Wine & Cuisine with Jeannie Cho Lee & Chef Brian Kim

So generally the food and wine pairing is really important.

And when did you get involved and interested in the pairing with the food and wine?

All my life.

Because I'm eating and drinking at home.

I think everything, as you said, starts at home.

It's what your mother taught you in terms of international flavors and global flavors and appreciating food and pairing wine I did.

Because as soon as I came back and really started appreciating from the UK, and I found a new appreciation for wine, I started bringing it into the dining table.

I would choose different wines.

But I guess the more professional and the more structured way of approaching food and wine pairing, especially with Asian cuisine, really starts with the very, very basics.

Korean food in general, Chinese food is actually exactly the same, and many Asian cuisine dishes is a very communal experience.

All the dishes come out at once.

And the idea of a pairing is that, well, you have 10 dishes and maybe six, seven banchan, condiments, and other side dishes.

How do you have one wine that can pair with all these different flavors? It's impossible.

And I don't even recommend it.

So what I do with communal setting and a very casual restaurant is that I ask the chef or the restaurant to bring out dishes in groups.

So bring out all the lighter, pan-fried, maybe more vegetable ingredient dishes in the beginning.

You can bring them out five or six at a time.

It's okay.

But in that setting, you need to group the flavors so that you can then choose a bottle of wine or something that is appropriate for that flavor group.

So this is one way of overcoming the communal setting of most Asian meals.

Now, the other way was, you know, as you have your five-course menu, which is very classic, is to do one dish at a time, which is the Western concept, and it's easier because if it's only one dish even if it has let's say five six seven different flavors on that dish you can still try to find a wine that will pair with that dish so and this i haven't even started describing what it is you're looking for in that dish, whether it's the spiciness, the level of salt, the fattiness, the way that it's been steamed, the ingredients themselves, the condiments.

I mean, that's the preparation and the flavor profile of the dish.

But on the other hand, if you also are thinking seriously about a wine that's compatible, you look at the wine and its structure too.

And the structure is how much acidity does it have? Will it bring a refreshing quality to every bite? How much tannin does it have? Will it go with the protein and the type of protein you have? Like red meat with higher tannin red wine, obviously everyone knows goes well together.

But What happens when you introduce like a XO sauce or gochujang chili sauce or paste? even if it's the same ingredient, you change the entire profile.