Burgundy: Serafin and Chinese Food at The Peninsula

So, last night I had the pleasure of dining with Mme. Frederique Bachotet, niece of legendary Burgundian Christian Serafin and winemaker for the Serafin Domaine. Myself and the chaps from One Red Dot Fine Wines headed to Spring Moon Chinese Restaurant in the iconic Peninsula Hotel to pair her wines with some Chinese food and taste an array of vintages from the red wine producing estate.

I have to say Frederique is a lovely lady with a great sense of humour and a great winemaker to boot! Although most of the conversations we had together were in French (it’s amazing how I can speak French after a few glasses of wine!) it was clear to see the passion she has for making great wine from a grape that is so hard to get right every year.

 

It wouldn’t be Hong Kong without pairing Pinot and duck so to kick off proceedings it was Peking Duck and Gevrey-Chambertin 2008 which was, as expected, a robust wine that when paired with the duck and especially the hoisin sauce, highlighted the great acidity the wine has and was, not surprisingly, a great pairing (let me tell you now, the chef pre-prepared the menu for us knowing full well it was a dinner of red wines only, and only Pinot Noir). I love Peking duck personally and think that Pinot is the quintessential wine to pair with this dish – well worth a try next time you head to your local Chinese restaurant.

So onto the next course, beef and egg white soup. Wine and soup? Maybe not, but it would be a brave move. There was not actually a wine paired with the soup as it’s a tough one to pair but if anyone could pull it off, Bordelais sommelier and brand manager for One Red Dot Nicolas Zozoula could pull it off. In fact, adding a little white pepper to the soup did it a world of good and made the impromptu pairing with the Gevrey 2008 a real surprise. The soup is hearty and meaty and in fact did go very well with the wine.

 

I am not a huge fan of Pinot Noir personally, there are some that I love but it’s a tough one for me and I began to question whether or not we should drink Burgundy wines, especially the reds without food. Personally, I don’t think so, maybe aged Burgundy but certainly not the younger ones.

Spring Moon is the Peninsula’s renowned Chinese restaurant and I have had the opportunity to have two meals there in the last week. Last week I had a Napa valley lunch there and the next dish also featured on that menu too which is why I have to question what, if any knowledge of wine the chef of the restaurant has. Let me put it frankly….red wine and Garoupa fish do not pair together…period. Last time I had the misfortune of drinking a Napa Meritage blend with sautéed Garoupa and last night, again, a Pinot with the same dish.

 

Garoupa is a deep water ocean fish, a white meat fish and while I could understand pairing a trout, tuna, salmon or sardine fish with a red wine, I cannot see how or why anyone would want to pair a Garoupa with red wine. The wines we had paired with this dish were the Serafin Morey-St-Denis Les Millandes 2008 and 1999. The wines were outstanding but the pairing was not.

Next up was the Serafin Chambolle-Musigny Les Baudes 2008 which was a decent wine but again was way off the mark with the pairing. Deep Fried Golden Prawns Battered with Salted Egg Yolk…nope, sorry chef, another total disaster there. The wine was a pleasure to drink, the food a delight to eat, but putting prawns and red wine together, especially with the salty egg was just wrong. In my world there’s only one thing you can successfully pair with egg and that’s Champagne, let alone the prawns which were screaming for a white wine to pair with them.

 

In Chinese cuisine, when you order a Peking duck, they really only use the skin for the delicious pancake dish that is the iconic recipe from Northern China. The rest of the duck is taken back to the kitchen, stripped of all its meat, minced together with water chestnut, bamboo pith and mushroom and served as another dish. This minced duck is placed on a lettuce leaf with hoisin sauce and eaten like a lettuce taco. This is a fantastic dish and one that was lovely with the Gevrey-Chambertin Les Corbeaux 2008. There was another wine paired with this dish but it totally contradicts my comment about not being able to drink Burgundy without food – the Serafin Gevrey-Chambertin Les Cazetiers 2006 was incredible. Easy drinking, light and feminine, I could have drunk the whole bottle, alone, without food – so, there are some exceptions! This was delightful, but in no way matched the food which was far too overpowering for this delicate wine.

With the 2006 looking so good I was really looking forward to the Serafin Charmes-Chambertin Grand Cru 2006 and it did not disappoint. Unlike the dish it was paired with, the Spicy Pepper and Salt Spare Ribs which were oily and you could taste the flour that they had been ‘dusted’ with before deep frying them. Had this wine been paired with something like a roasted goose or pork neck – fatty and supple – it would have made an excellent pairing. However, the pairing did not work but the wine was just out of this world good. So, I ditched the food and jut went with the wine alone. Again, proving my theory wrong, but then maybe it was just the 2006 vintage that does not need food (more experimenting needed to prove my case I feel).

 

In all, the wines were lovely and there’s no better way to get a full understanding of them than dining and drinking them with the winemaker. Sadly, Spring Moon is no more than a tourist-trap Chinese restaurant – and an expensive one at that. I have, as you have probably seen, been to local ‘dai pai dong’ restaurants and had better food where the pairings are impromptu and altogether the food much, much better in terms of quality and value for money. I shall not be going back to Spring Moon again (well I hope not anyway) but given the chance to stick the Serafin Gevrey-Chambertin 2008, the Les Cazetiers 2006 and the Charmes-Chambertin 2006 in my cellar I would do so at the drop of a hat.

Serafin Pere at Fils wines are exclusively imported and distributed in Hong Kong by One Red Dot Fine Wines. For more information you can contact them on sales@onereddot.com or you can call them on (+852) 2408 8320.