Who said Sauvignon Blanc can’t match with spicy food?

    We always heard that it’s totally impossible to match spicy food with white wine. Is it real or just because we follow other people s opinion. If you have never tried it, you don’t know wether it works or not. So, why not cook some spicy food and invite some good friends over to find the answer. Here we go!!!

Last Saturday night, we prepared a serious of gourmet seafood meals to find out which one matches better with the Sauvignon Blanc of Loire Valley. Our biggest surprise  was the unbelievable matching of spicy baby squid with a robust Sauvignon Blanc of Sancerre. Let me tell you their impressive STORY.

Let me first tell you about the recipe:

Spicy baby squids cooked with chili peppers (Attention, spicy as hell)

Ingredients

1. 500g of baby squids
2. 20-100g of red chili pepper, 20-100g of green chili pepper (make sure to be light handed with the chili pepper if you think that you can’t handle it)
3. Four cloves of garlic.
4. Four slices of ginger
5. 20g of leeks
6. 4 spoons of white wine (shaoxin alcohol would be better)
7. 6－10 tea spoons of salt
8. 3 tea spoons of sugar
9. 4 - 8 spoons of soy sauce
10. a half ladle of peanut oil

Let’s do it!

1. Macerate the squid with white wine and salt
2. At the same time, heat the wok with peanut oil
3. When the wok gets very hot, chop the chili peppers, leeks and garlic and put them in with ginger and sugar
4. When the chili peppers get very soft, put in all the squids and all the soy sauce
5. once the squids are cooked, serve it, and enjoy it!

According to my sommelier experience, a strong spicy food will stimulate our palette, and we can’t feel anything with white wine, but I totally changed my mind when I put these two opposite things together in my mouth. 

     Acid and fresh Sauvignon Blanc isn’t covered by sharp pungency; instead, it brings out the strong taste of spicy squids. At the beginning of the first sip, I feel high acidity in my mouth, this gives me a beautiful effervescent feeling and I can’t feel any pungency. Only 2 seconds later, the lively aromas of Sauvignon Blanc explode instantly everywhere, fresh , grassy, strong citrus fruits, especially high minerals penetrate into my tasting bud. 

     So many things come so fast that I have no time to react, as I am still trying to figure out these aromas, a strong pungency comes back again. It pushes every aroma away, except for minerality. Just because of this, it gives another kind of freshness which mixes very well with pungency, besides, the structure of mineral improves the stimulating feeling but reduces the intensity of pungency. This feeling stays in your mouth for a long time, and you can’t help having another sip. That’s the most interesting thing. 

So, about Food&Wine matching, there is no rule, especially for foreign food. If you are interested in Matching Food&Wine, make a daring attempt to do it, you might have  a pleasant surprise.

  Up next :

In our next episode we will tell you about another fantastic food matching that we did last Saturday, chinese vapored scallops with white loire, stay tuned :)