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Secrets to Pairing Wine, Chinese Food

Posted on: Friday, 17 December 2004, 15:00 CST

I'll set the scene briefly because it is likely to be familiar.

The workday has ended, leaving a couple, or several friends, unequal to the task of cooking and unwilling to dine in a restaurant.

The option? Chinese carryout (unless the remains of a prior feed are available at home).

The next question: What's to drink? Although most people think of hot tea or beer, wine can be an excellent match.

Chinese food, however, can be a real enigma when it comes to making matches with wine.

You are probably safe serving sparkling wine, if only because it is cold and carbonated, like beer and soda pop. While Chinese cuisine utilizes all manner of wine-friendly fish, meat and vegetables, their preparation rarely is simple. Soy sauce (read salt) is present often; so is sugar, vinegar and the "sweet-sour" combination of the two. Spices can be hot or boldly aromatic.

Chinese cooks often follow the spiritual principles of yin and yang. Tony DiDio and Amy Zavatto point out in a thoughtful new book, "Renaissance Guide to Wine & Food Pairing" (Alpha Books, $18.95), "Yin represents foods that are subtle, cooling, moist and soft. Yang, as you would expect, is the opposite side of the spectrum and includes the spicy, the crunchy, the meaty and the herbaceous."

They also point out: "Because spicy food enhances the tannins and thus the bitterness of wine, matching big reds can be a difficult task. ... You'll lose all the sweetness in the dish itself and only taste the hot, hot, hot.

"Wines that have a slightly higher sugar content, and thus are of a sweeter nature, ease the fire of spicy foods and allow you to better savor the rest of the flavors in the dish.

"High alcohol content stokes the flames. ... As wine in general has a lower alcohol content than hard liquor, you're still more ahead of the game" than consuming a high-octane cocktail; for example, a mai tai with kung pao chicken.

"Acid is your friend ... [It] prevents dishes with a multitude of flavors from being strangled into submission," the authors write.

Overall, pouring a wine that is bright, crisp and moderately perfumed or tannic is more useful than following "rules" such as red with meat and white with fish.

Because hand-in-glove combinations are so rare (after all, the Chinese were not thinking about European-style wine when they created their cuisine), settle for a bottle with a moderate or modest price.

Some examples:

* A 2001 Rex-Goliath Pinot Noir went well with pork ribs and twice-cooked pork. But it came out last when paired with beef coated with a sweet-and-sour sauce seasoned with orange peel.

* A middleweight California riesling, the 2002 Firestone from the Central Coast, was first with two selections, sesame chicken and - surprise! - the orange-flavored beef, while finishing dead last when combined with mildly seasoned fried rice.

* The 2002 Mount Riley Sauvignon Blanc from the Marlborough region of New Zealand went with just about everything. * An Alice White cabernet-shiraz blend from Australia, with its peppery fruit from the shiraz half, worked well with the sesame chicken - but nothing else.

Source: Record, The; Bergen County, N.J.

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