Route to Bordeaux via ‘beans thoran’ and ‘butter chicken'

Who says ragda pattice, Malvani kheema cutlets and pav bhaji, don’t lend themselves to a glass of finely matched wine? Ask French culinary writer Laurent Moujon and he will tell you just how well one can really hone in on a wine that will hold up to every Indian flavour from the streets to the high street. “Wine serves one main purpose: to simply make the dish sublime.Not disturb, not crowd, not overpower, and not walk alone. Just walk with the food,” he says.
It was six years ago, during a reception for Indian students studying oenology (study of wines) at the Institut de Promotion Commerciale in Bordeaux — one of the world’s oldest wine producing regions in south-west France — that got Moujon thinking when repeatedly asked about Indian food and its pairing with Bordeaux wines, usually known to share the table with steaks, roasts and cheese plates.
After authoring two books which saw Bordeaux wines paired with cuisines of China and Japan, the latest to brace Moujon’s inventive culinary project is a first-of-its-kind cookbook where Indian food in all its dhania-jeera-ghee-haldi glory have found its rightful place alongside Bordeaux’s red, white and sparkling blends.
This culinary journey through various Indian provinces with wines from the hallowed chateaux and vineyards of Bordeaux sparked 67 triumphant pairings with leading Indian chefs playing matchmaker.
Sample this: if the curry leaves and coconut in a ‘beans thoran’ found a worthy partner in the “rounder, softer” tasting notes of a Saint Emilion grand cru (wine of the most superior grade) or a Vin De France (French table wine), the “satin textured” Chateau du Retout with spicy aromas and the south Indian ‘lemon rice’ made for a happy couple. The taste of pureed lentils and prawns of a Parsi ‘Kolmi no Patio’ hit the right balance with the “fresh on the nose and a clean attack on the palate” ruby red from the vineyards of Chateau Tronquoy-Lalande while the mulled spice and anise notes of Saint Emilion’s grand cru classe delivered the fleshy mouthfeel that a Goan style pork assado deserves. Moujon’s personal favourite? “Old Delhi style butter chicken,” a dish that started off from Moti Mahal and travelled beyond the subcontinent “to heighten the notes of a white Bordeaux”.
The team of chefs which included Sanjiv Kapoor, Sriram Aylur, Sarah Todd and Akshraj Jodha from India; the likes of Vivek Singh and Cyrus Todiwala from the UK; and Akshay Bhardwaj and KN Vinod from the US worked in tandem with Sonal Holland, India’s first recipient of the title Master of Wine who led the tastings and Ujwala Samant, a wine connoisseur who also co-authored the book.
“The format was to pair each recipe with four wines — some white but mostly red — to allow folks to have a choice and range to suit palates and budgets. Sonal Holland came armed with a chart of recipes and their ingredients, a spittoon, bread, and wine,” said Samant, admitting that selection wasn’t easy. “Discussions on the seasonings, flavours, context of the Indian meal and temperatures in India helped us with the wine pairing.”
Samant — a former Mumbaikar who learnt about wines while living in Bordeaux when vineyard owners opened up her tastebuds to wine grapes and is currently based in the US where she’s started a wine-tasting group — calls “serendipity” her teacher. “I realised that not serving wine with Indian food was some sort of old-school baloney based on the believer’s limited exposure to foods outside the European table,” says Samant who would often raise eyebrows when she could smell freshly peeled green mangoes in a sauvignon blanc.
However, Samant’s journey of looking deeper into flavours and serving more wine with Indian foods taught her that the intricacies of pairing “a largely uncharted and hallowed territory” was also about using gustatory instincts. Given the distinctive flavours that define each Indian region — coconut and peanut infused Maharashtrian cuisine, spicy and pungent Goan food, or the creamy North Indian fare —“it was about what wine fits the creator’s vision of the food you’re eating, and why you feel it dances well together,” she explained dismissing old chestnuts like “wine is wasted on Indian street food” and “Indian food is too hot and seasoned for wine.”
“It’s almost as if wine is too delicate or Indian food is not refined enough for wine,” says Samant who once served ragda pattice, Malvani kheema cutlets, pav bhaji, masala peanuts, samosas and Maharashtrian bhareet at an autumn dinner in the US and let her guests choose the wines. “All our guests — American, European, Asian — went first for the red, switched to the rose and white. They all said this was a new experience because whenever they went to Indian restaurants, they ordered beer,” said Samant, recounting the experiment which helped debunk another myth — “that best pairing for Indian food is beer”.
Optimistic that wine is no longer a reserve of the “posh” in India with younger people taking to the drink and changing vintner perspectives on wine production, Samant feels that the time is right to have regional food pop ups with conversations around wine. “Its compatibility with bisi bele bhaat or kosha mangsho or gushtaba or idi appams would demystify and democratise what is after all fermented grapes in a bottle,” she signed off.