riesling & rice vinegar: alsace-japon dinner

My friends M and H and I were even to the very end unable to decide on a catchy name for the Alsace-Japanese-themed dinner we hosted at my landlady's place the other night. The idea was to serve my friend M's stunning Japanese / Chinese home-cooking with a range of interesting Alsatian bottles, whatever we could turn up on a week's notice. The theory being that these are the type and quality of wines that I wish were available in great Asian restaurants, but which very rarely are.

I suggested we call it the "Axis Powers Dinner," but the idea was rejected on the grounds that Alsace isn't really Germany, Italy wasn't involved in our dinner at all, and then, of course, general tastelessness.

But I'm proud to say that even without a good title, we managed to stay admirably on-theme throughout the night's drinking, with the exception of a tremendous 1997 Georges Vernay Condrieu that my friend J brought, for which we had no choice but to, er, forgive him. Due to recent interruptions in Paris wine deliveries caused by a late Alsace harvest this year, it had actually been surprisingly difficult to find anything particularly special from the region - so after numerous slender just-pleasant base bottlings from Stentz-Buecher, Binner, Kreydenweiss, etc., the persistent, savory-honey, beeswaxy Condrieu hit with all the force of a A-Bomb. (Sorry.)

M's amazing hand-drawn menu sketch after the jump.