Food and wine pairing may not be new, but for the truly wine-dedicated, we're continuing our series covering food and wine matching from a wine-first perspective. Up next is red Burgundy.
Next up in our series on pairing meals with wine is red Burgundy (or just “Burgundy” to most devotees). The fervour for Burg in Asia is often attributed to its superior ability to match Asian cuisine especially compared with its burlier cousin, Bordeaux. However, I personally find this claim a little dubious, suspecting this may be a case of post-facto justification. Burgundy may go rather nicely with Beijing roast duck (though it depends on the sauce), but most collectors just want an excuse to drink their Burgundy, accompaniments be damned.
Burgundy’s challenge is that it is a subtle, idiosyncratic beast and any dish too explosive in flavour will quickly overshadow it. Anything sweet often makes it taste tart and thin. Anything with excessive umami from soy or other fermented products may do the same. Thanks to new oak ageing, top Burgundy is rarely any more amenable to pairing with spicy dishes than red Bordeaux in my experience. So, in the interest of finding meals that will flatter these prized bottles rather than overwhelm or wreck them, I’ve tried to stick to options that are rich in flavour but not overly complicated.
The Wine
The wines we are principally referring to here are those from the Côte d’Or, made up of the Côte de Nuits to the north (almost exclusively red) and the Côte de Beaune to the south (more famous for white). Red Burgundy is more monolithic than even white Burgundy in the sense that it is made exclusively from Pinot Noir (the Gamay grape, once Pinot Noir’s Burgundian bedfellow but now relegated to neighbouring Beaujolais, was banned from the Burgundy’s vineyards by Philip the Bold in 1395 for being “very bad and very disloyal”).
Nonetheless, the category is diverse in the sense that it includes everything from the humble Bourgogne Rouge––though how humble can a wine that easily costs upward of US$50 be?––to Domaine de la Romanée Conti (DRC) Romanée Conti and Domaine Leroy Musigny, both of which will set you back around US$20,000. Common to all of the wines, be they modest or mighty, is perfumed fruit, silky texture and, in both the literal and figurative sense, translucency. This tends to make them marry well with dishes that have a similarly sensuous, caressing texture.
As a general rule, the less expensive the wine the lower the level of ripeness and hence alcohol, body and concentration, but the best Bourgogne Rouge will compensate with bright fruit, acidity and charm. The level of oak aromas and tannins present depends mainly on the quality level as there are no top-end wines that eschew oak entirely for style reasons alone. Therefore, dishes with aggressive elements like chili spice or strong fish flavours tend to be happier with less ambitious bottles.
Stylistically, the main divide is between the robust and the graceful. Among village wines––a value sweet spot that is usually identifiable by a hyphenated name and less eye-popping price tag––there are Gevrey-Chambertin (robust), Chambolle-Musigny and Vosne-Romanée (graceful) in the Côte de Nuits; and Aloxe-Corton and Pommard (robust) and Volnay (graceful) in the Côte de Beaune. The most expensive wines are likewise divided between the robust––most of the DRC stable, plus Domaines Dujac and Ponsot––with a rich, lusty character that unfurls slowly over the course of an evening; and the graceful––Jayer, Roumier, Mugnier––which deliver seductive fragrance and glossy fruit in a seemingly weightless frame. Before picking a meal, it’s a good idea to figure out which style you’ve brought to the table.