At the end of last month I was asked to join Siam Winery at the launching of their New Thai wines, Monsoon Valley.  My job was to match their wines with Thai food.  I thought I should write about this concept of matching Thai food with wines.  Historically speaking, the concept of drinking wines to compliment Thai food is quite foreign to Thai eating culture.  Thais have always consumed alcoholic beverages for pleasure and relaxation or to put it quite bluntly to get drunk!  The thought of drinking anything to compliment Thai food was never in our minds.  To makes matters worse; wine is also not indigenous product of our drinking culture.  Wine drinking culture was imported to Thailand by those of us who went to school abroad or came into contact with Westerners who have been drinking wines since the Roman times.  It was about 10 to 15 years ago that Thais started to drink wines.  This is because the world got smaller and Thais who drank wines demonstrate to the rest of us a certain amount of sophistication.  We want to be perceived as being culture and sophisticated people.  It was therefore, quite a challenge for me to do the food matching with Thai wines from Siam Winery.  

          I did not even know if we could grow grapes for making wines in Thailand because our soil and climate is not the same as in other wine producing countries.  I had to do research on Siam Winery Product and found out that the vision of making Thai wines came about as a result of the production of another beverage, Spy Wine Cooler.  They needed to make grape wines and blend it with fruit juices and other ingredients to produce the Spy Wine Coolers that we are all familiar with. Khun Chalerm Yoovidhya, the Chairman of this family owned company had this vision that we should be able to produce wines in Thailand to compliment Thai food and promote Thai wine industry and make a name for Thailand as a wine producing country.  It was and is not the intention of Siam Winery to produce great wines to matched those great Grand Cru wines of France but rather to create Thai grape wines that are grown in Thailand with a New World wine character which compliments specifically Thai food.  This whole concept of matching Thai food with Siam Winery wines is more easily accepted and understood by those countries that have a wine drinking culture and for this reason Monsoon Valley is concentrating its marketing efforts in Thai restaurants abroad and upper end hotels and Thai restaurants in Thailand.                                                                                                               

         I guess the reason I was ask to match Thai food with their wines is because I know something about Thai food and at the same time I appreciate and am familiar with the concept of drinking wines with food.  The Thai public in general still needs to be educated and understand about this concept.  Drinking wine is healthy and it does compliments the food.  You don’t have to drink to get drunk anymore but to appreciate the flavor and discover that the wine makes yours food taste better.  Eventually Thais will develop this cultural sophistication.  The consumption of wines will also increase but the tax on locally made wines makes the pricing of Thai wines not competitive enough compared to cheaper imported wines.  It is the vision of the Chairman of Siam Winery that Thailand can be proud of its own wine industry.  That we produce New World wine specifically and intentionally blended for Thai food, which is so famous around the world.Now let’s get into specifics about how this wine compliments Thai food.  I have chosen three dishes to match the wines.                       

      What is important for us to understand is that Thai food is Aromatic, spicy with very pronounced flavors.  The taste combination of Thai food is also very different from other world cuisine.  Such combinations as sweet, sour and spicy hot, Sweet and hot or even three flavors of equal strength salty, sour and sweet with a little hotness kicked in means that the wines that we drink with Thai food should not over power all these pronounced flavors but compliment it or help in digesting and cleansing your palate.  I chose the dish Nam (pickled pork) which I put these pieces of pork through a breading procedure with peanuts in it and deep-fry them.  Nam is usually eaten with accompanying vegetable and herbs.  There are lettuce leaves, cubed lime with rind on it, cubed ginger, shallots, peanuts and chili peppers.  As you munch on this lettuce cup of Nam you will get a different flavors everytime you chew.  There is greasiness from the Nam being deep-fried, the nuttiness of the peanut and the ginger, lime and shallots helps the digestion and cleanse the palate.  Then I chose the Monsoon Valley Malaga Blanc white wine to compliment this dish.  The character of the white wine is quite dry with a slight nose of fruitiness, which the wine maker Khun Laurent likes to call it melon.                                 

.        As you drink this wine after eating the Nam the wine will clean your palate and add some acidity to the dish that you are eating and cut the greasiness of the deep-fried Nam.  The Nam itself is also sour but the wine is slightly sweeter than the Nam and mellows out and balances the taste of the food in your mouth.  For the roast chicken with Panaeng Sauce I chose the red or the rose to go with it.  This dish has very pronounced flavor and is a little on the sweet side.  What is required of a wine to compliment this dish is a wine that is not too sweet or robust in flavor.  It should have enough acidity and some tannin to counteract the richness of the curry sauce which is made from coconut milk and very rich herbs and spices.  In this way the red or rose when drunk with the Panaeng Roast Chicken will help you to appreciate all the subtle flavors that lies underneath the curry sauce.  The last dish, which is my own creation of Mussamun, curry lamb shanks to be drunk with the Shiraz.  Here again the curry is very rich and made with lamb.  It has tamarind in the sauce as well as palm sugar.  It has this remarkable sweet, sour and salty taste combination that compliments the natural flavor of the lamb.  The Shiraz is not too robust with a small amount of spiciness in its character.  This spiciness in the wine goes well with the curry and the lamb. At the same time the Shiraz is not too sweet and dry enough to help you palate digest the complex flavors of the lamb and tannic enough to clean your mouth and ready your palate for the next mouthful.  I must apologize for writing so much but I want you all to understand and begin to discover for yourselves how wines can compliment our Thai food.  This is a rather long guideline, which I hope will prove useful to some of you.