Wine at the Cantonese table.

Chinese food is many cuisines, so wine pairing with Chinese food starts by naming the kitchen. Cantonese cooking, the food of Guangdong and Hong Kong, is built on freshness and balance: seafood steamed with restraint, roast meats with lacquered skin, sauces that temper soy with a little sugar.

It rewards wines with fresh acidity, fine bubbles or a touch of sweetness and it is unkind to heavy tannin and new oak. Champagne, Riesling and Pinot Noir will carry you through most menus. The grand, oaky red ordered to honour the occasion is the bottle most likely to struggle, above all with the lighter dishes.

Five principles of wine pairing with Chinese food

Cantonese meals are shared. Several dishes sit in the middle of the table at once and everyone takes a little of each, so a wine has to work across plates. Versatility beats a perfect match with any single dish.

• Match the weight. A delicate dish needs a delicate wine; a slow braise can take more. The classic mismatch is a heavy wine meeting a light dish.
• Acidity and bubbles love salt, soy and fried textures. Salt softens a wine's bitterness and sharpness and makes it seem fuller, while acidity and bubbles refresh the palate after anything fried. A wine's acidity is the most useful thing it can bring to this table.
• Sweet sauces want a touch of sweetness in the glass. Sweetness in food makes a dry wine taste thinner, sharper and more bitter. A wine at least as sweet as the dish restores the balance. Sweet and sour pork is the extreme case: an off-dry Riesling matches both its sugar and its vinegar.
• Tannin and oak fight delicate seafood. New oak's toast and vanilla smother delicate flavours. Umami, which Cantonese cooking draws from soy, oyster sauce and dried seafood, makes a red wine's tannin taste harder and more bitter. With some fish and shellfish, a tannic red can also leave a metallic, fishy aftertaste.
• Chilli heat and alcohol amplify each other. Alcohol makes chilli burn harder and chilli makes alcohol burn more. A lower-alcohol wine with a little sweetness calms both.

When in doubt at a Cantonese table, pour Champagne.

Dim sum and tea

Dim sum brings steamed, fried and baked dishes, savoury and sweet, to the table at once, so choose wines that cover ground.

Champagne is the natural partner. Its acidity and bubbles suit translucent har gow (prawn dumplings), siu mai of pork and prawn and silky cheung fun (rice noodle rolls). They also cut cleanly through pan-fried turnip cake and anything from the fryer.

Riesling covers the rest. A dry one suits the steamed dumplings and lo mai gai, glutinous rice and chicken steamed in a lotus leaf. An off-dry one meets the sweet barbecued pork inside char siu bao. On a German label, feinherb or halbtrocken signals off-dry; German Riesling labels are easier to read than they look.

Tea is already on the table at dim sum and it stays there, whether pu-erh, jasmine, oolong or chrysanthemum. Wine joins the tea without replacing it. For guests who drink only tea, keep the pot topped up as attentively as the glasses.

Steamed fish and delicate seafood

The whole steamed fish shows Cantonese cooking at its most precise: steamed just to the point, dressed with shredded ginger and spring onion, finished with sizzling oil and seasoned soy. The flesh is delicate and sweet, the edges salty.

Pour Chablis, a dry Riesling or another crisp, unoaked white. Their acidity meets the soy and the ginger; their restraint leaves the fish alone. The same wines suit steamed scallops, prawns and other light seafood. This is the course where a tannic red does the most harm, drying the palate and flattening the fish.

Roast meats, from char siu to goose

Siu mei, the Cantonese roast meats, pull a wine in two directions, towards sweet glazes on one side and salt and crackling on the other. Char siu, barbecued pork with a sweet, lacquered glaze, wants fruit or a touch of sweetness. An off-dry Riesling, a Pinot Noir or a Beaujolais cru such as Morgon or Fleurie all work, none of them heavy in tannin. Siu yuk, roast pork belly under salty, crackling skin, is happy with those reds or with Champagne, whose acidity cuts the fat. Glossy soy sauce chicken sits comfortably with Pinot Noir. A dry, pale rosé bridges the whole platter, with enough acidity for the crackling and enough fruit for the glaze.

Roast goose, rich, crisp-skinned and served with plum sauce, can take a red with more presence. Pinot Noir is the safe choice. A mature Nebbiolo, its tannins softened by age, brings acidity to cut the fat; a ripe Grenache meets the plum sauce with fruit of its own. Roast duck follows the same logic.

If someone at the table has brought a powerful, tannic red, this is the moment to pour it. The fat of the goose softens tannin, where the seafood would only show it up.

Braises, abalone and the spicier dishes

Braised abalone in oyster sauce, sea cucumber and slow-cooked mushrooms are about texture and deep savouriness more than fruit. They flatter wines that have traded fruit for savoury, developed flavours: a mature white Burgundy, an aged Champagne or a soft, mature red. Umami strips fruit from a young wine and leaves it hard; a mature one has less fruit to lose.

Cantonese cooking uses chilli sparingly. It appears in salt-and-pepper squid and in XO sauce, the Hong Kong condiment built on dried scallop, dried shrimp, ham and chilli. Here, pour an off-dry Riesling with modest alcohol. Its sweetness calms the heat and its acidity refreshes. Many sweeter Mosel Rieslings are low in alcohol, which helps. Keep tannic reds and high-alcohol wines for other dishes.

Banquets

A banquet brings many dishes in a sequence the kitchen sets and the wine has to follow. At a Hong Kong wedding banquet, for example, a roast suckling pig often opens the meal and the whole steamed fish arrives later, after the soup and the abalone. The usual order of whites before reds cannot hold.

Two approaches work. Pour Champagne throughout: it follows the pig, the seafood and the fried dishes without overwhelming the fish. A vintage or late-disgorged bottle has the depth for the braises too; reading a Champagne label tells you which one you are holding. Or pour a versatile Pinot Noir for most of the meal and keep a crisp white or Champagne open for the fish.

A banquet is long, so quantities matter as much as choices. Plan the quantities and the pacing in advance and keep water on every table. Ask for ice buckets early. In a warm dining room the whites need them all evening and the red is better for a few minutes in one too.

One bottle or three

If you bring one bottle to a Cantonese dinner, make it Champagne. If you bring three, add an off-dry Riesling and a Pinot Noir. Between them they answer almost every dish that reaches the table.

Japanese cooking asks similar questions with different answers, as wine with Japanese food explains. For a private dinner with the wines chosen around the menu, see our fine dining and vintages dinners.