Wine list...

[Randy Caparoso]

Bucko, I would suggest that your crowd practices some degree of self-hypnosis. Alsatian style Gewurztraminer is generally one of the worse wines to serve with Asian style foods that emphasize sweet/sour/hot sensations. In this context, 99% of the time the high alcohol, moderate acid, and naturally bitter/phenolic edges of Alsatian Gewurztraminers taste harsh -- difficult to digest the food, and difficult to drink the wine. There are exceptions, of course -- such as certain Chinese preparations of crispy roasted pork -- but in most others, it's a bad, bad combination. How do we know? Our own trial-and-error. We used to try to serve this wine in our own dining rooms, and the regular, everyday consumer reacts in exactly the way I'm talking -- the wine tastes bitter, and the dishes certainly taste overly sweet and/or hot and filling. The result is that they don't finish their bottle, and they certainly have a hard time eating their dish -- a nightmare for a restaurant like ours, with food prepared by a James Beard Award winning chef!

That's the reason we specifically choose only clean, light, fragrant Gewurztraminers with good fruitiness, but low bitter/hot tannin/alcohol elements; and it is certain parts of California and Germany, rather than Alsace, that are the sources of these styles. These findings have also been confirmed by people such as David Rosengarten and Joshua Wesson, by the way, and so I know that ours is not a minority opinion.

[This message has been edited by Randy Caparoso (edited 03-30-2000).]