WTN: Szechuan Gourmet and great wines

Dinner with Jay Miller (the good one) and Gene Vilensky. As usual there was lots of wine (to the point that Jay's Pinon Vouvray remained unopened at the end of the night) and fantastic Szechuan food. We ordered lots of dim sum; pan-seared pork and chicken potstickers and a couple of rounds of chilli and soy pork broth dumplings - and then for sheer indulgence followed with stir fried pork belly, lamb with cumin, shredded smoked duck with ginger and some seriously spicy chicken. Truly shocking that all of us were able to get up and walk back afterwards! The food was really fantastic, and I look forward to heading back to Sich Gourmet soon (as those pork dumplings are truly stellar).

The wines, happily, were all freaking awesome with no misses.

1973 C.V.N.E. (Compañía Vinícola del Norte de España) Rioja Imperial Gran Reserva
Really lovely at first with a range of complex developed flavours; black tea, rose petals and orange over lighter cranberry and other red fruited flavours. Plenty of acidity underneath with resolved tannins, very gentle and elegant though as the night went on this faded a little and started to feel a little tired with the fruit and other flavours losing intensity and some caramelized elements emerging.

2000 Noël Verset Cornas
Starts out a litle tart and light, but keeps building with air and time and an hour into the evening it's an amazing mixture of red fruits, olives, herbal, leathery and meaty notes. Incredibly polished, silken and elegant with grainy tannins underneath and tremendous length. Wow!

2001 Müller-Catoir Haardter Bürgergarten Riesling Kabinett halbtrocken
Hmm, a Schwarz-era Catoir - this certainly doesn't suck!
An intense blast of citrus fruits, pear and minerals first up, then with time this keeps developing and evolving, becoming creamier and richer and picking up some interesting leesy notes (Gene called it Comte cheese-like, I'm in agreement), while still retaining a sense of fantastic precision and balance.

2008 Selbach-Oster Zeltinger Himmelreich Spätlese "Anrecht"
I have very high expectations every time I open a bottle, and this never disappoints. Classic Mosel fruit over a bed of slate and rocks with serious acidity giving it a sense of incredible vibrancy, energy and length. Fantastic wine and probably the best wine value I have come across this year given the consistency and sheer enjoyment I have found from every bottle so far at a great price.

2008 AJ Adam Dhron Hofberg Spätlese
Good grief... this is insane. Very ripe in its flavour profile with some red fruits, apples and pears mingled with herbal elements and the exotic lilac and other floral notes I usually find in Adam's Hofberg, powerful yet almost weightless in the mouth, the minerality and acidity underneath is even more intense than in the Anrecht and it feels as if there's a livewire running through it with an electric and seriously long finish. Thrilling stuff.

I'm alway happy to see people opening up anything else other than riesling (though I love riesling) with Chinese food. Granted this was Szechuan, but the line of Riesling works well with chinese food is a rather simplistic view.

Given that Chinese food, especially Cantonese food is rather complex and varied, it can absorb a number of wines. The only thing with chinese food is that especially at formal banquets, the sequence of the food often would classically have the wines moving from whites to reds back to whites, back to reds, etc, which is not ideal.

Look at the components of the dish, the sauces and those will be the hints as to what wine will match best, i.e look at Chinese food matching the way you would look at Continental food matching and you will be surprised at some of the obvious matches. I've always endjoyed Rioja which I think works well, as does Champagne, Pinot Noir and even some dishes with Cabs and young bordeauxs.

Matching wine with Chinese Food is almost (about half in fact) as complex as matching wine with Asian Food. Or indeed Matching wine with Continental Food - especially if the continent isn't specified.