Wine pairing with Chinese food

Lee writes that in most Asian meals it is impossible to match one wine to one dish. A family table may be rice and six to eight dishes, and each bite mixes them. She asks for versatility, an acid backbone and a seamless texture. A good pairing, in that room, is a wine that heightens most of the dishes, not every one of them.

On a formal Cantonese banquet she is more specific. The food does not arrive light, then heavy, so she would follow the food, even if that means pouring red before white. If the table has only one wine, she names a medium-bodied, elegant red with low to moderate tannins, such as a Spätburgunder from the Ahr, or a dry Riesling with enough body for the meat. A fuller, more aggressive wine, she writes, would detract.

Sylvia Wu, in a Decanter guide last updated on 1 October 2025, says the same of a feast: forget one wine for each dish. She wants an all-rounder. Sparkling wine is the palate cleanser — Champagne, English fizz, Cava, or a well-chilled Prosecco. If the dishes are heavy with red meat or strong seasoning, she moves to a sparkling red such as Lambrusco. Aromatic whites with a little residual sugar, Kabinett Riesling and Gewürztraminer, are what she puts with steamed fish and with herbal spice. Asti, which she says young drinkers in China nicknamed the “little sweet drink”, is the easy glass at a hot-pot party. For red-braised seasoning, soy and sugar, she wants a fruit-forward, supple red: a New World Pinot Noir, or a southern Italian red such as Nerello Mascalese. Barbera is the other candidate, for soft tannins and fresh acidity. Muscular reds with robust tannin are the wines she would leave off that table. If several sweet-and-sour dishes are out together, she would also leave off zero-dosage fizz and bone-dry whites with austere acidity.

Sarah Grunwald, a certified sommelier, writing on Wine Folly, answers the one-bottle question for a mixed takeaway order with German Kabinett Riesling: aromatics, a little sweetness, high acidity, a lighter body. If the bag is heavier — dark sauces, duck or pork — she moves to a sweeter Spätlese. If the bottle has to be red, she wants Gamay, for low tannin, acidity and a light body, and she keeps it off the dishes that are very spicy.

Fongyee Walker MW and Edward Ragg MW, in The World of Fine Wine on 20 October 2026, describe the same break with the classroom. Staff trained to pair one dish with one wine have to drop that model and pair to a regional flavour instead. The examples they give are the sour-spice of Guizhou, the salty savouriness of Dongbei, and the chilli-infused dishes of Hunan.

Lee’s essay of 25 April 2015 calls a typical Cantonese meal one of the easier places to pour wine, set against Yunnan, Sichuan or Hunan, because the cooking aims at lightness and freshness. For delicate seafood she wants a dry Riesling or a dry Pinot Gris, with little or no residual sugar, so the wine is not competing with the sweetness of shrimp or clam. Gewürztraminer and Muscat, she writes, overpower that seafood. Stir-fries with a restrained hand of soy, oyster sauce and black bean need more substance. For a refined meal without aggressive flavours she names mature Chardonnay, aged Semillon, and a mature blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon.

The strong dishes, in that essay, often come first: suckling pig, roast goose. A young, fruity Pinot Noir is the red she would open then. A Northern Rhône Syrah, she writes, wants at least ten years in bottle before it meets that meat, because young Syrah is too strong. Vegetables and noodles come at the end, which is the wrong way round for a European wine order. Her practical answer is two wines at once, a red and a versatile white. The red is Old World, medium-bodied, fruity, low to moderate in tannin. The white needs acidity for the oil of a long run of stir-fries: a dry Alsace or German Riesling, a Pouilly-Fumé, or vintage Champagne.

The 2011 booklet is her dim sum note, and it is written inside a book about German wine, so the bottles are German. When fried and steamed dishes share the table, she wants a crisp dry or off-dry Riesling from the Nahe, the Rheingau or the Mosel: acidity for the oil, and a lift for the steamed plates. Very sweet wines, she writes, can overwhelm steamed vegetable dumplings or shrimp dumplings, har gau (虾饺, xiājiǎo), so she stays with the drier styles. An elegant Spätburgunder from the Ahr or the Nahe is the red she calls versatile for a casual Cantonese meal. Intensely fruity, high-alcohol or oaky wines, she says, compete with steamed food. For steamed seafood itself she names German sparkling wine, Silvaner, and leaner Pinot Gris or Pinot Blanc. For a black-bean stir-fry she wants a ripe Spätburgunder, or a full-bodied white from a warmer German region.

Wu’s dim sum paragraph is the restaurant version a reader in Britain or America is likely to meet. Mild, savoury, tender textures: Chardonnay-based still and sparkling wines. Blanc de Blancs for shumai (烧卖, shāomài). A mineral, saline Manzanilla for prawn dumplings. Spring rolls: a youthful Grüner Veltliner, or Picpoul de Pinet. Char siu bao (叉烧包, chāshāo bāo): an off-dry Riesling or a chilled Moscato d’Asti. A warmer-climate Pinot Noir can work with char siu itself, she writes, but tannin and high acid may fight the sweet dough. With dumplings and pan-stickers she says to avoid heavy, tannic reds. Fried rice and chow mein, greasy from the wok, are an acidity problem: a German Riesling, an English blanc de blancs, or a linear, mineral Chablis.

Wine Enthusiast’s guide, by Dakota Kim, asks Ryan Bailey, of Kato in Los Angeles, and Jordan Chen, of Yang’s Kitchen in Alhambra. On egg rolls, Bailey wants a Grüner Veltliner from the Wachau, for a herbaceous line through the filling and the dip. Chen wants a dry blanc de blancs, from brut to brut nature: “You need something nice, crisp, and very refreshing with egg rolls because they’re probably an appetizer.” On char siu bao they split. Chen: “A red wine would taste bitter with the char siu, so I prefer a white with good acidity and freshness, which most Hungarian whites have.” He names Furmint. Bailey prefers a semi-carbonic Gamay, whose ripe fruit gives the impression of sweetness without residual sugar. On fried rice, Chen wants a dry Gamay with acidity and a little fruit. Bailey wants Champagne, “really high in acidity, which lends itself well to fried foods,” including rosé Champagne.

Mike DeSimone and Jeff Jenssen, in Robb Report on 26 April 2024, separate the two hot cuisines. Sichuan heat, in their account, comes from Sichuan pepper and chilli oil, and the numbing kind can change the way wine, and even water, tastes for a while. Hunan uses fresh, dried and pickled chillies. Strong tannin, the kind they associate with Cabernet Sauvignon, intensifies the burn. The wines they have found hold their flavour through that change: a Spätlese or Auslese Riesling, or a late-harvest Tokaji, with enough sweetness and acidity. With Hunan stir-fries, and with braised chicken or seafood, they report a different glass: crisp Italian whites, and they name Vermentino, Greco di Tufo and Fiano.

Wu’s note on “Sichuan-style spices” is broader. A cold sparkling wine — Prosecco, Asti or brut Champagne — to clear the burn. Aromatic whites with the smell of the spices. If sweetness is the route: an Auslese Riesling, or a lighter Sauternes or Tokaji Aszú. Rosé with ripe berry fruit, and off-dry Riesling, as what she calls salivating soothers. Young Gamay or Pinot Noir against rich flavours. The wines to avoid have powerful tannins and high alcohol, which she writes tend to enhance the heat.

A limit on that sweetness sits in a different Decanter piece, Julie Sheppard’s guide to spicy food, updated on 12 August 2024. It is not a Chinese chart. Anne Krebiehl MW says, “For me, off-dry wines only work if there is also an element of sweetness in the spicy food,” and her example is palm sugar in a Thai dish, echoed by a feinherb Riesling at about 11–13% alcohol, not a dessert wine. Andrés Rangel calls off-dry Gewürztraminer, Viognier, Muscat, Pinot Gris and Riesling the safe way to contain heat rather than amplify it. Sheppard reports Matthieu Longuère MS’s phrase for a wine that meets the heat head-on: a “spice booster”. The styles she then names are bold, fruity reds such as Syrah or Grenache, chosen for fruit rather than tannin, because too much tannin is, in her words, the worst enemy of spice. A Sichuan dish with no sweetness in the sauce is not the plate Krebiehl was describing.

Two single dishes are named elsewhere. Grunwald pairs kung pao — sweet, sour and spicy, with peanuts — with an off-dry Alsace Pinot Gris, for sugar, fruit, structure and acidity. On Wine Enthusiast, dan dan noodles split. Bailey wants a Manzanilla, because that style “works very well with dishes that incorporate nuts or seeds, whether it be as a component or as sauce.” Chen wants an off-dry Riesling, because it echoes the dish. Wu, separately, marks General Tso’s chicken and orange chicken as sweet-and-sour plates from the takeaway menu, not as Hunan originals. Orange chicken, she writes, hardly resembles tangerine chicken from Hunan. For those sweet-sour plates the key is residual sugar, and she names Gewürztraminer and Torrontés. That is a different dish from the fresh-chilli Hunan cooking in the Robb Report piece. Walker and Ragg name Hunan’s chilli-infused dishes as a flavour a sommelier has to meet. They do not name a grape for it in that essay.

Judy Leung’s account of a trip to Yangzhou, published on The Woks of Life on 14 July 2024, places Huaiyang cuisine (淮扬菜, Huáiyáng cài) in Jiangsu, north of Shanghai. She calls it one of the four older traditions, with Cantonese, Shandong and Sichuan. She describes the cooking as knife-work, a delicate refined flavour, and a dish that lets the main ingredient show. Zhenjiang black vinegar comes from Zhenjiang, in the same province. Shanghainese cooking, běnbāng cài (本帮菜), is the food she grew up with, a mix of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and she names dishes the two share, including squirrel fish in a sweet-and-sour sauce. A sweet-savoury Huaiyang plate in that piece is fish steamed with sweet fermented rice, jiǔniàng (酒酿), and ham. Red-braising, in her note on a river fish, is soy, wine and some sugar. The piece is a food diary. It does not recommend a wine. A critic’s dish-by-dish Huaiyang chart, of the kind this page would cite, was not found. The wine notes that were found are filed under Shanghainese food, which sits in the same delta.

Lee’s 2011 chapter calls Shanghainese food oilier and richer than Cantonese, with vinegar and sugar up front and soy used freely. Red cooking is the slow pot: soy, rice wine, sugar and ginger, often pork, and often fatty. Chillies, she writes, rarely appear, unlike on tables to the north and west. Vinegar, a real sweetness and the oil are why she wants firm acidity, and why Riesling from Kabinett up to Auslese fits once the food is actually sweet. A red, if one is poured, should be light to medium-bodied, from a cool site such as the Ahr or Franken. Mature Spätburgunder is the red she trusts with the umami. For the braises — pork belly, knuckle, meatballs, a whole fish — she wants a fuller red, Dornfelder or a ripe Spätburgunder, with firm acidity for the fat, and not an excessively tannic wine, because the salt will exaggerate it. A Kabinett or Spätlese with enough body can stand in. A delicate wine, she warns, gets lost in the salty sauce.

The light end of the same meal is a different glass. Steamed hairy crab, shrimp with Longjing tea, and xiaolongbao (小笼包, xiǎolóngbāo) are, in her note, light and fleshy, with a vinegar dip against the sweetness of the seafood. She wants sparkling wine, including from aromatic varieties, because the acidity meets the vinegar and the style stays light. A light, sweet Riesling from the Mosel, the Nahe or the Rheingau is the still alternative, the sweetness echoing the seafood rather than covering it. A report by Gao Ceng in the Shanghai Daily, 17 May 2012, of a dinner Lee gave at the Peninsula Shanghai, quotes her reason for pouring cool-climate wine with this food: “On the contrary, it was because I had already found that some wines from regions with cool climates complement, even enhance, Shanghai flavours.” The reporter’s summary of her hongshao (红烧, hóngshāo) rule is the same three tests: a versatile wine, firm acidity for the oil, and a texture that echoes the dish.

Wu’s Decanter note, updated on 25 April 2025, is the dish as served: Peking duck (北京烤鸭, Běijīng kǎoyā), which she dates to the Ming dynasty, 1368 to 1644. Crispy skin, rich fat, thin pancakes, cucumber, spring onion, hoisin and sugar. The order she prints is the skin dipped in sugar first, then a pancake with a little hoisin, not a plate of meat on its own.

Pinot Noir is the answer she says a wine professional almost always gives, for delicate fruit, fine tannins and a medium body. For roast duck without the condiments she would still accept a Burgundian Pinot, a peppery Syrah, a rosé Champagne or an oaked Chardonnay, the acidity against the grease. Once hoisin and sugar are on the pancake, she writes, those classics are no longer enough.

Jennifer Docherty MW, whom Wu calls the first ethnically Chinese and Mandarin-speaking Master of Wine, is the dissent. “Despite its popularity, I don’t believe in pairing Pinot Noir with Peking duck.” Pinot, Docherty says, is quite linear, and does not hold a greasy, rich mouthfeel. Her first choice is a Spätlese Riesling: “Nice acidity with more residual sugar should go perfectly with the duck and the sauce.” For a red she names a ripe Clare Valley Shiraz, or a “nicely balanced” Crozes-Hermitage Syrah: fine tannins, and an acidity she calls non-assertive.

Lee takes the other side in public, and she names a bottle. On 20 September 2015 she wrote that when she is asked for her favourite Asian pairing, she says, without hesitation, “Peking duck with Pinot Noir.” The wine in that piece is a young, fruity Felton Road Block 5, acidity through the fat and enough presence for the sweet, salty sauce. The 2011 booklet, again inside its German frame, treats Peking duck with Spätburgunder as the widely accepted match: red-berry fruit with the sugar or the plum sauce, acidity through the fat, and a savoury note for the meat. Roast mutton and lamb skewers, in the same paragraph of that booklet, are a different red. They are in the next section.

Ryan Bailey, in the Wine Enthusiast piece, is with Lee on the grape and stricter about the style. “The classic pairing for duck has always been Pinot Noir,” he says, and he wants a Burgundy that is lower in alcohol, with little or no new oak. Jordan Chen agrees on Burgundy and names Chambolle-Musigny. A Russian River Pinot, he says, is “too powerful” for the duck’s subtler flavours. Wu’s note on Chinese reds, and on icewine, with this dish is in the last section. The disagreement here is about Pinot, not about a Chinese bottle.

Diana Kuan, in TASTE on 3 January 2020, quotes Kian Lam Kho, author of Phoenix Claws and Jade Trees. Cumin came into China along the Silk Road, and it is rarely used in Cantonese, Sichuan or Shanghainese cooking. Xinjiang, he says, is where it is used most. “It has a huge Muslim population that consumes a lot of lamb, and lamb is very closely associated with cumin.” From Xinjiang, in that account, cumin became a staple farther east and north: Gansu, Ningxia, Shaanxi and Shanxi, and also Beijing, Inner Mongolia and the northeast. The Xinjiang and Ningxia guides on this site are the wine regions inside that map. They are not a recipe.

Lee’s northern chapter is the wine note that covers the same ground. She draws the food from Xinjiang in the west to Heilongjiang in the north. Beijing food, in her account, is heavier, darker in its sauces, and built on wheat rather than rice. Mutton, which she traces to the Mongolian dynasties, is still the meat of hot pots, stews and barbecues. The cooking is saltier, heavier and oilier than in the south, and more intense. Because salt exaggerates tannin, a very tannic wine should be avoided. Acidity has to stand up to the oil. Moderate tannin helps with the protein and the fat. For roast mutton and lamb, and for barbecued skewers of mutton, lamb or beef, the red she wants is fuller and heartier. In the German range that booklet is about, that red is Dornfelder. A ripe Spätburgunder can do it if the tannins are firm and the body is at least medium. She does not use the word cumin. The skewers are the plate. The instruction printed for them is hers: a fuller red, and not a very tannic one.

A reader who wants the chilli on those skewers turned up, rather than cooled, is back in Sheppard’s general note, above: a fruity Syrah or Grenache, fruit rather than tannin. That note is not a tasting of Xinjiang lamb. Fongyee Walker’s sentence on pulled lamb and a Chinese Viognier is in the next section. The estate she names is not in this directory.

Wu, in the Peking duck piece, is the writer who says where a Chinese bottle fits that dish. A sweet, juicy Merlot, Syrah or Malbec from a sun-baked region such as Ningxia or Xinjiang, and not the robust, oaky, tannic versions, with the plummy hoisin. Marselan, if the list has it: she describes it as the French crossing of Cabernet Sauvignon and Grenache, and writes that many people consider it the next signature grape of Chinese wine. Again, less oak, more fruit. For a sweet wine she names Chinese icewine, especially from Huanren in Liaoning, served cold, against the grease. She says it is made in quantity and rarely exported. This directory does not cover Liaoning, and no Huanren producer is added here.

Li Demei, in Decanter China on 31 March 2017, is the source for the grape itself. Marselan was bred in 1961 by Paul Truel, with the French research institutes INRA and ENSAM, and named for the town of Marseillan. He describes aromatic, deeply coloured wines, soft tannins, and the ability to age, sometimes with Merlot in the blend. The vine reached China in 2001, at a Sino-French project in Huailai, Hebei, later called Domaine Franco-Chinois, where he made the first Chinese Marselan. The first plot was 2.75 hectares. In 2004, he writes, COFCO, the owner of Great Wall, brought it to Penglai, in Shandong. From 2005 it was planted in the Helan Mountain East of Ningxia, the Yanqi Basin in Xinjiang, Taigu in Shanxi, and Huailai, among other places. The area he gives, writing in 2017, is over 4,000 mu, which he converts as 267 hectares, most of it then in southern Xinjiang, followed by Gansu, Ningxia and Huailai. Those figures are from 2017. They are not a current census.

Three of the six wines at his ProWein masterclass that year are estates this directory already files. Tiansai Vineyards, Skyline of Gobi Marselan 2014, from Yanqi, is Tiansai. Château Zhongfei, a barrel-aged Marselan 2014, also from Yanqi, is Zhongfei. The Zhongfei page here was drawn from Jancis Robinson, and it does not name a cuvée. Li Demei’s list does. Grace Vineyard, Tasya’s Reserve Marselan 2012, from Taigu, is Grace Vineyard, in Shanxi. The Grace page in this directory leads with Chairman’s Reserve, the bottle the critics’ corner records from James Suckling, not with Tasya’s Reserve. The Huailai visit this directory publishes is Château Sungod, in Hebei. That is COFCO Great Wall’s château. It is not Domaine Franco-Chinois. The two are not one cellar.

Walker, quoted in Upscale Living, is the pairing sentence that names Chinese bottles. “Peking duck can be paired beautifully with Chinese Pinot Noir,” she says, and the magazine gives Kanaan Winery’s Chapter and Verse Mastery Pinot Noir, and a Pinot Noir from Xige Estate. This directory’s Kanaan page, taken from Suckling, lists Cabernet blends and Riesling. The Pinot is Walker’s sentence, not that page’s. Xige Estate is in Ningxia. The same interview continues: “Shandong dumplings are well suited to Longting Reserve Sea Breeze Chardonnay, while pulled lamb matches well with Chateau Mihope Viognier. And you can’t go wrong with Jade Dove Cabernet Sauvignon.” Longting is not Domaine de Long Dai, the Lafite estate this directory files in Penglai. Château Mihope has no page here. The Ningxia guide already records that a website for Mihope was not confirmed. Jade Dove is a name on Xige’s visit page, which lists Jade Dove wines and does not print a grape. Walker’s sentence says Cabernet Sauvignon. It does not, in those words, say that the wine is Xige’s. This directory has no second Jade Dove.

The medal Cabernets are a different file. Helan Qingxue and Jia Bei Lan, Helan Mountain Xiao Feng, Li’s Estate and Dongfang Yuxing Yeguangbei are Ningxia reds this directory records from Decanter. The note on Jia Bei Lan is that story. Wu’s duck red is a juicy bottle, less oaky and less tannic. A trophy Cabernet is not thereby a match, and this page does not claim to have tasted one against the duck. Dongfang Yuxing’s Geruihong Marselan 2024 is the Ningxia Marselan in that medal record. Silver Heights is the other Ningxia Marselan the directory names, Jiayuan, and Emma Gao is the note on the winemaker. A medal page is not a pairing note.

Shandong, in this directory, is the coast. Changyu Noble Dragon, from Yantai, is Cabernet Gernischt and Cabernet Sauvignon. Treaty Port, in Penglai, lists The Commissioner, a Marselan. Nine Peaks, near Qingdao, lists Marselan among its grapes. No pairing writer cited here tastes those bottles with a dish. Yunnan in this directory is Ao Yun, a Cabernet Sauvignon grown between 2,200 and 2,600 metres. None of these pairing notes names it. A structured Cabernet is not the juicy, lower-tannin red Wu describes for hoisin. Sparkling wine is the all-rounder Wu, Lee and Grunwald keep returning to when a table will not sit still. The Ningxia estate this directory files for sparkling wine is Chandon China. That is the style they describe. It is not a cuvée they opened with a banquet. The guide to Chinese wine ties this note to the rest of the directory.