pepper will heighten the Krug's depth and breadth.
Available for HK$1,030 from Moet Hennessy Diageo (tel: 2976 1888)
Louis Latour Chassagne-Montrachet 2002, Burgundy, France
Louis Latour is one of the biggest brands and vineyard owners in Burgundy; the reason it's so big stems from its success at delivering good-quality wines. This creamy Chassagne-Montrachet is the perfect match with grilled snapper wings with Chinese five-spice. The silky wine plays with the supple wings while the acid backbone steers and directs the flavour combination to a long finish. The interaction between the wine's lightly spiced oak and the Chinese five-spice melts into each other seamlessly. The clove component in the spice mixture melts into the crisp brown flavours of the wings; the cinnamon provides warmth against the richness of the Burgundy fruit, and the pepper gives high notes that changes the personality of the frisky chardonnay fruit into a solemn deep thinker.
