One of my current challenges – and one I’m so keen to see through to completion – is to show to Chinese people just how easily wine partners so many Chinese cuisines. China is truly blessed with a regional culinary spectrum of comparable significance to that found in Europe, so to me it’s only natural to explore ways and means by which Chinese people can marry their extraordinary culinary heritage with wine – both Chinese and western.
For reasons that have more to do with an imposed French tradition and less to do with logic, cabernet sauvignon and its blends have become the fall-back wine currency in China. Having travelled the length and breadth of China and having experienced some of its culinary diversity and authenticity, it’s disappointing to me that the first wines that Chinese people choose to partner with their regional cuisines are so often based around cabernet, especially from Bordeaux. Shiraz, with its inherent expression of pepper and spice, would in most cases be a far more suitable partner.
Shiraz mirrors its origins with breathtaking honesty. When grown in warmer regions – the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale especially – it delivers its sought-after richness and opulence. Bring it from a cool climate, such as the Yarra Valley or the Great Southern, and its sumptuousness turns to elegance, its jamminess to fine, drying and savoury qualities. From cooler regions it can even deliver a perfume of dark flowers to complement its scents of black pepper and spice. All the while it retains its intensity and flavour – its own stamp of identity.
It’s pure historical accident, but a fortunate one for Australia, that it has become the home of the world’s most significant high-quality plantings of this variety. Australia has almost become synonymous with shiraz, which gives its wines more chance than most to partner with a range of Chinese cuisines, from Shandong to Yunan, to Hunan and Guandong.
Here are three you might like to consider. Each are sold in China.
Yering Station Estate Shiraz Viognier 2012 (from a cooler climate)
Very stylish and elegant, with a fragrance of musky spices, small black and red berries, fresh, faintly toasty cedar/vanilla oak and cracked pepper laced with a sweet violet-like perfume. Despite its youthful leanness and focus, it’s bursting with forest berry flavours that ease down a pliant and faintly mineral line of tannins towards a fresh, delightfully balanced finish of length and style. Try it with spicy Cantonese cuisine, especially goose and duck.
Penfolds Bin 128 Shiraz 2012 (from a warmish climate)
An unusually robust Coonawarra shiraz whose deep, bloody aromas of red and black fruits and sweet chocolate/cedary oak are lifted by a sweet floral note and reveal undertones of dried herbs and menthol. Its meaty core of fruit is framed by a grippy, gritty spine, extending long and lean towards a firm, lingering finish of mint and menthol. Try it with milder Yunan dishes.
Heathcote Estate Single Vineyard Shiraz 2013 (from a warm climate)
A firm, deeply flavoured and astringent shiraz. Its rather closed, earthy aromas of dark plums, berries and cedar/chocolate oak are lifted by a whiff of violet and cracked pepper. Deeply ripened, with a gamey, almost pruney depth of dark plums, blackberries and briar entwined around a firm, chalky backbone, its finishes with length, persistence and drying, meaty aspects. Try it with classic Shandong cuisine; lamb and cumin in particular.
