Pairing Chinese Food and Good Wine
When the Chinese food has nothing to do with cardboard boxes, it’s best to go for wine, not beer.
The folks behind the new Mandarin know this and so designed a generally well-chosen and well-priced wine list. But it could be better.
The best thing about the list is the price: current wines appear to be listed at no more than 2.5 times their wholesale price, and older wines are not expensive, either. The only problem is that some of the older wines are from “off” vintages--the 1984 Beaujolais, the 1983 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, the 1980 Burgundy.
Still, when you see bargains in every cranny of the three-page booklet, it will warm your heart even more than the red sauce innocently placed on every table warmed my gullet. A 1986 Saintsbury Chardonnay at $16 is a $13.50 bottle of wine at retail; 1986 Cuvaison Chardonnay is $20, and sells for $16.25 at retail.
A REAL FIND: We ordered a red wine, and it was a real find: 1981 Robert Pepi Vine Hill Cabernet Sauvignon, a steal at $20 since the wine is no longer commercially available and already shows marvelous development. Moreover, the currently available vintage of Pepi, 1983, is much younger and therefore less drinkable, and sells for $17.25.
Gewurztraminer is a great match for Chinese food and this list has only a single choice, but it’s a good one: 1985 Chateau St. Jean Alexander Valley ($14), a wine that has just .6% residual sugar and thus is dry enough to match with any of this food. (The wine is no longer commercially available, but it sold for $8 a bottle when it was.)
For those in a festive mood, prices for California sparkling wines are quite fair ($24 for both 1984 Schramsberg Blanc de Blanc and Cuvee de Pinot).
$10 CORKAGE FEE: If you want to bring in your own wine, you’ll get no hassle: corkage is $10. And the glassware--a crystal clear tulip with a fine, delicate rim--is a step above the clunky stuff you get at a lot of restaurants. Service is very eager if slightly off-mark (our waiter committed the common malpractice of pouring too much wine into our glasses, nearly up to the rim).
On the other hand, when we ordered a glass of the house red wine, Robert Mondavi California Cabernet ($3.50 per glass), and the restaurant was out, the waiter chose to open another wine--it turned out to be the same 1981 Robert Pepi we had ordered. And thanks to the restaurant’s apparent heavy-hands policy, we got a hefty seven-ounce pour of it. Now, that’s a bargain.
Now if only there were a couple more Gewurztraminers, a Chianti, a younger Beaujolais.