I tend to be a purist when it comes to wine. I believe the best wine and food pairings are with foods and wines of the same region. There are certainly exceptions to this rule like German Rieslings that go so well with Asian cuisine. But as a general rule Sicilian wines go best with Sicilian cuisine, Spanish wine with Catalonia dishes... You get the idea. I cringe when I see a big Cabernet in a Japanese restaurant.
For a dinner at the Peruvian restaurant Costanera I had a challenge. There is very little wine produced in Peru. They do make a lot of Pisco, and I love a good Pisco Sour. But wine is hard to come by so I turned to neighboring Chile and Argentina.
Luckily I just received two nice wines from these regions for a tasting. The first a Torrontes by the Catena Family created at Bodegas Esmeralda in Mendoza, Argentina produced under the Tilia label. The second a Chilean Sauvignon Blanc called Root:1 by Felipe Tossa of Vina Ventisquero in the Casablanca Valley, Chile.
Let's see how they did with some Cocina Peruana.
We started our tasting by sampling these wines alone. Both are made by very prestigious vineyards and both are made for the "value wine" category.
The Tilia Torrontes was smooth and flavorful. I am not a fan of Torrentes so it was not very appealing to me at first, but this is a very good wine. Torrentes is a floral wine, a lot like Viognier, with flavors of peach pit, apricot, almond, and orange citrus fruit. As it is poured it had a bright pale yellow color with green tones. On the nose there are scents of rose and jasmine. This grape also reminds me of Muscat. It sells for under $10,
I was curious how this wine would be with the food.
I typically would pair this with chicken or seafood dishes but I was just reading a blog post that said it was very good with a spicy chorizo dish. Pairing: Torrontes with Chorizo & Goat Cheese Salad. I am going try something like that.
At dinner this wine, as I predicted, went very well with an appetizer of shrimp and plantanos coated in a mildly spicy tomato sauce in a delicate puff pastry cup. The wine accented the spice and bread flavors and complimented the shrimp and plantanos. It also went well with the Chiharron De Pescado a quinoa-crusted fish fritter with a salsa gulf dipping sauce. I liked the way this wine worked with spicy food.
Our second wine, the Root1 Sauvignon bounded out of the bottle with lovely citrus aromas and color. It is very smooth, gentle yet full of fresh complex flavors of passion fruit, grapefruit and lime. The lime was really present in each taste. It was balanced with crisp acidity and some mineral notes. I liked the way it rolled around and filled my mouth with enjoyment. This wine also sells for around $10.
I planned to try this with a dish called Tiradito Niikei, a Peruvian sashimi of tuna dressed with a spicy aji amarillo cream and a soy lime dressing. Sure enough it was perfect with the dish. Flavorful but not overpowering.
This wine also went very well with our delicious entrees of Escabeche de Pescado, a pan roasted fish (made with Corvina), with spiced pickled onions and yams as well as the Chaufa de Mariscos which is a Peruvian version seafood wok-fried rice.
The story of this wine is this "Chile’s unique geography makes it one of very few grape-growing regions in the world where original European rootstock has been unaffected by phylloxera. While most vineyards around the world are planted on grafted rootstock, Root: 1 is grown on pure, ungrafted roots, producing a Sauvignon Blanc with intense fruit flavor and authentic varietal character." Importer
Find these wines on www.vinquire.com or www.wine-searcher.com
See our Review of Costanera here: Costanera Montclair, NJ - Restaurant Review - Excellent Peruvian Cuisine
