A Brilliant Food-Wine Pairing

9 Nov 2015: I discovered this quite by accident but it was for me one of the most memorable pairings: Graham's 20 Years Tawny Port with pork belly braised with dried wild mushroom (Imbricated hydnum) and mild chili (虎掌菌扣王花腩).

This happened during a dinner at Kin's Kitchen, Hong Kong.  The slow cooking of the pork belly added a caramel note to the rich meat-jus enhanced sauce and concentrated the umami flavours from the mushroom, lifted with the mild chili. The Graham's 20-year Tawny offered a richness of complexities: sultana, toasted vanilla, honey and pecan nuts, with some light spicy notes, and above all an abundance of umami flavours from the long ageing, which helped intensify the unique flavours of the dish, and offered the right sweetness level to pair perfectly with the mild chili. The velvety and mouthfilling texture of the Tawny port coated each bite of the pork belly, and the combination was simply sensational! I highly recommend!

Another pairing which I rather liked was 1989 Cos d'Estournel with pigeon cooked sous-vide.  The sweet tobacco and cedar tertiary notes of the Cos d'Estournel complemented the savoury flavours of the pigeon. And the 2007 Monthélie-Les-Duresses, Comtes Lafon was a perfect match with the steamed rice with abalone and chicken dices, wrapped in lotus leaf!

Food and wine pairings are rather subjective, in my view, just that some tend to be more inspirational than others, eliciting a bit more excitement!