Many have long believed that non-Western food—from Indian to Thai—pairs better with beer. That is hardly ever the case, and this is a topic on which I even have long pontificated. Many Asian and Middle Eastern countries also have their vibrant wine industries: Lebanon, Morocco, and Turkey have all long produced wine. Now China, Thailand, and India are beginning to accomplish that as well.
So I had a nice long chat with Maz Naba, the sommelier and wine director at San Francisco’s present-day Chinese restaurant Mr. Jiu’s, located in an alley in Chinatown.
All responses had been edited and condensed for clarity. Liza B. Zimmerman (LBZ): What wines pair well with Chinese meals? Maz Naba (MN): Best iterations of pairings I’ve had with whites are high acid, leaning closer to a tropical and riper fruit slant. However, they are not necessarily candied, as is frequently the easy pick while pairing with Chinese or any Asian ingredients with spice for that to be counted.
The anchor for me is always acidity, which keeps making you salivate: as you have extra wine, your palate receives refreshed, allowing you to keep consuming more spiced, fatty, and robust meals. I also love reds which can be both vibrant and juicy, with excessive acid, and with low tannin structure (which include Cru Beaujolais) or spicy and bold reds with a chunk of extra grip and grit: like Côte Rôtie or Syrahs from Sonoma or Santa Barbara.
It all relies upon truely on the dish because the spectrum of Chinese food can provide variety broadly. One of my favorite pairings is aged Piedmontese reds: Barolo, Barbaresco, and Lessona, among others, with our Peking-fashion Liberty Farms Duck. The excessive acidity, red citrus, licorice, and violet-rose aromatic elements are this sort of adorable assist to the richness and ambitious focused flavors that come from our geese’ aging process.
LBZ: Are many of the dishes higher with whites, and in that case, why?
MN: As an all-around ‘pass to wine, I love rosé with Chinese food: especially if it is made in the Vin Gris fashion: crafted from an immediate pressing of pink grapes. If I actually have a problem guiding a guest closer to a selected fashion of wine, I rely upon the notion that the flexibility of rosé is so good-sized and factor out how diverse our selection is.
Rosé virtually has the nice of both worlds with wines that vary from light to full and nearly continually have sufficient acidity—as with maximum of them the fruit is being picked early sufficient to keep freshness—and often has the sparkling fruit and weight additives to assist bridge the divide between white and crimson.
Champagne with age is also an incredible option; however, the one’s wines can often be out of peoples’ price factors. So if now not rosé, I head back to wines produced with the right quantity of residual sugar that, when evolving, their sweetness dissipates and turns to frame.
LBZ: What dishes are excellent with reds?
MN: Dishes like silken tofu with rib eye, Liberty Farms duck, Wolfe Ranch quail, bird dirty rice, and long beans are all true alternatives.
LBZ: Can you have meat, such as red meat, with white wine?
MN: The first issue I constantly keep in mind is how much weight the white has and if the red meat dish has acidity as nicely. A crisp white would be steamrolled with a boldly flavored pork dish, but a fuller white should rise to it.
Additionally, if I am pairing whites with meat dishes, I decide upon whites with pores and skin touch during manufacturing. These wines could have enough frame and weight and sufficient acidity to boost the fatty parts of a few portions of meat and anchor tannins and green texture from the extended maceration of the skins.
LBZ: What taste factors of those wines stand up to unique sauces and spices in your foods?
MN: I search for texture, weight, acidity, acidity, acidity, and more acidity. Residual sugar is not regularly the first component I remember, however greater like those wines that have developed into and given manner to more body through the sugars than sweetness.
LBZ: Can you discuss a couple of pairings and why they work in the wine/food flavors?
MN: I love pairing wines with age. Some of my favorites, though, emerge as being whites that had been produced with a great quantity of residual sugar. Some of the wines I’ve been most amazed by are off-dry whites from the Loire Valley.
LBZ: Why do most of the sector assume Chinese meals ought to be eaten with beer?
MN: It’s the carbonation and bubbles. It essentially behaves like acidity. The pH balance of the beer is leaning more towards neutral than wine e.G. Budweiser is in the four.3 pH variety and any grapes with proper farming and developing situations at the back of them could be inside the three.3 to a few.6 range whilst processed to make wine.
In addition, the carbonation facilitates elevate and purge the palate from spice and/or bolder flavors: again behaving like acidity. It gives the diner the sensation that your palate has been scrubbed clean from what became just eaten. If beer were served bloodless and flat, it would not be as appealing, nor wouldn’t it have the acidity to assist in cleaning the palate, however, with the arrival of microbrews from across the state and world—which can be pushing the bounds in phrases of flavor profiles—brewing tactics which are generating a variety from sours, IPAs, pilsners, dry hopping, etc. Thus, beer has additionally emerged as a more appealing choice concerning variety and bang in your buck.
