New | Wine opinion: Asian cuisines find their perfect match
However, with many casual Asian meals, the issue with many attempted pairings is that the dishes are rarely content to play the role of scruffy street urchin to the Comtesse.
Their fancy footwork and flamboyant twirling might just throw her off her feet. In fact, the extreme range of flavours of some Asian dishes suggests they might be best partnered with the type of streetwise girl that many connoisseurs might dismiss as "not serious". A little tart sauvignon blanc perhaps?
Still, matching wine to Asian dishes is a fascinating topic, though perhaps obsessed about much more by the wine trade itself trying to find new consumption occasions for its product than consumers themselves. Nothing raises our hackles more than hearing producers imperiously declare, "My wine goes with Asian food". Asian food, like European food, runs the gamut, from the delicately perfumed nobleman that is Cantonese cuisine to the feisty merchant prince of Singapore.
Singaporeans interviewed for our Guide to the Singapore Wine Trade said they have a very challenging time matching wine with their local food, and even the F&B pros we interviewed stated that, while people are starting to bring their wine to the hawker stands that represent some of the city's richest culinary heritage, the wine choices themselves tend to be quite simple.
The bottles on view are often varietal new world picks with simple fruit and uncomplicated appeal, washing down nicely with the fast talking chilli crab and carrot cake on the table.