Many in the wine industry try to dumb down the wine and food pairing process with a lot of generalisations. There are some cultures whose foods require more detailed research and perhaps investing time doing tasting trials to create the perfect pairing. Most Caribbean, Asian and specifically Indian foods need special care and attention to get the pairing just right.

Wine Selection by ‘focus group’

I recently visited Mystic India, a nominee in the category Parish Gem – St James for The Jamaica Observer Table Talk Food Awards, where wine lover and owner Kareena Mahbubani has a signature way of selecting wines — she pulls together fellow wine and food lovers, serves up some of Mystic India’s delicious fare, and has them vote on which wine works best with a particular dish.

Gewürztraminer

Wines produced from the Gewurztraminer grape are regular chart-toppers in these tasting sessions. One of the 18 Classic Noble Grapes, it is a pink-skinned grape variety that produces some of the most distinctively aromatic wines in the world. Literally translated, Gewurztraminer means “spiced Traminer”, in reference to the grape’s heritage as a mutation of the Traminer family of grapes. Up until 1870 Gewurztraminer was simply known as Traminer in the Alsace region of France, and even until the 1970s both Traminer and Gewurztraminer were used to describe the same grapes. Wines made by this grape have always made perfect pairing with most Indian and Middle Eastern cuisine.

Gewürztraminer is like the grown-up version of Moscato. While Gewürztraminer wine has many similarities to Moscato, it also has a higher alcohol content, more striking aromatics and lower acidity. With these characteristics Gewürztraminer is not so easy to quaff, which might be the reason that some describe it as one of the wine world’s love-it-or-hate-it grapes.

Gewürztraminer is for many wine lovers the signature variety of Alsace. Its highly perfumed aromas of rose petal, smoked meat, lychee, grapefruit, and spices are immediate and captivating, although some lack refinement and seem a bit blowzy owing to low acidity and high alcohol. Gewürztraminer is as unlike the steelier, more aristocratic Riesling as a white grape can be. No other region of the world has been able to produce significant quantities of Gewürztraminer that even approach the decadent richness and exotic fruit qualities that the best producers in Alsace achieve.

Rare

Gewürztraminer is a surprisingly rare wine grape, it is grown on only about 20,000 acres worldwide! The very best examples are from Alsace, France. In the US, Sonoma County, California, Columbia Valley, and Washington State are making great Gewürztraminer wines also.

In Jamaica so far I found Gewürztraminer produced by Fetzer and Chateau St Jean. If you can, try a bottle of Gewürz with spicy Jamaican or Indian dishes. You won’t be disappointed.

Christopher Reckord – Entrepreneur & Wine Enthusiast. Send your questions and comments to creckord@gmail.com. Instagram: @chrisreckord Twitter: @Reckord