Food for a Riesling Tasting?

[tammylc]

My wine club is meeting tomorrow night, and the theme is German Rieslings. We've got four 2002 Riesling Kabinetts, one each from four different growing regions in Germany. People in the group are really interested in tasting how wine and food interact with each other, so we usually taste and evaluate the wines on their own first, then again with food.

Any suggestions?

[carswell]

Hors d'oeuvres involving any of the following:

- Salmon (poached and chilled, tartare, lightly smoked, gravlax)

- Lightly smoked trout with horseradish cream

- Sushi and sashimi, especially made from mild white fish/shellfish

- Whitefish cavair, salmon caviar

- Crab or shrimp salads (e.g. crab with garlic, chile, lime, fish sauce, cilantro and sugar on endive leaves; tiny shrimp with mayo dressing in an avocado half)

- Weisswurst

- Melon and prosciutto

[jamiemaw]

In addition to carswell's excellent suggestions:

Lightly smoked sablefish with cfeme fraiche; American lumpfish caviar, garlic-chilli wok-fried baby squid tubes.

Sushi is an easy pairing with Kabinett; and chicken chow mein, of all things, is joined at the hip.

If you're sampling a late harvest reisling, a spiced-peach tarte Tatin might be interesting this time of year.

Cheers,

Jamie

Edited September 5, 2005 by jamiemaw (log)

[winebabe]

One of the greatest food and wine matches happens to be Riesling with heat or spice, which makes it a great wine for spicy Asian or Mexican dishes. The heat from the food is mitigated by the fruitiness of the wine. Asian dishes tend to have sweetness in addition to heat and the sweetness in the preparation is balanced out by the fruitiness of the wine. Try kabinetts that are of varying degrees of fruitiness.

[petite tête de chou]

Perhaps a simple fish dish with apples, onions and a bit of curry or a turkey or chicken piccata?

[tammylc]

Thanks for the suggestions! I've got limited preparation time, so I'm leaning towards things that are simple to put together. My budget is also pretty small, but people don't expect a lot of food, just tastses.

I think I'm going to do some sort of smoked fish (I'll see what I find when I'm out), melon and prosciutto, and curried chicken salad (Whole Foods sells a really nice prepared one). And bread, of course.

Given where I'll be shopping, I'll probably get sucked in by the cheese case. Any favorite cheese combinations to share?

[Alex]

Ah, I remember those Rieslings! Ms. Alex did a multi-country (US, Australia, Germany, Austria) Riesling tasting with some friends earlier this summer, with some surprising results.

Don't quote me on this, but I seem to remember reading somewhere that cheese is not recommended as an accompaniment for wine tasting because of how it coats the tongue. If you do want a cheese, though, I'm thinking an Emmenthaler would be a good match. I'd also want no more than a very light smoke on the fish. I love the melon and proscuitto idea. We had figs and proscuitto as a starter the other night, and I found myself wishing I had chilled and opened a Riesling instead of a Viognier.

[jbonne]

if you haven't already headed off to shop, and there's Vietnamese groceries in the area, consider some goi cuon (the often-misnamed "salad rolls) in the mix.

skip the cheese.

[Brad Ballinger]

Probably too late, but for next time -- onion tart.

[rlibkind]

Probably too late, but for next time -- onion tart.

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Excellent suggestion, and even more appropriate with Alsatian Rieslings.