JANUARY'S not all bad. After the great Christmas cooking marathon and weeks of crazy expenditure on luxury comestibles, it's a relief to return to simpler, cheaper pleasures. The Chinese take away comes into its own low budget, zero effort, exotically flavoured food, raised to a new high with the right bottle of wine.
The bad news - best disposed of at the outset - is that it can be more difficult than you might imagine to hit on a happy combination. A great many wines taste utterly dismal with a wide range of Chinese dishes. (For some reason I have yet to fathom, these tend to be precisely the wines most frequently listed in Chinese restaurants.) This means that, even if you shell out a generous sum on an excellent wine that you've enjoyed before, it may turn out to be disastrous. It's wiser to give a bit of advance thought to the key flavours of the food and wine and proceed along the lines of an arranged marriage.
The cheering news, in bankrupt January, is that it's possible to achieve a sublime partnership without spending very much money. Ken Hom may drink fine claret with his Peking Duck, as reported in Decanter, but he is in a miniscule minority. The general consensus among food and wine writers with a special interest in flavour matching, is that simple wines with uncomplicated tastes go best with Chinese food. That means a suitable bottle can be found for not much more than the price of a portion of Crispy King Prawns from your local take away restaurant.
As a general rule, white wines work much better than red - and the whites that work best are those with luscious fruit and perhaps a touch of honey in their make up, even though the finish may be dry as a bone. The sweetish flavours of Chinese food need wines with an element of sweetness about them. With their ripe fruit flavours and zingy, palate cleansing acidity (a definite plus since Chinese food is inclined to coat the ingbe), New World Rieslings emerge as a star choice. German Riesling Kabinett is also excellent. From whatever part of the globe, Riesling goes beautifully with ginger, spring onions and other flavouring mainstays and also works well with sweet and sour combinations - among the hardest of all to match.
Gewurztraminer and other spicy whites are often trotted out as obvious Chinese partners. I'm not so sure. Unless you are eating something with a fairly strong flavour - sweet spare ribs, for instance - very aromatic wines such as Gewurztraminer can easily dominate the food. Choose with caution. Other whites to consider are peachy Viognier and even honeyed Vouvray (lovely with Szechuan flavours), or not too dry Italians such as Pinot Grigio and Lugana. There will no doubt be dissenters, but it's my belief that all of the white wines mentioned so far taste miles better with most Chinese food than Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc. The fairly liberal use of sugar in the kitchen - in main dishes and accompanying sauces - tends to make very dry wines taste bitter and thin.
For this same reason, red wine addicts will need to avoid oaky, tannic reds, which Chinese food can transform into vinegar in a thrice. Indeed, any red wine with powerful flavours will probably prove too assertive for your take away. At a trial tasting session the other evening, I found that even with a spicy sauce, the peppery Shiraz I'd picked out as a putative partner threw its weight around too much. Light to medium bodied fruity reds are a better bet. Inexpensive New World Pinot Noir is versatile - good with the spicier dishes and an absolute treat with Aromatic Crispy Duck with Plum Sauce.
If expense is no object, you could always drink champagne - another Chinese food partner widely advanced by food writers for its palate cleansing properties. I haven't tried this combination, I must confess - it being the least champagne friendly season from a fiscal point of view - but a sparkling substitute from, of all places, Sardinia, has what's needed to enhance take away happiness.
