Finca Montepedroso with Duck wings in orange sauce
Finca Montepedroso
Winery Finca Montepedroso
www.familiamartinezbujanda.com
D.O.: Rueda
Grapes: 100% Verdejo
Ageing: 5 months on its lees.
Price: 7,30 €
Excerpt from the book “Pairings of spanish wines with exotic cuisines”.
Click to see the preparation of these dishes, in Asian recipes.
The tradition of winemakers from Rioja in Rueda is not new; in fact it was a Riojan who started the production of quality table wine and laid the foundations for what would become the verdejos of the 21st century.
These last years perfection has been carried to its highest level, with a state-of-the-art winery placed in a 25 Ha. farm at 750 m. over sea level. This Montepedroso is already in the podium of the best wines in the region, showing that, despite the conflicts with the Administration, they keep producing exciting wines.
Sharp fruits (grapefruit, green apple), even some stone fruits (peach, lychee), sweet spices (anise, fennel) and those grassy notes so typical of verdejo grapes, the maximum expression of this grape in each glass.
Orange duck wings
The first thing that comes to mind when speaking about orange duck is Escoffier’s French cuisine, but this delicious combination already used to be cooked by the Chinese in the sophisticated Zhou dynasty’s court.
Oranges come from that country and they have an ancestral liking for duck and for mixing sweet and sour flavours, so this dish was ancient long before Catalina de Medici took it to France, attributing it to Tuscany.
Nowadays it can be found in every Chinese restaurant in the world, but you may enjoy it in full if you follow my recipe, making it easy, cheap and exquisite.
Pairing.jpg "Alitas de pato")
This is a popular dish but with haute cuisine profiles, since the contrast between the orange sauce, slightly sweet-and-sour, and the powerful duck meat might seriously jeopardise the wine.
This time we have a wine that has a balanced but powerful acidity; therefore it has a good attack in mouth, clean from the cloying caramel flavour, and leaves a long aftertaste, slightly anise-like, fruity, herbaceous, even mineral. As a result, the wine holds high its banner without spoiling the complex flavour of the dish.
Chinese meals are usually long and complex, but it is most unlikely to find a dish in them that does not go well with this verdejo.