We went for Thai Mussaman Beef Curry from Rick Stein’s Far Eastern Odyssey. The recipe includes fish sauce, shrimp paste, lemongrass, palm sugar and black cardamon. We ended up sampling a couple of different wines with it.
First up, we opened a bottle of Waitrose’s Aromatic and Citrus Spanish Dry White. This is made in Galicia from the Airen grape. It was pale gold, crisp with a citrus pineapple creaminess. We thought it improved through the meal and was a good match.
We also opened a bottle of La Pierry Alsace Riesling 2008, a French white we had bought in Alsace. This had a slight sweetness and was very creamy and acidic with peach flavours. We were not impressed with this at first with the food, but found it too improved considerably after a while.
Two examples of how the palate sometimes adjusts favourably to a wine as a meal progresses.