What goes with Chinese food? Not Dujac.

Pre food:
A 1996 Combottes was showing beautifully. Cherry, rose petals, licorice, a touch of green and the beginnings of the tertiary wood floor notes. Needed time.

Unfortunately it did not get any. Knowing I would be cooking all of tomorrow, we ordered Chinese food. General Tso Chicken, Szechuan beef, Moo shoo pork, decent enough in their own right, but they instantly killed the Dujac. It tasted metallic and the fruit had disappeared.

We bagged what little there was in the bottle, but even half an hour after we had finished eating, our palates were not really back to normal. Sugar, spice and soy are not an easy match. Makes you wonder whether all those great Burgundies going to China are paired only with Western food.

Well, General Tso is about as Chinese as Colonel Sanders :slight_smile: I usually open Jura whites with Chinese food these days, but I make Chinese food more often than I am in the mood for white wine so there are definitely some red Burgundy dishes in the rotation. The elements that make red Burgundy work are dishes without much heat (obviously) and either sauceless or with a sauce based on a meat stock or a bit of soy. If there is sugar in the equation red Burgundy is out, but it’s not a bad excuse for a New World pinot. General Tso has tomato in the sauce in addition to all the sugar so definitely a clash.

Beer.

Don’t be silly. If you feel like beer, fine, but there are tons of wines that shine with Chinese dishes.

It is a fail most of the time. Beer works. Save your wine for another day or time.

I don’t find beer remotely agreeable with Chinese food personally, but if that works for you then great. It’s much easier to find a wine that works well, and since wine interests me much more than beer in the first place I’ll stick to that route instead. For those not much interested in drinking wine, tea would be a much more appropriate alternative than beer.

Jura whites really do well with many of the Cantonese dishes we see. I also find that they do very well with South Indian flavors though that is not what normally one experiences in most Indian restaurants here.

I am about to go enjoy some Champagne and dim sum [cheers.gif]

Which is about as useful as saying “wine.” What kind of beer goes with what kinds of Chinese dishes? I am sort of curious, though as someone who is not generally a fan of IPA or other hoppy beers I am out of step with current trends.

The traditional pairing is tea.

With almost the whole range of Chinese food, I find a slightly drier riesling works quite well: feinherb, Kabinett…

Dujac, on the other hand, does go very, very well with roast duck.

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I like tart Saisons or Gueuze/Lambics. I agree with Keith & others that there are plenty of wines which are perfectly fine to drink w/Chinese food as well.

Thanks Anthony. A Lambic sounds interesting. Will have to try that.

Cheap beer is pretty good with hot pot.

You mean your dujac didn’t pair with American food.

Burgundy works very well with smoked tea duck (so long as you ignore the sauce).

Bordeaux works well with red cooked pork dishes.


Those are our standard red wine matches when we go to Grand Sichuan for a wine dinner.

I agree with both of your posts.

There are plenty of whites that go well with Chinese food, and I find beer, on top of so much rice, far too filling.

I usually reach for a dry riesling, or a gewurtz. Champagne works well, too.

I haven’t tried a white Jura with Chinese yet, but I can imagine a not-so-oxidative representation working very well.

I like modern style soft tannin Bordeaux with non spicy Chinese. Currently drinking my lesser 2000’s when I fire up the wok.

I find the best pairing is actually recent-vintage Lafite. [snort.gif]

Barring that, I like dry riesling with Chinese.

Merry Christmas!

My go to beer pairings for Americanized Chinese food are things with some hop presence to them, but not a lot a lot of sweetness (so not west coast IPAs). Basically something to cut through the dish without overloading I tend to look for Czech style Pilsners, cleaner pale ales (British or American), or a hoppier brown ale.

With anything traditional, I’m pairing based on heat and dominance of soy flavors in the cuisine. I like beers that have some malt character to them for anything with with a decent amount of soy or other fermented, umami intensive flavor. Because I don’t normally want sweetness to go with that, I tend to lean Belgian (or inspired) and mostly in the Biere de Garde realm. Dubbels can also work if they are on the lower alc/drier side. If your food has more acid to it (and in Chinese cooking, that tends to come from vinegar), something that has acidity on its own is welcome–think Berliner Weisse and other things with a lactic ferment in them. I’ve had mixed success with lambic, but my complaint is that often times the food mutes the complexities of the beer.

If I only had one beer to pick, it would be a Flemish red/brown, as the acidity+malt sweetness does well with everything from more vinegar influenced dishes on through things that have pungent and funky flavors.

Hope that helps.

Since “Chinese food” is such a huge category, kind of like “European food”, it’s hard to say for sure. Steamed fish or chicken is really different from something that’s amped up with lots of spice and pepper. But as a general rule, I think that dishes made with fermented beans, soy sauce, fish sauce, etc., just don’t match all that well with most wine and if there’s any sweetness to the dish, like say barbequed duck or pork, it just isn’t worth worrying about the match. Just have whatever wine you want and don’t put both food and wine in your mouth together.

Sometimes a white, especially an off-dry white, can work. I never understood the idea of gwertz - I always figured that’s because it reminds people of lychee sometimes so they try to make that connection, but a Riesling spatlese or something along those lines can be OK.

But there is one perfect match for many Chinese dishes.

Sherry.

Tannic reds? Not so much. But a good oloroso, even one that has a hint of sweetness, is probably the most brilliant match I’ve ever found for just about any Chinese dish that’s going to include any kind of fermented bean element.

Or Madeira, whether dry or sweet - those can be great matches too, even with the Americanized versions of Chinese food.

I think it’s the oxidized and caramel like qualities that work. Of course, if you don’t like fortified wine, you can probably get the same effect with certain white Burgundies neener . . .