The Art of Pairing Wine with Food

Author: Wu Shuxian
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-05-01
Features: How to pair Chinese cuisine with wine? How to pair Western cuisine with wine? What kind of wine should be chosen for seasonal dishes? Is drinking wine the same every month? By reading this book, you will find the answers to the above questions. In 2006, when the firecrackers of the Lantern Festival echoed, I finally completed the last manuscript of The Art of Wine Pairing with Food, and the completion of this book also fulfilled my long-standing wish—to popularize the basic knowledge and culture of wine through a book. Wine Pairing with Dishes basically covers the fundamental principles of combining wine with dishes, especially explaining the pairing principles from the perspective of the taste principles between wine and food, as well as the core of wine—the body. The main purpose remains to help readers truly understand the characteristics of wine and drink and pair dishes according to their own needs, rather than blindly following my preferences. I believe everyone has their own tastes, and I respect everyone's preferences. The reason I wrote this book was just to provide a professional standard for everyone. I am not a culinary professional, and I wrote this book mainly for wine, because most people drink wine while pairing it with dishes. Chinese cuisine is vast and profound, and the traditional eight major cuisines are already complex enough. Today, with the convenience of transportation, chefs are mobile nationwide, making these cuisines even more diverse, with variations like "not Sichuan-style Sichuan cuisine" and "not Cantonese-style Cantonese cuisine." We have also heard names like "modern-style cuisine" and "creative cuisine," which even the famous chefs of each school cannot clearly define. Pairing Chinese cuisine with wine has always been the biggest challenge for wine critics and authors in Southeast Asia, because Chinese cuisine, unlike Western cuisine, focuses on ingredients rather than preparation. Western cuisine is basically 70% raw materials and 30% preparation. If you know the ingredients, pairing dishes with wine is not difficult. However, Chinese cuisine involves serving a dozen dishes at once, making it difficult to pair each wine with each dish perfectly. Chinese ingredients are richer than Western ingredients, but the quality of agricultural products in China is unstable, making it impossible to classify them by quality. Some products with a century-long reputation have been tarnished due to the addition of harmful substances. Our country has more vegetable varieties than foreign countries, such as Shanghai green cabbage, rapeseed, lettuce, chrysanthemum, and water celery, which are all delicious vegetables. However, due to excessive pesticide residues and the lack of an organized regulatory body for scattered farmers, the quality is inconsistent. I sincerely hope that our vegetables and other raw materials for seasonings (such as soybeans) can establish agricultural product associations in every region, and the country can set qualified quality standards for agricultural products. In this way, our Chinese cuisine would have a standard to follow, and our delicious and unique agricultural products could be exported to foreign countries more frequently.
In general, white wine is suitable for most Chinese dishes, while mature red wine with soft tannins is suitable for Chinese cuisine. In terms of pairing Chinese dishes, I have collected the characteristics and main dishes of the eight famous cuisines and matched them with wines that suit them, and most of the pairings should be appropriate. For Western cuisine, I have mainly introduced the main ingredients and wine pairing procedures of Italy, France, and Spain, hoping to give those unfamiliar with Western cuisine a basic understanding of wine pairing. Chinese cuisine has always emphasized health preservation, and the food consumed in each season is very. Therefore, I have introduced the wines suitable for each season according to the different months and temperatures. Chinese people have always had diverse tastes, and this book cannot cover everything. It can only summarize the general principles of wine pairing with dishes, and the finer details depend on the readers' personal preferences. This book is not only a guide for consumers to enjoy wine but also applicable to sales personnel in the wine industry and professionals in the catering industry. It introduces the art of pairing Chinese cuisine's eight major cuisines with wine, the pairing techniques of French and Italian cuisine with wine, the choice of wine for seasonal dishes, and monthly wine drinking guidelines.