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June 21, 2018

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Sweet and sour wine dreams realized in Asti

Isacs is the founder and CEO of EnjoyGourmet, a leading gourmet digital (www.enjoygourmet.com.cn) and print media company in China. He has authored over a dozen wine and food books including the awarded ISACS Guides and other gourmet books and is a wine consultant to governments, wine regions and organizations. He also hosts wine events for leading organizations and companies throughout China. Contact John via jcolumn@enjoygourmet.com.

When I first came to China decades ago, my Chinese friends had many preconceptions about the tastes and preferences of foreigners. Chief among these was that foreigners loved sweet and sour pork.

Granted, long before I arrived on the historic shores of China, I was savoring typical Chinese-American fare in the far-off enclave of Connecticut.

Cantonese-American cuisine predominated and typical fare included spare ribs, egg rolls and of course sweet and sour pork. All were deliciously greasy to the uncalibrated American tongue.

More than 30 years later and having spent most of my life in China, I now boast a more evolved palate for Chinese cuisine and have had the special privilege to work closely with many of China’s most renowned chefs. It’s therefore little surprise that I’ve developed a passion for regional Chinese cuisines and have written at length on pairing some of China’s greatest dishes with wines from around the world.

With all this sino-localization of my tastes, I unashamedly still love a good sweet and sour pork.

There exist several styles of wines that pair nicely with sweet and sour dishes and some of the best are premium sweet wines.

Good sweet wine goes well with many dishes but lesser sweet wines are basically bad regardless of the dish pairing. So what exactly makes a high-quality sweet wine?

It’s pretty much the same attributes all top dry wines must have: intensity, balance, persistence and complexity. All good to great wines must have intensity. In other words an aroma and flavor that makes a major impact on your senses.

Balance means all the elements are harmonious and no one element dominates the others. This is especially important in sweet wines where a good acidity is needed to balance the sweetness. Low-quality sweet wines are often cloying, featuring only sweetness and no acidity.

Persistence or length in the palate and complexity are also highly desirable traits. So what sweet wine features all these attributes and also makes a fine companion to sweet and sour dishes? The answer comes from the rolling hills of northwest Italy.

Moscato d’Asti

In the world of wines, nothing so perfectly expresses casual sweet elegance as a glass of Moscato d’Asti. Made in and around the hilltop town of Asti in the northern Italian region of Piedmont, Moscato d’Asti wines are among the best affordable premium wines.

These sweet and gently effervescent wines are made from the ancient Moscato Bianco variety and typically offer lovely aromas and fresh flavors of tropical fruits, peaches, nectarines, white blossoms and honey.

While the Moscato Bianco grape has been cultivated for centuries in the Piedmont region, marking it out as one of the oldest grapes in the Italian wine industry, semi-sparkling Moscato d’Asti wines are a relatively recent commercial occurrence.

Wines of this style have been made by producers for centuries for their own consumption but the wines were rarely sold to consumers. Asti winemakers prized the wines as a digestive to be served in-between courses or after a meal and therefore the wine developed a reputation as a specialty winemaker’s wine, rather than a commercial wine.

This started to change at the end of the 19th century when people in northern Italy, then gradually throughout Europe, increasingly developed a taste for these fragrant light sparklers.

During the heady days of pre-war Europe, the fashionable ladies of Europe would often be seen with a glass of Moscato d’Asti in hand. This was especially true in the spring. Fast forward to the 21st century and the wines of Moscato d’Asti have become one of the most popular styles of Italian wines with a rapidly growing number of admirers in China.

Moscato d’Asti wines are only slightly fizzy, or frizzante, as the Italian call them and usually have about 5.5 to 6 percent alcohol. The charming sweetness in these wines is never cloying and is balanced by lively acidity. All these qualities make them loving companions to sweet and sour dishes as well as numerous other Chinese dishes that combine sweetness and sourness.

In a testament to the versatility of this wine, I recently had a bottle of L’Armangia Moscato d’Asti Canelli with several different dishes at a leading traditional Shanghai restaurant and every dish that combined the classic Shanghai qualities of sourness and sweetness was a winner with the wine.

As with many other Italian sparkling wines, in Moscato d’Asti there exists a wide range of quality levels. Therefore, it behooves consumers to pick wines from top producers.

Some of the best who have wines available in Shanghai are L’Armangia, Araldica, Batasiolo, Michel Chiarlo, La Spinetta, Prunotto and Bera. Moscato d’Asti wines aren’t particularly age-worthy so I suggest sticking to the most recent vintages.

Some final suggestions to optimize your Moscato d’Asti drinking experience is to serve the wines well-chilled, or about 6-8 Celsius, in a Sauvignon Blanc white wine glass. While it’s presently fashionable to serve sparkling wines in flute-shaped glasses, to fully appreciate the lovely aromas and texture of Moscato d’Asti wines, a white wine glass with a proper bowl is preferable to the stylish yet aroma-compromising flute.

Where to buy in Shanghai

Varieties: The ancient grape Muscat, or Muscato as the Italians refer to it, is the grape that makes the unique semi-sparkling and semi-sweet wines of Asti.

Key term: In Italy, all semi-sparkling wines are called frizzanti.




 

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