Voracious for Valpolicella
Last week, I attended “Voracious for Valpolicella,” a food and wine pairing seminar held by the Consorzio Tutela Vini Valpolicella on a gorgeous sunny day at Hotel Rivington in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City. I have been a fan of the different wines of the Valpolicella region, but this was the first time that I saw its potential as a reliable wine pairing partner for Asian cuisine.
When it comes to Asian cuisine, I have had mixed feelings about food and wine pairing. Asian food is notoriously difficult to pair with wine due to the multitude of bold flavors combined in one setting, and the standard approach is to mitigate the effect of the spices and the heat with off-dry, fruity white wine like a Kabinett Riesling or an off-dry Gewürztraminer. However, as a Korean-American who grew up not drinking sweet beverages with my meals, the idea of having a semi-sweet, fruity wine with Korean food always seemed extremely unappetizing to me and made me just want to reach for a beer instead.
In addition, many Asian consumers tend to have a strong cultural preference for red wine over white wine. Just for illustrative purposes, as of 2018, red wine accounted for 80% of wine sales in China. Jeannie Choe Lee MW attributes the fondness for red wine partly due to Asians’ affinity for the health benefits of red wine and the fact that Asians are not looking to turn down the heat and spice but actually enjoy the burn.
When it comes to pairing red wines with Asian food, some people seek to mitigate the effects of umami, spice and sweetness with “safe” wines like Pinot Noir or Gamay, while others fully embrace turning up the heat and the spice with higher-alcohol, tannic wines. In fact, in her article, “Asian’s Love for Red Wines,” Jeannie Choe Lee MW advocates for pairing full-bodied red Bordeaux with a Cantonese seafood meal, Korean chili paste or Sichuan peppercorn. After attending the Valpolicella seminar and learning about Valpolicella’s affinity to a wide variety of flavors, I’m convinced that Valpolicella is the next great pairing partner for the Asian feast.
Thanksgiving is approaching this week in the United States, and I feel like my Asian-American friends have started splitting into a few different camps:
Turkey and stuffing purists;
Abandoned the turkey and cranberry sauce to go back to hot pot, a spread of traditional Korean dishes surrounded by banchan or fiery, spiced-up, flavorful Southeast Asian dishes with lots of dipping sauces; or
Need the turkey with samosas on the side.
For my friends who fall into any of the three categories above and are looking to add a red wine to the table, here is a short primer on approaches to pairing wine with food and why Valpolicella might be the perfect red wine for your Thanksgiving meal.
Food and Wine Pairing Principles
First, what is food and wine pairing in the first place?
The aim of pairing food with wine is to create a combination that is greater than the individual elements alone. Essentially, 2 + 2 = 5.
Lars Leicht, the speaker at our “Voracious for Valpolicella” seminar, started his program with the quote:
“Food without wine is a corpse; wine without food is a ghost. United and well matched, they are as body and soul: living partners.”
Many people think of food and wine pairing as the wine enhancing the food, but it is more often the case that the right food will enhance the enjoyment of the wine and complete the experience of the meal.
There are a few major approaches to pairing food and wine (not by any means the exhaustive list):
The congruent/complementary method
Pairing food flavors with wine structure
Pairing by molecular structure
This article will not discuss #3 above because I just have not read much about the molecular structure approach yet, but it is the concept of combining flavors that have similar molecular profiles in order to enhance the tasting experience.
The Congruent/Complementary Method
This method comes down to considering whether the food and the wine have similar or dissimilar characteristics to enhance the sum of the parts.
Congruent Pairing: Pairing food and wine with similar characteristics to expand the volume and bandwidth of the flavors together (e.g., a high acid Muscadet with briney oysters with a spritz of lemon; Fino sherry and olives)
Complementary Pairing: Pairing food and wine with different characteristics to fill in the elements that the other lacks to create a complete flavor experience (e.g., a light-bodied, high-acid Champagne with fatty, crispy fried chicken)
Pairing food flavors with wine structure
Under the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) program, the basic structural components of wine boil down to five components (SATAB):
Sweetness - How much residual sugar is in the wine (dry, off-dry, medium-dry, medium-sweet, sweet)
Acidity - How much acidity is in the wine. While the amount of acidity is a scientific fact that can be described in numbers, people gauge acidity using different methods, such as how much the wine makes their mouths water, how sharply they feel the wine in their cheeks, etc. (low acid, medium - acid, medium acid, medium + acid, high acid)
Tannin - The presence of phenolic compounds found in the skins, seeds and stems of wine grapes, which add structure to the wine and make the wine feel grippy or sandpaper-like. Only red wines, skin-contact white wines and some rose wines have significant contact with grape skins during the winemaking process, so the concept of tannin is really only applicable to these categories of wines. From a wine assessment perspective, tannins are considered in terms of how much tannin is present in the wine (low tannin, medium - tannin, medium tannin, medium + tannin and high tannin), in addition to the characteristics of the tannins (e.g., grippy, astringent, green, fine, chalky, coarse, smooth).
Alcohol - Simply how much alcohol is in the wine expressed in terms of the abv percentage (e.g., 13% abv). Although the amount of alcohol is a numerical fact, people do perceive alcohol content differently. Do you take down a couple of martinis at happy hour? You probably don’t perceive the alcohol percentage of a 15% abv wine in the same way as a person who mostly drinks wine spritzers. Alcohol is also described on a scale of low alcohol, medium - alcohol, medium alcohol, medium + alcohol and high alcohol.
Body - A more subjective concept that relates to how weighty the wine feels in the mouth (light bodied, medium - bodied, medium bodied, medium + bodied, full bodied).
Food flavors can be broken down as follows (also not an exhaustive list):
Sweet
Bitter
Spicy
Bland
Salty
Sour
Oily/fatty
Umami
The basic idea in food pairing by wine structure is that certain flavors in food can make wines with certain structural characteristics taste bitter or harsh, while other flavors in food can enhance the flavor of the wine when paired with a wine with the right structural components.
Here are a few of the principles:
Sweet flavors in food can increase the perception of harsh acidity and can make a dry wine feel thin in an unpleasant way.
Spicy food increases the perception of astringency in tannins and alcohol in the wine while reducing the perception of fruit flavors in the wine.
Bitterness in food increases the perception of astringency in tannins while reducing the fruitiness of the wine on the palate.
Umami in food increases the perception of bitterness from the tannins in the wine.
Salt in food makes the wine taste less astringent.
One of the amazing attributes of Asian cuisine is the bold combination of many flavors at once (e.g., umami, fat, salt, sweetness), and as can be seen above, pairing red wines can be a challenge because of the higher alcohol content and presence of tannins in red wines over white wines. Pinot Noir, Barbera and Gamay are often considered safe red wine choice for food pairing due to their lower tannin content and usually moderate alcohol levels, while wines with high alcohol and grippy tannins like Cabernet Sauvignon can often clash with many of the flavors in the meal, although as Jeannie Choe Lee noted, the effect is not entirely unwelcome among Asians.
Ready to expand your red wine options with Valpolicella?
What is Valpolicella?
Valpolicella is a region in northeastern Italy immediately north of Verona. It is a major region for red wine in Italy and second in terms of production after Chianti.
By law, the DOC and DOCG wines must be a blend of the black grapes Corvina and/or Corvinone (45-95%), Rondinella (5-30%) and other authorized varieties.
The Valpolicella region encompasses a number of different appellations, which can be confusing even for advanced-level wine students, but the easiest way to break them down is by first determining whether the wine is made with (1) fresh grapes, (2) semi-dried grapes or (3) both fresh and semi-dried grapes.
Valpolicella Made from Fresh Grapes Only:
This category of Valpolicella is made using the same process as most other red wines with healthy, fresh grapes that are harvested, crushed and then fermented on the skins. Inexpensive Valpolicella is fermented in stainless steel tanks with moderate fermentation temperatures to preserve the primary fruit flavors and sees only a few months of ageing before release. The higher quality Valpolicellas may see some oak during a longer ageing period, which creates a more textured, slightly spicy wine.
These wines generally have bright red cherry and cranberry flavors with low to medium tannins, medium to high acidity (depending on where the grapes came from) and medium alcohol levels. The wines have a brilliant pale ruby color and to me, the wines always have a soft roundness in terms of texture.
Valpolicella Classico DOC: Valpolicella wine from the historic Classico zone.
Valpolicella DOC: The basic Valpolicella, which can include grapes from outside of the Classico zone. The Vapolicella boundaries were extended outside of the Classico zone for commercial purposes (i.e., to increase production) and not due to the quality of the extended area, so if you are purchasing Valpolicella, you really want to be buying the Classico wines, as they tend to have higher concentration and acidity from the better locations than the basic DOC wines.
Valpolicella Valpantena DOC: Valpolicella from the Valpantena Valley.
You also often see “Superiore” on the labels for the wines above, which denotes a higher minimum alcohol level and mandatory ageing for at least one year from the first January 1 following harvest.
Valpolicella Made from Semi-dried Grapes Only:
“Appassimento” is the traditional technique used in Italy and other wine regions of drying grapes off the vine to increase the concentration of the resulting wine. Grapes are picked and stored for three to four months in aerated drying lofts. The arid conditions cause the grapes to lose water, and as a result, increase the sugar levels, which increases the potential alcohol levels. The drying process also increases the acidity and tannins in the wine, in addition to increasing the level of glycerol, which is a component in wine that makes the wine feel softer and fuller.
In Valpolicella, the appellations for wines using grapes from the appassimento method (semi-dried grapes) only are divided based on whether the resulting wine is dry or sweet:
Recioto della Valpolicella DOCG: A traditional sweet dessert wine made from anywhere within the Valpolicella region, which can be labelled “Classico” if it comes from the Classico region. The sweetness (approximately 50 g/l sugar) comes from the fermentation stopping before completion, which leaves behind residual sugar. The wines have concentrated dried fruit and fresh fruit flavors with rather high tannins and high acidity, which provides structure and balance against the dense fruit flavors. Truly special dessert wines.
Amarone della Valpolicella DOCG: A dry or slightly off-dry wine (5-9 g/l sugar) that can also be made from grapes sourced anywhere in the region. Recioto is the traditional sweet wine made using the apassimento method in Valpolicella, and the dry or off-dry Amarone is actually the more modern wine that was the result of the happy accident of a producer letting the fermentation finish to dryness, rather than stopping the fermentation to preserve the residual sugar. Amarone must be aged for a minimum of two years for the regular category and for four years for the Riserva category. These wines have a brilliant pale red hue, with medium + to high acidity and complex aromas from the combination of the drying process and wood ageing process. Due to the appassimento method, the wine has higher tannins than regular Valpolicella made from fresh grapes only, but the higher tannins are also offset by a gorgeous round texture from the higher glycerol, which sets it apart from other major red wine categories in the world. To me, excellent Amarone is like unfurling a plush red carpet down the palate.
Valpolicella Made from Fresh Grapes and Semi-dried Grapes:
Finally, we have the “ripasso” method, which basically combines the standard Valpolicella winemaking (using fresh grapes) and the appassimento winemaking method (using semi-dried grapes). Unpressed grape skins that were partially fermented to make Amarone or Recioto are added to completely fermented Valpolicella wine made from fresh grapes. Because the unpressed grape skins did not finish the fermentation process, some residual sugar and active yeast remain, and the transfer of the yeast and residual sugar from the grape skins to the newly fermented Valpolicella wine re-starts the fermentation process, which increases the concentration, tannin and alcohol content in what would otherwise have been a regular Valpolicella wine. The appellation for this method of production is Valpolicella Ripasso DOC.
Ripasso is a means of partially achieving the characteristics of Amarone (albeit at a lower level) without the significant expense and time commitment required for a producer to make Amarone (e.g., a minimum ageing period of one year following the first January 1st after harvest, instead of two years for basic Amarone, and having the ability to use fresh grapes, rather than only semi-dried grapes in Amarone), and it is an excellent option for consumers who are seeking the Amarone style but do not want to pay for the higher cost of a bottle of Amarone.
Valpolicella and Food
As evident from the section above, Valpolicella offers a variety of wonderful styles to choose from. For the sake of brevity, in this article, we will focus on pairing food with Valpolicella DOC wines made from fresh grapes only.
One of the interesting things we learned at our “Voracious for Valpolicella” seminar was the concept of two different styles of the Valpolicella DOC wines: (1) Valpolicella fresco; and (2) Valpolicella strutturato. The fresco style is lighter in body, lower in alcohol and has the lowest tannins. It is, as the name implies, meant to be a fresh, fruity and easy-drinking wine, and the recommendation from our instructor, Lars Leicht, was to pair it with salads and spicy Asian food.
Valpolicella strutturato is made with fresh grapes like the fresco style but has more concentration, alcohol and body and may have seen some oak ageing for a more savory, textured, slightly tannic expression. Lars recommended pairing it with pork and poultry dishes with dried herbs, garlic, braised meats, mushrooms and tomatoes.
At our seminar, we were invited to experiment with pairing six different Valpolicella wines with (1) a light green salad, (2) pizza with dried herbs and (3) a burger. Side by side, you could actually tell the differences between the fresco and strutturato categories, and out of the different pairing permutations, the standout pairing was the pizza with the Valpolicella strutturato, which brought out the dried herbs and tomato sauce against a savory backdrop of tart wild berries.
Why Valpolicella with Asian food?
Valpolicella has medium + to high acid, which keeps a meal from feeling heavy and stodgy and provides a wonderful counterbalance to the fats and proteins in the dishes.
Valpolicella generally has medium alcohol. The wines that we tasted at the seminar all had alcohol percentages between 12% and 13.5%, which is becoming much more rare in red wines, as climate change continues to push up alcohol levels. Due to the moderate levels of alcohol, Valpolicella wines tend not to create as much of a strong burning sensation when combined with spicy food.
Most Valpolicellas have light to medium tannins, which is an important consideration when having spicy, bitter or umami-rich food. For those who are seeking to turn up the heat with their wine with a slightly more tannic and higher alcohol wine, the “strutturato”-style Valpolicella wines offer a fantastic option that does not overwhelm the underlying fruit in the wine.
The fresh, fruity flavors in “fresco” -style Valpolicella can offer congruent flavors to go with Asian flavors with a sweet component, such as sweet soy and cane sugar.
A “strutturato”-style Valpolicella has excellent acidity to cut through fat in cured meats while having a fuller body to withstand meat dishes like braised meats.
At the moment, Valpolicella is not as expensive as many other red wines at approximately $15-$30 USD, which is ideal for large gatherings. You can open a few bottles for your guests without sacrificing a side dish.
Why Valpolicella with the traditional Thanksgiving meal?
The same principles for pairing Asian food with Valpolicella above apply as well for a loaded plate of turkey medallions, mounds of mashed potatoes oozing with gravy and spiced greens! Turkey is not a protein that demands high, grippy tannins to resolve the fat in the meat like a fatty ribeye steak does. As with Asian meals, Thanksgiving dinners are also served with a number of side dishes and accompaniments at one time, which makes this versatile wine a reliable red wine pairing partner for T-Day.
Will Valpolicella be on your Thanksgiving dinner table this year?
Comment below with your favorite Thanksgiving food and wine pairing. Whichever cuisine, wine and culture you’re celebrating with, I wish you and your loved ones a joyous holiday season.
Cheers,
Viv
