Sunday brunch pairing dim sum and wine at South Beauty. JP/Arif Suryobuwono
What to drink with dim sum? A good rule of thumb is to have it with its two time-tested companions — tea and champagne. But rules are made to be broken.
The first common companion, tea, uses its sequestering properties to remove fat and flavors left on the palate, putting it back on track. It also aids in digestion, soothes and stimulates the mind. The second offers its acidity and effervescence to clean, and its yeasty, bready, fruity flavors and other elements of complexity to excite the palate.
However, “rules are made to be broken”, said Wine and Spirits Circle (WSC) Deputy Chairman Brian Billdt during one of the Circle’s events in recent months — a Sunday brunch “experiment” in which dim sum was paired with a variety of wines.
Held at South Beauty, a Chinese restaurant in Central Jakarta, the experiment presented an array of possible suitors for the Chinese breakfast — red wines from Australia (Vasse Felix Margaret River Shiraz 2007) and Chile (Concha y Toro Marques Carmenere 2007), a New Zealand white (Otuwhero Single Vineyard 2008) and an Aussie white (Lost Valley Cortese 2007) made from a rather unknown grape variety, Cortese or Gavi as it is known in Italy.
As in any experiment, a control was quietly introduced. It was, to my great delight, Piper Heidsieck Champagne Brut Non Vintage (NV), which was served as an aperitif.
In spite of being non-vintage and carrying a price tag lower than Rp 1 million, it was surprisingly excellent: fresh, toasty, yeasty, creamy, fruity and well balanced with good acidity and very small bubbles.
It even exhibited a degree of sophistication and complexity, albeit to a lesser extent, that made the other sparkling wine, a chalky, simpler Spanish cava (Noche y Dia Brut Nature NV), pale in comparison.
Moreover, the champagne, a fresh supply of which I managed to keep in my flute throughout the meal, was so flexible with food. It matched all the small-portioned dishes (except the dessert) so well that the other wines seemed redundant.
Nevertheless, the cava was a more affordable alternative to the champagne for accompanying the first course (a dumpling with bits of black mushroom and sea cucumber and a lot of shrimp inside).
This uncomplicated wine, made in the same method used to make champagne, had no outstanding characteristics so it did not challenge the highly savory flavor of the dish. Its acidity, which was snappy, was noticeably higher than that of the champagne.
The grip of such acidity, underlined by its mineral, earthy flavors, made the wine taste bone-dry even though it was not without sugar (which can amount to up to 15 grams per liter).
The other two white wines, in spite of being non-sparkling wines, have a sort of “affinity” to them in their refreshing, zesty characters with the Cortese even exhibiting some spritz thanks to its lively acidity.
However, unlike the delightful and yet versatile champagne, these were exciting New World wines with strong individual characters — each was treated with a different approach to pairing.
The Otuwhero was markedly Sauvignon Blanc as apparent in its rambunctious disposition and the intensity of its straw, grassy, herbaceous, flavors which, together with some stony and smoky notes, somehow kept its vivid fruitiness in check. This Marlborough star — pronounced oar-two-fare-raw — was paired with light-flavored rice flour rolls with fresh shrimps.
The strategy was to match attention-demanding wine with simple food, so as to allow the nuances of the wine to be fully experienced without being masked by intense food flavors.
The Cortese was a great crowd pleaser. Fruitiness, refreshing acidity, honeyed flavors, and crispiness were interwoven so deliciously and seamlessly in it, giving the palate a great thrill. It was obvious why Qantas Airways reportedly offered it to its first-class passengers.
Even those who don’t drink white wine may like it very much. It was paired with three delicacies — fish maw, mushroom, chicken; beef balls with dried tangerine peel; and a dumpling stuffed with shrimp, chicken and crab roe.
So, the idea was to create comparable food and wine combinations as both the food and the wine were supposedly equally rich in flavors. But the food’s flavors were not as intense as the wine’s and the wine’s personality was so forceful it squarely put its food companion on the sidelines.
The experiment with the reds was a challenge. The very sweet papaya pastry puff, suitable for dessert, subdued the taste of sweetness in the 5-year-old Shiraz — making it taste rather flat.
Containing an 11.5 percent Malbec component and coming from a benchmark vintage, this Shiraz demonstrated a degree of refinement, giving it so European feel and making it different from rich, overpowering East- Australian Shiraz.
So, it did not smother the dumplings with dried shrimp and beef and a fritter of twisted dough stuffed with shrimp paste presented in the next course. But it didn’t easily go with the dish either and the fritter’s mayonnaise sauce was a jarring rather than amusing note.
The divergence of gustatory profiles continued with the pairing of the last red — Concha y Toro Marques Carmenere 2007, and glutinous rice with chicken and dried scallops wrapped in lotus leaf.
Chicken and scallop complement each other. They form the basis for Cantonese “superior stock”. The Carmenere, fortified by 10 percent Cabernet Sauvignon, got a robust platform to put on stage an exciting show of blackberry, dark chocolate in the finish and hints of vanilla. Both presented different worlds of flavors, each of which are best left on their own.
As in the vicissitudes of life, there are occasions in which partnering up is desirable and going in separate directions is better. And the breaking of rules does not always lead to fantastic encounters with the untried.
