After several reviews on how to drink less and how to alter our dinner menu to make it less of a temptation to match it with wine it is quite fun to think that vegetarians seem to be on top of their game to drink less. How about people who love to entertain and host big parties? Does it mean they need to start cooking veggie dishes?
Japanese Plum Wine
One of the options here is to think Oriental – Japanese sushi buffet (you can make it really exciting and exotic with different fresh sashimi pieces and rolls) or Chinese with their dim sum extravaganza.
Yet again, what to serve with it?
One of the options, as per many wine guides, is to serve with off-dry wines like Riesling and Gewurztraminer – their sweet notes will match the fragrant and spicy character of your meal and create an interesting flavour sensation. Yet if you think about these wines, they are European in origin; what is there on the market that locals drink with this type of food. I went to Chinese and Japanese shops to explore.
It is not a very wide selection I must say, most probably because most locals will prefer beer with their spicy dinner. Yet there was always a small shelf of fruit wine – plum wine and ume fruit wine (which is a fruit that is similar to plum yet I found it more delicate and aromatic).
Choya plum wine or ume fruit wine
This Choya plum wine (Ume fruit wine) will cost you around £17 (more or less depending on a size of the shop and how well they sell wine), so it would be slightly more expensive than a regular off-dry white wine, but hey-ho why not to try something different.
Another positive factor here is that this Japanese plum wine is quite significantly lower in alcohol – at 10% abv you can have a few small glasses of this nectar quite easily. Yet mind the sugars – the contents is rather medium sweet than off-dry, so a few more dozen of grams of sugar are there indeed.
What is interesting is that it provides absolutely different dimensions to your dish. In example, I have tried it with some dim sum and it works really well with vegetarian and seafood dumplings without overpowering their delicate flavours,. Chicken and meat dumplings were also a good match as they are normally quite spicy and fragrant, so the sweetness of this plum wine worked well and created a counter-balance.
I have also found that I am quite OK after a small glass of it – not a big fan of swet-ish wines, but it was a good accompaniment for my dinner, so why not to try it for yourself? There are few more brands you can find, most of them are even more expensive and reaching £25-£30 price tag and some bottles feature actual plums in them, so why not making your party just a bit more special with Japanese Ume fruit or plum wines?
Choya Original Ume Plum Fortified Wine 75 cl (Case of 2) is available on Amazon and will set you back by £32 for a set of two ( a good deal in my books), but they do sell other brands and just single bottles, so these lower alcohol wines are fairly affordable. Give us a shout what’s your opinion about Japanese plum wines!
Cheers!