Viña Esmeralda with Turkey Curry
Viña Esmeralda
Winery Torres
www.torres.es
D.O.: Cataluña
Grapes: 85% Alexandria Muscatel, 15% Gewürztraminer
Ageing: No
Price: 7 €
Excerpt from the book “Pairings of spanish wines with exotic cuisines”.
Click to see the preparation of these dishes, in Asian recipes.
For us who can talk about the history of Spanish wine because we have personally lived through it, this wine has been one of the pioneers in the line of what used to be called "feminine" wines (that would currently be offensive) and perhaps the best known white wine all around the country, but we have seen its evolution along these latter decades, from the times when it was a dry muscatel to the 2014
Viña Esmeralda, in which the complexity of aromas and strong structure have turned this wine into something much more serious.
It keeps its profile of exotic fruit (passion fruit, green apple, lime), flowers like rose, jasmine and nard -surely because of the Gewürztraminer grapes-, some spices and balsamic hints like thyme and bay leaves.
Turkey curry
In Tamil language, curry means sauce (the real word is "kari" but the British transformed it according to their extravagant spelling), so it is like saying sauce when speaking about French cuisine, that is, nothing.
This word actually refers to different things, from a bush (Murraya koenigii) to an endless variety of dishes elaborated with some sauces which have the same name and are characterized for being prepared with a mixture of spices which receives the same name, although its real name is "Masala".
The curry we present here (see the recipes chapter) is home-made style, as it is usually cooked in Madras (a region currently called Chennay). There are thousands of curry brands, but they usually contain gluten.
Pairing
Hindu cuisine is characterized by overusing spices, and this is especially true in currys and masalas. Even though they may have vegetables, meat or fish and seafood, the sauce overshadows the flavour so strongly that the raw material is of no importance. Even if we use goat meat instead of turkey, the pairing must always be based on the sauce, because a red wine, for example, would be overwhelmed at the first bite.
It is important to choose a fruity wine but with a good acidity structure, since some white wines would be like water when paired with curry. The wine must be like reed: flexible to face wind but with good fibre to stand firm. That is how this Viña Esmeralda is, an ideal wine to confront that flavour hurricane and refresh our mouth after each bite.