Pairing Wines With Chinese Cuisine

The red, Sichuan peppercorn-spiked gravy that covered the tender slices of beef served as a warning: This was going to be no easy task. “This is where most people reach for the beer,” said Campbell Thompson, a Beijing-based wine importer. “Or maybe just a glass of water,” said another guest. “Or maybe just white rice,” chimed in a third dinner partner. On a recent Tuesday evening, I gathered a group of eight wine and Chinese cuisine experts in my courtyard kitchen in central Beijing to taste a broad range of 10 Chinese dishes with eight wines. The goal was to test the common perception that it’s challenging — or downright impossible — to pair wines with Chinese cuisine. The Chinese have a dinnertime tradition of drinking baijiu, a high-grade Chinese grain alcohol, but in recent years, more international wines have begun to appear on restaurant menus in China, from the most traditional state-owned Chinese restaurants to trendy ones like Lan and Da Dong in Beijing.

But even as wine lists have emerged at restaurants in Beijing and Shanghai, some wine experts argue that little thought has gone into putting those wine lists together. Burgundies, costly bottles of Lafite, and anything labeled Bordeaux are often served at lavish Chinese meals meant to impress important guests. But some wine experts say that those wines clash with the spice and complex flavors of Sichuanese food and are too heavy to go with the delicate seafood dishes of Cantonese cuisine. “The young nature of the local wine market is what inhibits creative wine pairings,” said Gabriel Suk, the senior representative in Asia for the Chicago-based wine auction house Hart Davis Hart. “Chinese restaurants are told what to purchase by the local distributor, who might be making decisions based on sales margins rather than a concerted effort to find the best pairing.” Another challenge in pairing wines with Chinese cuisine is the complexity of sauces and ingredients that go into the dishes, said Fongyee Walker, who owns the Beijing wine consultancy Dragon Phoenix Wines with her husband, Edward Ragg.

In Western cooking, she said, “you can almost think of the wine as a sauce that goes with the dish.”“In Chinese cooking,” she continued, “the dishes are already balanced and complete in themselves. For example, a touch of sugar goes into almost every savory Chinese dish.” The upside is that because pairing wine with Chinese cuisine is a relatively new concept, “it’s a blank slate,” said Mr. Ragg. I figured my kitchen, where I hold cooking classes and private dinners, would be a good place to discover what works. Joining me for the dinner were Mr. Thompson, Mr. Ragg and Ms. Walker; Melissa Wong and Robert Chu, a Chinese-American couple living in Beijing who are avid wine drinkers; Fiona Sun, the editor of the magazine Wine in China; and Vicky Lok, a Guangzhou-based wine broker.

For the occasion, Mr. Thompson, who owns a wine importing company called The Wine Republic, donated four white wines, one pinot noir rosé blend, and three red wines from the New and Old World that retailed from 170 yuan to 520 yuan, or $25 to $75, in Beijing. Mr. Thompson chose light to medium-bodied wines, and reds with lower tannins, too much of which can clash with salt and spice. Dishes were served in order of their complexity of flavors, beginning with lighter dishes and ending with two dishes loaded with Sichuan peppercorns and dried chili peppers, before moving on to a dessert of candied “basi” apples, a common Beijing dish. One definite winner of the evening was a semisweet riesling. The 2007 Mount Difficulty Target Gully Riesling from Marlborough, New Zealand, stood up to spicy, more complex dishes, including kungpao cashew chicken with its sugar, black Shanxi vinegar, chili peppers, and faint hint of Sichuan peppercorns. With a medium body and high acidity, the riesling balanced the sugar, salt, and even the pickled flavor of the wok-fried bamboo shoots.