Sicilian wines great with preserved meat
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CHINESE preserved meats always play an important role on festive dinner tables. European preserved meats and wines have enjoyed a long synergistic history; but the same cannot be said of the equally diversified and exalted preserved meats of China.
It’s easy to pick wines for the hams, sausages and other preserved meats of Italy, Spain and France as they have deliciously coexisted for millennia. By contrast, there’s a lack of history and general dearth of information on pairing wines with Chinese preserved meats, but this in no way should dissuade us from trying. In fact, there exist many excellent wine partners for popular Chinese preserved meats and the dishes in which they are featured.
Perfect whites and reds
Many Chinese preserved meat dishes boast rich and savory flavors with salty and often slightly sweet, mouth-melting fattiness. All these qualities make them excellent partners for white wines with a solid acidic backbone. Some of the best choices are Australian Riesling wines from Eden Valley, French Alsatian Rieslings, Sancerre and Pouilly-Fume and New Zealand Marlborough Sauvignon Blancs as well as Spanish Albarinos. The fruit in these wines balances and complements the savory and salty flavors of the meats while the healthy dose of acidity cuts through any fattiness while facilitating digestion. Pork and chicken preserved meats are particularly nice with these whites.
Spicy Chinese preserved meats like Sichuan or Hunan sausages may overpower many dry whites. In these cases, I suggest a dry Manzanilla or Fino Sherry as these fortified wines have the intensity and strength to stand up to the most spicy, salty and flavorful preserved meats and dishes in which they are featured. Served well-chilled, these Sherries will nicely augment the flavors of spicy preserved meat while appeasing any sensations of heat in the mouth.
The delightful world of Chinese preserved meats are certainly not the exclusive domain of white and fortified wines. They also pair exceptionally well with red wines. This is especially true of beef and lamb preserved meats. The best reds for these meats feature lively fruitiness and gentle tannins. Beaujolais Crus, Southern French Grenaches and Spanish Tempranillos are all stylistically appropriate to pair with Chinese preserved meats. But in 2017 my favored red wine for Chinese preserved meat comes from Europe’s most southern wine region.
Imagine that you’re drenched in sunshine drinking wine and enjoying cured meats 3,000 years ago. Where are you? Why, Sicily of course.
Settled as early as 8000 BC by tribes from the Iberian Peninsula, this is Italy’s oldest winemaking region. The first archeological evidence of winemaking in Sicily dates back about 3,500 years ago when Phoenician traders brought vines to the island. Recently, DNA studies of ancient relics indicate that winemaking on the island actually predated the earliest Phoenician settlements.
Who made these wines we still don’t know, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters to us most is that the Sicilian wines of today are some of the best, most distinctive and reasonably-priced wines in the world.
Until relatively recently Sicilian wines were considered over-ripe, too high in alcohol and lacking in elegance. The culprit wasn’t the grapes but rather the high temperature and lack of modern winemaking equipment. The excessive heat and exposure to oxygen damaged the grapes and resulted in oxidized and baked wines. For centuries, the ripe and powerful wines of Sicily were used to boost the alcohol and fruitiness of wines to the north. This was especially true in poor vintages.
Over the past 20 to 30 years the beneficial combination of harvesting in the evenings, new investments in technology and modern winemaking practices have resulted in drastically improved Sicilian wines. Today there’s a lot to like about Sicilian wines, namely their fruitiness, exuberance and balance. These qualities also happen to make them fine companions to Chinese preserved meats.
The most important red wine grape in Sicily is the native Nero d’Avola. The name of this varietal literally means the “black grape of Avola,” a town in southeast Sicily. Today the grape is cultivated throughout Sicily and is most prominent of Sicilian wines.
Nero d’Avola reds are also one of the best wines to enjoy with Chinese preserved meats. Good examples of these wines feature preserved meat-friendly qualities of concentration, medium acidity and generous soft tannins.
These are all properties that bring out the best flavors and textures of premium Chinese hams like Jinhua from Zhejiang Province, Rugao from Jiangsu Province and Xuanwei from Yunnan Province. The power, headiness, structure and innate spiciness of Nero d’Avola wines also means they are fine partners to spiced sausages from Sichuan, Hunan and Yunnan provinces.
For lighter vegetable dishes that feature persevered meats as flavor boosters, Sicilian white wines are quite suitable. I suggest trying the fine, light Insolia, Catarrato and Ansonica native variety white wines. These are unpretentious, easy-drinking white wines that complement rather than overpower delicate dishes. They also often exhibit charming floral and almond notes that add subtle flavor dimensions to persevered meat dishes. Should you favor a white of more substance, than look no further than the deep-golden colored, fruity and full-bodied Sicilian Chardonnays.
Inferior Sicilian wines still exist so it’s important to pick a quality-minded producer. Some of the top Sicilian wines available in Shanghai are made by Planeta, Donnafugata, Terre Siciliane and Firriato.
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