Although I have many favorite foods in the world, something I would definitely have on the menu for my last supper would be sushi. Given wine is my favorite beverage, I thought it’d be fun to explore the pairing.
The Asian Palate
Growing up in an Asian-American household, I’m used to combinations of fishy, umami, bitter, earthy, spicy and sour flavors in my food beyond America’s typical addiction to simply sweet or salty. In fact, I can remember a time when sushi was considered exotic and weird by much of the population. Now it’s ubiquitous in the US and Chile. Like with food, I think my Asian palate is one of the reasons why I like exploring exotic wines so much–The most interesting wines bring all those other flavors and characteristics from where it comes from besides generic chocolatey oak and sugar.
At the same time, wine (from grapes) hasn’t been a traditional accompaniment to Asian foods, especially in Asian households, so I actually hadn’t had a lot of experience pairing Asian foods and wine.* It took my first trip to France for wine and food pairing to click in my head. France has centuries of experience pairing wine and European food, but that’s not the case with Asian food. Since the market for wines in East Asia has expanded, it’s clear Asians are still learning about wine. Moreover, exporting producers are still learning about wine styles to pair with Asian foods and how to please the Asian palate. That’s another reason why I wanted to explore wine pairing with sushi and sashimi.
* There’s currently talk of making an Asian-American Winery Association to promote more wine and Asian food pairing at restaurants in the US.
Traditional Pairings with Sushi and Sashimi
Although we already have some established wine pairings for raw seafood dishes from Europe, Japan also has its own traditions of non-wine pairings that should also inform how we pair wine with sushi.
The most typical pairing for sushi in Japan is green tea. Tea tasting can be a hobby just like wine. It can be just as geeky, snobby and expensive like wine too. However, in the case of sushi, cheap, lighter tea is often served for free in Japan and makes the best pairing. The main reason behind this is that the sushi should be the star of the show. This is an important rule in wine pairing that people often ignore: The more complex the wine, the simpler the food to highlight the wine while the more complex, subtle or delicate the dish, the simpler the wine.** In this case, tea is used more as a palate cleanser and to deal with the thirst the saltiness of the sushi will cause.
Another typical pairing is sake, which is an alcohol made from rice in a process more akin to beer brewing than wine. Sake is also like tea and wine in that there are different styles, quality and characteristics. There can be fruity/floral, umami, earthy and bitter notes. The acid is generally low with a light and smooth finish. Again, the general rule is drinking a simpler sake to use as a palate cleanser to let the sushi shine. Sake is also becoming more popular as a pairing with non-Japanese dishes too, so it’s something wine lovers might want to explore.
Speaking of beer, most Japanese beers are pilsner beers (essentially a pale lager). Hence, they are light and not particularly strong, so they should also make a nice pairing with sushi as a thirst quencher and palate cleanser.
**On a personal side note as a person who gets irked by people dowsing sushi and other East Asian foods with a liter of soy sauce, a similar pairing argument can be made for soy sauce too: The better the quality of the sushi, the less (or even zero) soy sauce you should need. I guess the opposite might be true too: the cheaper the sushi, the more complex wine and tea or amount of soy sauce you can accompany it with to mask the lesser quality ingredients. This is also what winemakers do with oak and sugar to hide the lesser quality grapes they use in the wine. However, I think many people do it with sushi and other Asian foods because they really don’t like the fishy, earthy and other “exotic” flavors, so they just cover it with salt. Likewise, winemakers sometimes cover quality fruit and terroir notes with too much oak or over-extraction because many consumers don’t actually like tasting the “terroir” and natural flavors in wine. These modern wines, like California Rolls, make good gateway wines, but as your palate develops, you prefer more distinction from the terroir, just like different types of fish in sushi.
I should also clarify that simpler food with complex wines doesn’t have to mean poor quality. A steak can be something simple without complex seasoning or sauces but can be high quality. Similarly, a simple wine doesn’t mean unbalanced or poor quality. Sometimes a complex or super intense wine can distract from, clash or be too much with complex and intense foods, but the wine should at least be pleasant and balanced.
Sushi Wine Pairing Options
As I mentioned earlier, the quality of sushi matters as well as the type of sushi. It could be sashimi (just raw fish), chirashi (a bowl of various sashimi spread over rice with pickled vegetables), or various types of maki (rolls) or nigiri (raw fish over a small bed of rice), which can contain all types of raw seafood, seaweed, vegetables, cheese (in the US and Chile), or fried/cooked fish or chicken with various sauces (outside of Japan). All these might have different ideal pairings. Let’s not forget wasabi and ginger too, which can bring some heat but is usually on the side as an option in American style sushi while in Japan wasabi is already in the sushi itself and the ginger is a palate cleanser.
However, I’m not going to bother with trying to pair each individual type since most people order an assortment of types of sashimi and sushi. By the way, this is another issue pairing wine with Asian meals in general because many Asian meals are several, diverse dishes shared with several people at the same time. Hence, you need versatile wines that can go with all types of dishes rather than one wine for one dish or one wine for each course.
Assuming the sushi quality is good, authentic and with many types of raw seafood, an ideal wine pairing should be dry, simple, light, low in alcohol and refreshing according to traditional Japanese sushi pairing philosophy. Of course, this leaves us with a lot of the typical raw seafood wine pairings like Sauvignon Blanc, Muscadet, Albariño, Verdejo, Assyrtiko, Chablis (or unoaked Chardonnay), Vinho Verde, Pinot Grigio (and a ton of other Italian whites like Gavi, Pinot Bianco and Verdicchio), Gruner Veltiner, Picpoul de Pinet, Txakoli and dry sparkling whites. These all tend to be light, crisp wines with minimal to no oak.
Some of the high-achieving versions might be too acidic, high in alcohol, oaked and briny for sushi, which already has its own taste of ocean in the seaweed and seafood, so they don’t need to be expensive, high rated versions. Many other raw seafood dishes already have lemon juice in it or are served with lemons so you may need a more acidic wine to pair with it. In contrast, sushi is not served with lemon, and sushi vinegar in the rice is mellowed by some sugar, so a medium to medium-low acid wine can work too.
On the other hand, meatier and fattier fish like salmon and tuna can often go well with bigger bodied or more intense whites like Chenin, Semillon and Riesling or lighter reds like Gamay, Cinsault and unoaked Pinot Noir. A dry, light rosé should also work.
Of all of these choices, I feel like Muscadet (made from the Melon de Bourgogne grape from the Loire) really encapsulates the non-interference and cleansing philosophy of Japanese sushi pairing. Some of the others can sometimes be too intense in terms of acid, fruit or other distinct notes like green notes in Sauvignon Blanc or Verdejo while Muscadet has more neutral fruit with fresh acid and minerality but not too much. The time on lees does give it some texture while remaining light. They’re usually low in alcohol too. Aged Muscadet best mimics sake for me. Additionally, Txakoli or a simple Brut Sparkling is similar to Muscadet but with some fizz.
One could also say the green notes in Sauvignon Blanc can also mimic green tea notes, but it needs to be subtle. Thus, maybe an Austrian or German Sauvignon Blanc might be the next best option after Muscadet. This unique Marty Chilean Sauvignon Blanc that I reviewed, made with sake yeast, is especially an ideal pairing because it’s rounder and less acidic but with remaining green notes. Thus it’s sort of like green tea and sake combined.
Unsurprisingly, typical raw seafood wine pairings both theoretically and through my experience are generally the best bet. Pairing, like with wine in general, is still quite subjective, so it really depends on your palate though. You should experiment. At the same time, as much as I love wine, not everything needs to be paired with wine. I’ve seen silly articles about pairing Halloween candy and breakfast cereal with wine, and I think it’s too much. I don’t need wine 24/7 with everything I eat. Green tea with sushi is perfectly fine on most occasions for me, but there may be occasions where I might want wine instead.
The Experiment
To test my theories and really focus on authentic Japanese sushi and pairing philosophy, I found a wine designed especially for sushi by a Japanese oenologist. I’m curious to see her interpretation of the perfect sushi wine. It wasn’t at all an expensive wine at $8, which already fits my theory that the wine need not be too expensive or intense.
Keeping with my theory, I’m going to pair this wine with higher quality classic Japanese sushi. In Japan, it’s all about the quality of the rice and the freshness and variety of the fish to get the complexity of flavors and textures from sushi.
Finding Sushi in Chile
Although I appreciate the amount of cheap sushi they have in Chile, it lacks quality rice and is masked by too much cream cheese to cover the lack of quality of the fish. However, Chile has an abundance of cheap, fresh salmon from their farms in the south (a whole other issue due to its environmental effects), so the salmon is usually fairly fresh and is the primary or sometimes only option for raw fish at fast-food sushi places which are abundant. Cheap sushi or sushi gohan (rice) bowls are just as common as empanadas in Chile nowadays, but 90% are American (with cream cheese, avocado, fried stuff and mayonnaise based sauces) and Peruvian (with ceviche flavors) influenced rather than Japanese. Nonetheless, one can find some pretty good, authentic Japanese, albeit more expensive sushi in Santiago since it’s a large international city. Plus there’s fresh, inexpensive seafood all over Chile due its endless coastline. For example, fresh oysters, scallops and sea urchin are so cheap compared to the US.
Tasting Notes
2021 Oroya “Created for Sushi” Castilla La Mancha
Airen (60%) Macabeo (30%) Moscatel (10%). Created by Japanese oenologist Yoko Sato to pair with sushi. It’s interesting that she sourced wines from Spain, but it turns out she works for Freixenet, which is based in Spain but produces wine all over the world, specializing in sparkling wines. Macabeo (Viura in Rioja) is typical for all types of whites from northeastern Spain and the Cotes Catalanes area of France too. On the other hand, Airen is usually reserved for brandy even though it’s the most planted grape in Spain. Dry varietal versions don’t often leave the country, so this might be my first wine with Airen as the primary grape. It’s typically a simple, medium-light, low tannin and medium-low acid grape. The 10% Moscatel should add a bit of aromatics to the other two more neutral grapes. I can already see the influence of Japanese sushi pairing philosophy from the varieties selected, but let’s see how it tastes with and without the sushi.
Screw cap. Extremely clear color. Mild yellow tones, but depending on the lighting, it almost looks like water. Overall, this is not an in-your-face wine. It’s subtle and reminds me of sake. The nose has medium-light intensity of white fruit and floral notes. The palate is round, medium-light bodied with medium-light acid but still feels fresh. It’s ripe and fruity, but more like ripe Asian pears and not at all tropical. No hard edges at all. 12% alcohol. It’s supposed to be something that will cleanse the palate and refresh after the saltiness of the soy sauce and fish, but also not accentuate the heat from the wasabi or ginger. It’s subtle, fairly simple but round nature should allow you to focus on the textures and flavors of the fish and rice. It’s not necessarily supposed to linger on the palate too long once it cleans your palate for the next bite of sushi. It’s an 86 point wine on its own.
With sushi/sashimi, I found it functions as it should in theory. If your mouth is burning a bit from the wasabi, then the wine soothes it. If your mouth is salty or fishy, then the wine cleanses it for the next bite. There’s a little more fruit on the wine with salty and spicy foods, but when I tried it with teriyaki (a sweet sauce), some bitter notes came out. Therefore, I think it’s best with standard raw fish, vinegar rice, soy sauce and wasabi combinations rather than sweeter Japanese dishes or sweet unagi (eel) sauced sushi. With sushi/sashimi, it doesn’t interfere and goes down easily and quickly. Eventually, you realize that you’ve drunk most of the bottle. It’s a wine that can seamlessly replace sake or tea with sushi.
Conclusion
In the end, this wine follows the Japanese pairing philosophy of non-interference. I can’t say the wine is vastly made better by the food or vice versa, but it allows you to focus on each type of sushi between each sip. It also makes me think of East Asian culture, which often puts the community first over standing out individually. Sometimes it’s better not to stand out and to do work in the background for the greater good without any individual credit as many East Asians do as immigrants or in their own countries. We should appreciate inexpensive, complementary wines like this more rather than always trying to find blockbuster wines which can sometimes clash with the food you’re eating. Less is sometimes more.
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