Wine and Chinese Food Pairings Suggested by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Wine and Chinese Food Pairings Suggested by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I learned to pair wine with Chinese food in an unlikely location; outside Stuttgart, Germany at the King’s Palace Restaurant in downtown Vaihingen.

One of the major industries of Stuttgart besides cars (Mercedes-Benz and Porsche production) and chocolate (Ritter-Sport) is Riesling wine production.  Stuttgart is part of the traditional region of Swabia, which is located next to Alsace, France with that region’s Rieslings, Gewürztraminers, and light sparkling wines called crémants.

My husband Laurent and I shopped in Strasbourg, Alsace at least once a month to purchase Alsatian wine when we lived in Stuttgart.  We also took extended vacations in Burgundy to purchase Pinot Noirs and Beaujolais.

All these wines match up well with different Chinese dishes.

The 6 wine varietals I will use for wine pairing follow:

-Dry Riesling

-Riesling

-Gewürztraminer

-Pinot Gris (Pinot Grigio)

-Beaujolais (Gamay varietal)

-Pinot Noir

I have used Ken Hom’s Complete Chinese Cookbook as a reference for matching restaurant recipes with these wines.

The first bit of wine pairing advice Ken Hom gives is that Shaoxing rice wine, which resembles sherry, goes best with Chinese food.  Later, however, he concedes that dry whites and light reds go with Chinese food.

I have added gewürztraminer to this list, because it is dry and fruity in Alsace despite being a little heavy on residual sugar elsewhere.  (Some people would like this sugary taste to go with pork dishes, especially those people who eat pork chops with applesauce or braised red cabbage – rotkohl.)

To start I would mention that rosé goes well with the diversity of dishes offered at dim sum brunches.  Rosé can stand up to the vinegar used in many dipping sauces for various dim sum.  (See The Dim Sum Field Guide: A Taxonomy of Dumplings, Buns, Meats, Sweets, and Other Specialties of the Chinese Teahouse by Carolyn Phillips for illustrations and recipes for dim sum favorites.)

I recommend trying the following dishes with the following wines:

- Dry Riesling

1 - Honeyglazed Pork

2 – Roast Crispy Pork Belly

3 – Cashew Chicken

4 – Lemon Chicken

5 – Walnut Chicken

- Riesling

1 – Pork with Black Bean Sauce

2 – Fried Fish with Garlic and Green Onions

3 – Steamed Fish Cantonese Style

4 – Steamed Salmon with Black Beans

5 – Mango Shrimp

- Gewürztraminer

1 – Chili Pork Spareribs

2 – Steamed Pork with Spicy Vegetables

3 – Barbecued Pot Roast

4 – Cold Beijing Pork

5 – Steam Pork Loaf

- Pinot Gris (Pinot Grigio)

1 – Shrimp with Honey-Glazed Walnuts

2 – Crab Casserole in a Clay Pot

3 – Sichuan-style Scallops

4 – Stir-fried Squid with Vegetables

5 – Stir-fried Broccoli with hoisin sauce

- Beaujolais (Gamay varietal)

1 – Mongolian Hot Pot

2 – Yunnan Steamed Chicken

3 – Barbecued Quails

4 – Beef in Oyster Sauce

5 – Stir-fried Pepper Beef with Snow Peas

- Pinot Noir

1 - Crispy Sichuan Duck (mild spices)

2 – Cantonese Roast Duck

3 – Eight Jewel Duck

4 – Braised Duck

5 – Stir-Fried Lamb with Garlic (with beef this becomes Mongolian beef)

Note – Cabernet Sauvignon also goes well with Chinese duck dishes that are not too spicy.

The wine pairings here are my suggestions based on being surrounded by some of the best white wines to go with Chinese food in Stuttgart, Germany.  Trips to France added the Burgundy reds (Pinot Noir varietal) and Beaujolais (Gamay varietal) to Germany’s Rieslings.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Sommelier: The Wine Facts Society Game Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Sommelier:  The Wine Facts Society Game Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

This is a game for adults of legal drinking age whose objective is to win some hand-cut cheese cubes and learn some wine facts along the way.

Items Needed to Organize Sommelier:

-Sommelier Test Prep Book – The Sommelier Prep Course: An Introduction to the Wines, Beers, and Spirits of the World by Michael Gibson

-Index cards

-rubber bands (at least 30)

-pens and notepads for scoring

-prize: small plates of hand cut cheddar cheese cubes or crackers and cheese

(There can be multiple winners, so have supplies ready.)

Creating the Game Materials:

You need to write out sommelier questions with the index cards.

Use The Sommelier Prep Course’s chapter review questions and key terms for each of it 29 chapters.  (There is an answer key at the end of the book.)

Make a deck of questions for each chapter with answers and place rubber bands around the card deck for each chapter. The answer key is at the end of the book.

You might want to code index cards for different chapters with c1, c2, c3 and son on.

It will take time to write out the questions and answers, but you will learn in the process. 

How to Play the Sommelier Society Game:

Objective: Wine a plate of hand cut cheese cubes to go with your wine at end of play

Number of Players: 2 to 6 per table

When does play start? 

Players can join and leave a game throughout the day, but have to have 20 right scores to obtain a cheese plate.

Who leads the game?

Each group has a table leader who asks questions and scores players on small notebook paper. 

The leader notes who has earned 20 points for a cheese plate.

Expansion 1 - Pronunciation

Practice saying all the key words until you can say them perfectly.

Expansion 2 - Spelling Test

Once you can say all the key words perfectly, hold a spelling test.  Perfect scorers get a cheese and apple slice plate.

Expansion 3 - Name the Country of Origin of the Grape Varietal

Once you can perfectly pronounce and spell the names of the different grape varieties, go to the Key Terms section of the Grape Varieties chapter in Sommelier Prep Course and name the country that is considered the country of origin for each grape.

Pronunciation and spelling provide clues about country of origin, which is why I listed this game expansion after those two tasks.

Expansion 4 - Fish or Steak Game for Grape Color Memorization

In this game, you need to make an index pack that will list the grape variety's color along with a clue for the wine color on the back of the index card.

For most of the cards, you can use fish for dishes that go with white wine and steak for dishes that go with red wine.  Some white grapes and red grapes can be made into sparkling wines or dessert wines, so you will have to add those categories.

Just making the game index cards helps memorize red and white grape varieties.  

Play this game before trying to memorize wine grape variety colors alone.  Making your own game helps information stick better.

You can play this Fish or Steak game alone or in a group.

Foreign Wine Geography Sommelier Game Expansion

Learning the geographic location of where a wine comes from provides a clue for memorization about the wine grape variety or varieties used to make it.

Some of the world’s most famous foreign wines are blends made from different wine grape varieties like those of the Haut-Médoc in the Bordeaux region of France.

Almost all prestigious foreign wines go by place names that reveal nothing about the grape variety or varieties that was (were) used to make it.

The two exceptions to this state of affairs are Alsace, France and Germany, which use the grape variety used to make the wine on their labels.

To play the foreign wine geography memorization game, use index cards to make your own flash cards.  The process of the making the cards will help you memorize the facts.

An example of a card follows:

Front of Card:

Grape variety:                                       Merlot

Country of Origin:                                 France

Most Famous Wine Location:            Western France

Back of Card:

Most famous foreign wine:

Saint Emilion wines from the Bordeaux region.

Do this for all the foreign wines listed in The Sommelier Prep Course: An Introduction to the Wines, Beers, and Spirits of the World by Michael Gibson.

Just use the directions North, South, East, and West to describe a location in a country to make the game easier.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Click for Laurent Paget's Book

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Visiting Vermont and New Hampshire by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Vermont and New Hampshire by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

When my husband Laurent attended the ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) in Boston, we decided to do a weekend trip to Vermont and New Hampshire; these two states together are the size of Monterey County California where we are from.

Our ultimate destination was Middlebury College, the world famous institution for teaching foreign languages.  One of Laurent’s degrees is from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies (MATFL – Master’s of Teaching Foreign Languages) in Monterey, California.  We were paying homage to the mother ship in Vermont.

Middlebury helps its students achieve language fluency through immersion summer courses where they sign contracts to do everything in their chosen language during summer.  These effective courses have been expanded to high school age students through the K12 program according to Middlebury’s website.

To get to Middlebury College in Vermont, you have to drive through New Hampshire and leave Boston via hairpin turns on flat land.

“Are the British still coming?” I asked myself as we zigzagged out of Massachusetts into New Hampshire.

Once in New Hampshire, I noticed that all the libraries and many town halls had short Ionian columns along their porches overlooking Main Streets.

Ionian columns were created in the Ionian Island chain off the coast of western Greece.  While most of Greece was under Ottoman (Turkish) rule, the Venetians took over the Ionian Islands till the end of the mid 19^th century and formed local nobility that was Italian not Greek.  I liked the scroll- topped columns on these small rural libraries.

When we arrived in hilly Middlebury (Vermont), it seemed like there were three bakeries on every block selling different kinds of cakes and cookies from around the world.  I guessed that students practiced ordering and asking what cookie ingredients were in immersion languages spoken by the different bakeries.

Humor aside, language house programs at Stanford and the University of Wisconsin – Madison may be been inspired by the success of Middlebury’s immersion classes.

I smiled at the laidback winter dress in town – pajamas, parkas, and expensive boots worn by students going to bakeries.

We went to a restaurant for lunch and ate fish and chips, several choices of Vermont cheese, and chocolate cake for dessert.  Snowflakes began falling during our meal, which made me feel snug inside.

We left, though, to beat the snow back to Boston.  Bells began to chime in the crisp winter air for a carillion concert as we walked up the main hill towards the church and our car.

New England embodies that meal, the snow, the music, and higher education goals for me.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Click for Laurent Paget's Book

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