Taking a wok on the wine side
A Master of Wine, Fongyee Walker is the effervescent host of a new show pairing regional Chinese delicacies with the right glass of wine. Li Yingxue reports.
It really was a journey of discovery — not only about food, but also about wine.” Sebastian Basco, producer of Wok n’ Wine
“Sausage Town, Sausage Town, welcome to Sausage Town!” Fongyee Walker, the first and only Chinese mainlandbased Master of Wine, sings this excitedly while boating down a canal in the “Town of Sausages”, otherwise known as the ancient town of Anchang in Zhejiang province.
She is there to film an episode of Wok n’ Wine, a new show that hopes to demonstrate the many ways you can pair the flavors of typical regional Chinese dishes with the right glass of wine.
From the mountains to the city, from the rainforests to the desert and the sea, Wok n’ Wine takes the audience on a journey through the diverse landscapes and cuisines of China.
For the first time viewers will be able to tap into the effervescent host’s deep understanding of wine and how it can accompany Chinese cuisine in an entertaining and accessible format.
The 14-episode show was released on Youku on Dec 26, followed by additional distributions via other online video platforms, including iQiyi, Tencent, Bilibili and Dianping. With two versions in English and Chinese, the program focuses on the cuisines of different regions of China.
“I wanted to share my knowledge of wine and viniculture with consumers alongside the wonderful and diverse world of Chinese cuisine with my friends from outside China,” says Walker.
Born in Malaysia, Walker was brought up in Hong Kong and Vancouver, before moving to the United Kingdom to study. As she was growing up, Walker developed her understanding of Chinese cuisine and wine simultaneously, as her mother is Chinese and father is from the UK.
“When I was young, we had a glass of wine with every Chinese meal, because my father opened a bottle of wine every day. I think wine is a natural pairing for Chinese food,” says Walker.
Walker fell in love with wine when she was studying for her doctorate in classical Chinese at Cambridge in 2000, when she met her husband who was the captain of the university’s blind-tasting team.
She moved to Beijing with her husband to open Dragon Phoenix Wine Consulting, and became a specialist wine educator and consultant in English and Mandarin in 2007.
The Institute of Masters of Wine welcomed 13 new Masters of Wine on Sept 5, 2016, including Walker. The title is only held by 369 people around the world, and it took her eight years to obtain the qualification. Sebastian Basco, producer of the program, planned to produce an original television show about wine and Chinese food with his all-Chinese crew in 2016. However, before meeting Walker, he almost gave up on the idea after trying out three other hosts. “We had wine experts, but they just acted like wine experts — it was so boring. So, when I met Fengyee, I realized she was perfect for the job. She’s a bit crazy, but at the same time she is a real wine expert,” says Basco. The Italian producer, who lived in New York before moving to Shanghai, used to follow accepted rules when it came to pairing wines with Italian cuisine. But after filming the show, he opened his mind to sampling different combinations of wine and Chinese food he had never tried before.
“It really was a journey of discovery — not only about food, but also about wine,” says Basco. “I never thought in a million years that I would enjoy a glass of wine while eating insects in real life. And that’s great, actually.”
Basco tried fried insects with wine in Yunnan province, and the food journey also helped change the way he cooks. He now uses seasonings and ingredients he picked up from trying different kinds of Chinese dishes.
The team adopted a flexible approach to shooting the show. The filming process is similar to documentary-making and the crew were rarely required to reshoot scenes. Basco says the show was sometimes improvised: “Generally, we would ask the chef to help with the wine tasting, and then find other people on location. Sometimes we just invited people to appear on the show.”
Sun Xiaoyi, co-founder of winepicurean.com, was one of the people Walker invited to join in the wine tasting for the episode on Beijing cuisine. She says working with Walker is always fun.
“In my opinion, each Chinese dish does not have to be paired with a particular wine — it’s all about personal preference and enjoyment,” says Sun.
Walker personally selected the 11 cities used as locations for the Wok n’ Wine series, choosing her favorite or most popular regional dishes, such as noodles from Shanxi province. In the show she visits old
hutong lanes in Beijing, dresses up as an imperial concubine from the Tang Dynasty (618-907) in Xi’an and even rides on a camel in the desert.
If the show is picked up for another season, Walker plans to explore Chaozhou in Guangdong province for its Chaoshan cuisine, Yangzhou in Jiangsu province to sample Huaiyang cuisine and Shenyang in Liaoning province to try Dongbei cuisine. “The trouble with China is that there are too many choices!” Walker says. Two episodes of the show are dedicated to showing how to pair domestic wines with local dishes, which sees Walker visiting the winemaking regions of Shandong province, Shanxi province, the Ningxia Hui autonomous region and the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. “The shift away from domestically produced wine to imported wine has been very rapid and dramatic — from about 90 percent domestic wine in 2007, to just around 65 percent by 2017,” says Walker. Walker believes that the Western way of pairing wine with the food really does not work well with Chinese fare. “I examine the key characteristics of local foods — whether they are salty, savory, sweet, complex or spicy. And then I decide what sort of wine would bring out the different aspects of the food,” says Walker. For Hunan dishes, she would choose one wine that would help tame the spiciness of the food, one wine that would bring out the salty, savory elements and another that would enhance the strong, spicy flavors. “With most Chinese cuisine, the greatest influence on the taste of the food really isn’t the basic ingredients but the cooking method,” says Walker. “We need to look at the cooking style of the cuisine, and then select wines that either enhance or reduce its taste according to preference.” In the case of Hunan-style food, someone who doesn’t like spicy food would need a mild wine to offset the spiciness of the flavors, such as a sweet wine like Moscato d’Asti. Someone who loves spicy food should pick a wine that enhances the heat and spiciness — like a Chilean Carmenere or Barossa Shiraz, Walker says. “In my opinion, because of its complexity and layers of flavors and tastes, Chinese food goes even better than most types of Western food with wine.”