WEEKENDER When in PyeongChang, pair wine with Gangwon food
.jpg?w=728)
Gamjajeon (potato pancake), below, paired with three white wines - from left, Le Petit Caboche (2015), La Cour Pavillon (2016) and La Joya (2014). / Korea Times photo by Yun Suh-young
By Yun Suh-young
The 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics is right around the corner, ready to greet guests from all over the world.
When athletes and tourists come to PyeongChang for the Games, they won't just be participating in the event, but also trying the foods Gangwon Province has to offer. It will be a great opportunity for foreigners and locals alike to sample the culinary delights the region has to offer, in addition to exploring the natural surroundings.
When in Gangwon, however, one should try exploring the flavors of the region with wine. Not many people pair Korean food with wine or know they go surprisingly well together - but in fact, they do.
Wine consultant Sarah Soo-kyung Henriet who is also CEO of wine and food pairing membership service Soodevie, traveled recently to Gangwon Province ahead of the Winter Olympics to experiment on the region's foods with a variety of European wines. She shared her experience with The Korea Times with advice on which wines to pair with food there.
Gangwon food characteristics
Before getting into the dynamics of pairing wine with Gangwon food, it's best to understand the characteristics of the region and its ingredients.
Gangwon Province is the coldest region in Korea. Situated in the northeast, it is a mountainous region - 80 percent of the province is covered by mountains - which explains the chilly weather. Cutting through the middle of the province from north to south is the Taebaek Mountain Range. The east part of the range is higher in elevation while the west is lower with gentler slopes and bigger temperature gaps.
Due to its geographical location, Gangwon Province is where to find Korea’s best ski slopes and resorts. The Winter Olympics this year will take place across PyeongChang, Gangneung and Jeongseon.
Its chilly weather has resulted in ingredients such as potatoes, corn and buckwheat growing most abundantly in the region. In the past, they used to be hardy plants eaten to relieve famine but are now representative ingredients of the province. Gangwon Province is particularly well known for foods cooked with potatoes.
The province is also known for its abundance of greens foraged from the mountains and forests such as doraji, gosari, dooreup, chamnamul, chinamul and gomchi. These are often stir-fried and transformed into a dish called "namul."
The foods of the Gangwon region are characterized by a clean taste, maximizing the original flavors of the ingredients as they use very little spice.
Pairing wine with Gangwon food
When discussing the experience of drinking wine with Gangwon food, this reporter wanted the discussion to come alive with a real pairing experience. So we sat down at a restaurant in Seoul that serves Gangwon food and tried pairing them with three kinds of white wine - two French and one Chilean.
Gamjajeon (potato pancake) and gamja ongshimi (potato ball soup) paired with three white wines - Le Petit Caboche (2015), La Cour Pavillon (2016) and La Joya (2014). / Korea Times photo by Yun Suh-young
Gamja ongshimi (potato ball soup) / Korea Times photo by Yun Suh-young
Buckwheat noodles and sanchae maemilmook (sprouts with buckwheat jelly) are paired with Italian rose and chardonnay from Bourgogne. / Courtesy of Soodevie
A variety of namul dishes are paired with chardonnay from Bourgogne. / Courtesy of Soodevie
We ordered gamjajeon (potato pancakes) with gamja ongshimi (potato ball soup) and tried them with the three wines which were Le Petit Caboche (2015), La Cour Pavillon (2016) and La Joya (2014), the latter which was Chilean.
The best pairing with the food was Le Petit Caboche, a sauvignon blanc, which paired well with the gamjajeon and ongshimi. It had a clean finish which didn't hinder the taste of the potato dishes.
"With a lot of Korean food, honestly, I find better pairings with rose and white. If you want to boost the flavors, you need a wine that catches it and boosts it up. Red wines kind of bring it down. I think the food should be the highlight," Henriet said, sipping down the white.
"The general conclusion from my trip to Gangwon Province was to pair the food with white (but not too much oak), and rose (not the sweet ones). With the rose, we need to differentiate sweet with fruity. Fruity doesn't mean it's going to be sweet."
She visited seven restaurants in PyeongChang, Gangneung and Jeongseon. The latter was more about the market - trying different wines in paper cups. She brought 10 wines and matched different wines with different foods at each of the restaurants.
"My favorite was chardonnay. In Gangwon Province they use wild sesame oil so when you try the namul, it's a very clean taste because the greens have the wild scent plus the wild sesame oil. The toasty sesame notes went really well with the oak flavor of the chardonnay," she said.
"This particular chardonnay (Le Bourgogne Chanson Chardonnay 2016) hasn't been aged in oak for too long so it has that kind of almond oak notes backing up the wild sesame oil, really embracing it. And the finish was so beautiful. It really highlighted the taste of the roots and the greens. It was a perfect pairing, a wow pairing.
"We also had pollack grilled, not too spicy but had the red pepper paste. That one also tasted really good with a chardonnay but also with a rose. A balanced rose with the right amount of acidity, which is sweet not sour, really boosted the fish flavor of the pollack without making it too fishy." These were dishes tried at the restaurant called Odaesan Gamasot.
"In Bongpyeong Mullaebanga, we had buckwheat noodles but the broth was made of pollack. It's one of chef Edward Kwon's highlight dishes they're doing. The noodles were so good with crispy pieces of fried pollack. We also had sanchae maemilmook (sprouts with buckwheat jelly). We tried to pair it with Italian rose from northern Italy's Lombardy area and the same chardonnay from Bourgogne," Henriet said.
"The dish also had wild sesame but a tint of sourness and the rose has the wild strawberry notes, so very fruity with a pretty high level of acidity. Buckwheat can be a little heavy and it really lifted it up. It was a really good pairing, better than the chardonnay. Same for the noodles.
"With German Riesling, I paired it with chinamul and that was good, it was super fun. I didn't even think about it and had it and it was like wow. But this Riesling was not sweet - it was more sour."
Her best choices out of all the wines she paired with the dishes were French chardonnay, French rose and Italian rose.
"Italian rose and French rose were excellent with pollack. Red wines didn't match so much with buckwheat, pollack or namul," she said.
Why was she so eager to pair wines with Gangwon food?
"Because the Olympics is coming and it's a big deal. There's been a lack of interest coming from Koreans and a bit of disconnect between Seoul and what's going on over there," she said.
"Tourists are not just going to go there to watch the Games. They're going to want to experience the region and taste local food and this is a great opportunity for Korea and Gangwon Province to promote its food and Korean culture. How great would it be to present something so creative and say hey, the wines you know of already, you can also drink it with Korean food! So when they go back to their home country, how cool would it be for them to go to a Korean restaurant because they want that pairing again?"