Keith Levenberg
Keith Levenberg
I'm not a big believer in wine/food pairing voodoo - eliminate the obvious clashes and you tend to be well-served drinking whatever it is you feel like drinking with whatever it is you feel like eating. Real synergies in the milk-and-cookies category are the exception, not the rule. But I stumbled on one yesterday, herewith my best wine/food match in ages:
Chongqing chicken wings + Martin Mullen 2016 Krover Letterlay Riesling Spatlese Trocken**
The wings recipe was my latest experiment on the road to the perfect chongqing, a mashup of the Mission Chinese Food recipe (which par-cooks wings then freezes them to crisp the skin sans starch) and a more classic version. I would not bother with the wings prep again - it works, but the end result is no better than boneless thigh chunks. The rest of it entails wokking garlic, ginger, dried peppers, sesame seeds, Sichuan peppercorns, zha cai, and doubanjiang until nicely integrated, then tossing with chicken, then dusting with spices (cumin, cardamom, pepper flakes) and scallions at the tail end of the heat. The zha cai and doubanjiang do not appear in many canonical versions of the recipe, and the latter may even qualify as spoofulation, but they are both vital IMO. The zha cai adds some acidic freshness, the doubanjiang a hit of umami and Sichuan flavor which ensures the result will not taste like so many failed versions, viz., generic fried chicken tossed with Sichuan peppers. That said, the whole dish is basically a vehicle to get high on Sichuan peppercorn numbing.
...which is what makes the beverage selection so tricky. Anything (from sweet auslese to basic ice water) consumed to relieve the heat will also quash the numbing half of the ma la equation. That is unacceptable. The perfect match will respect the 'corns. Does such a thing exist?
Mullen works in a part of the Mosel nowhere near apparently *anything* else I drink, to judge by the map on the (gorgeous) label. Per the Fass Selections offer and the Stephan Rheinhardt note, the Letterlay ** is from 38-year-old vines on red slate from a distinct parcel of what looks like a ridiculously steep vineyard on top of the river. It is trocken but not S&M trocken. The acidity isn't cranked a notch beyond what it needs for definition. It results in a wine that comes across robust and diamond-cut on the front end but soft and even silkily refined as you toss it around. It's pale-fruited (not at all tropical as the Rheinhardt note said) with pure and ultra-clean honeydew and lime-zesty flavors that veer off fruit towards celery and cucumber and finish with a sizzle. In my younger and more vulnerable days I would have chalked that up to generic "minerality"; eventually the scales fell from my eyes and I realized it was a cheap effect to pull off with a bit of CO2; in this case, it is *not* just CO2 doing the talking but something that really resounds on the back end and not only refuses to quash, but actually amplifies, the buzz of those Sichuan peppercorns. The effect is synaesthetically synergestic, the sort of thing that wine/food pairing voodoo so frequently promises but so rarely achieves.
I will have to buy more Mullen. The back vintages recently in such ample supply were sorta workhorse wines that didn't impress me. This is on another level, even with the food set aside. A special wine in terms of raw quality but also uniqueness of style. I can't think of another trocken that pulls off the gossamer weight and texture of this without feeling thin (and imbalanced by acid) - they usually crank up the power to add the body they might otherwise get from sweetness. This is gentle but not weak. A tough balance to strike but perfectly done here.
Chongqing chicken wings + Martin Mullen 2016 Krover Letterlay Riesling Spatlese Trocken**
The wings recipe was my latest experiment on the road to the perfect chongqing, a mashup of the Mission Chinese Food recipe (which par-cooks wings then freezes them to crisp the skin sans starch) and a more classic version. I would not bother with the wings prep again - it works, but the end result is no better than boneless thigh chunks. The rest of it entails wokking garlic, ginger, dried peppers, sesame seeds, Sichuan peppercorns, zha cai, and doubanjiang until nicely integrated, then tossing with chicken, then dusting with spices (cumin, cardamom, pepper flakes) and scallions at the tail end of the heat. The zha cai and doubanjiang do not appear in many canonical versions of the recipe, and the latter may even qualify as spoofulation, but they are both vital IMO. The zha cai adds some acidic freshness, the doubanjiang a hit of umami and Sichuan flavor which ensures the result will not taste like so many failed versions, viz., generic fried chicken tossed with Sichuan peppers. That said, the whole dish is basically a vehicle to get high on Sichuan peppercorn numbing.
...which is what makes the beverage selection so tricky. Anything (from sweet auslese to basic ice water) consumed to relieve the heat will also quash the numbing half of the ma la equation. That is unacceptable. The perfect match will respect the 'corns. Does such a thing exist?
Mullen works in a part of the Mosel nowhere near apparently *anything* else I drink, to judge by the map on the (gorgeous) label. Per the Fass Selections offer and the Stephan Rheinhardt note, the Letterlay ** is from 38-year-old vines on red slate from a distinct parcel of what looks like a ridiculously steep vineyard on top of the river. It is trocken but not S&M trocken. The acidity isn't cranked a notch beyond what it needs for definition. It results in a wine that comes across robust and diamond-cut on the front end but soft and even silkily refined as you toss it around. It's pale-fruited (not at all tropical as the Rheinhardt note said) with pure and ultra-clean honeydew and lime-zesty flavors that veer off fruit towards celery and cucumber and finish with a sizzle. In my younger and more vulnerable days I would have chalked that up to generic "minerality"; eventually the scales fell from my eyes and I realized it was a cheap effect to pull off with a bit of CO2; in this case, it is *not* just CO2 doing the talking but something that really resounds on the back end and not only refuses to quash, but actually amplifies, the buzz of those Sichuan peppercorns. The effect is synaesthetically synergestic, the sort of thing that wine/food pairing voodoo so frequently promises but so rarely achieves.
I will have to buy more Mullen. The back vintages recently in such ample supply were sorta workhorse wines that didn't impress me. This is on another level, even with the food set aside. A special wine in terms of raw quality but also uniqueness of style. I can't think of another trocken that pulls off the gossamer weight and texture of this without feeling thin (and imbalanced by acid) - they usually crank up the power to add the body they might otherwise get from sweetness. This is gentle but not weak. A tough balance to strike but perfectly done here.