A glass of Chablis with your Chow Mein?
Wine pairing is quite a tricky thing, especially when it is with non European food.
So many wines are overpowered by food with strong or spicy flavours. When trying to match wine and specifically Chablis in this case with takeaway food, the brain cells had to be awakened and taste buds had to be tingled.
The challenge was to match 2 wines, a Petit Chablis Domaine Sainte Claire and a Samuel Billaud Chablis. In my area, the takaway choices are limited to nasty pizzas, spicy Indian or Chinese.
Firstly some tasting notes for the Petit Chablis: a light lemony colour, smells very fresh and tastes very light, slightly citrusy but not overly complex. This wine would be overpowered by anything spicy or overly sweet. I am a very enthusiastic student of wine tasting and am still acquiring the vocabulary and training my palate to discern those aromas and flavours that are sometimes used to describe wine like “leather”, “gooseberries”, etc. I have to say that I have don’t have a memory of smelling anything distinctive from gooseberries but what do I know.
To match with this Petit Chablis, I would pick a dish with light flavours to complement this wine. The ideal dish from my local Chinese would be the Sesame Prawn Toast which is slightly savoury and with no overwhelming flavours.
For the second bottle we tasted and matched the Chablis by Samuel Billaud 2011. Samuel is the nephew of a famous Chablis winemaker and used to work with his uncle at their family’s Billaud-Simon vineyard. Now he has branched out on his own buying in local grapes to make his wines. The bottles I got were 2011 vintages which was supposed to have been a great year for Chablis.
On tasting, this has a more golden yellow colour compared to the first bottle. It smells fresh, citrussy again but fruity too. On tasting, there is light acidity, a bit minerally which is characteristic of Chablis and quite rich.
This wine would go really well with a main course of braised fish with tofu which is a slow braised fish dish with hints of oyster sauce and light soya sauce with a sprinkling of carrots, mange tout and spring onions. Served with plain white rice this would be a terrific take out meal. Anything like sweet and sour anything or spicy anything would totally render the flavours of this wine obsolete. It would go well with some lightly steamed seafood very well. Of course, the best and most natural accompaniment would be a plate of fresh oysters, preferably at a pavement cafe in Paris in the springtime.
EatCookExplore was sent the wine to review and match for this post.
