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What Wine Goes with Cambodian Food? Adventures of the Wine List at the Elephant Walk, Waltham

Posted 08/15/2008 at 09:41 AM by Cathy

What wine goes with Cambodian food?

Riesling, if you ask one of the partners at the Elephant Walk, who traveled to Pfalz, Germany and bought J.L. Wolf's entire reserve of their 2006 "Wachenheimer" for the restaurant.

The Wolf Riesling heads the list of featured wines on the Elephant Walk's wine list; it is one of a small selection in the category of northern European whites. Generally speaking, northern European whites are a good bet for Cambodian food since they include a range of sweet and off-dry wines that are often recommended for Asian cuisines that feature the heat of peppers and chilies.

But did it work?

The Wolf Riesling was dark yellow, almost golden in color. There was in fact a pronounced sweetness on the palate at first, but it gave way to a wide-open space mid-palate where just about anything could happen. That pause after an initial sweetness cleared the way for the food, welcoming the flavors, almost stepping aside for a forkful of Mee Siem to follow.

The Wolf Riesling is by far not the only option on the Elephant Walk's wine list. The complete list includes nine categories of white wines, from Champagne to Chardonnay, from Crisp Riesling with Minerals to Fruit-Driven and Off-Dry Riesling, from New World Sauvignon Blanc to Gewurztraminer.

The adventure of the Elephant Walk would be the red wine list. The house reds are a 2005 San Elias Cabernet Sauvignon and a 2006 Pierre Jean Merlot, but the list also includes Shiraz, Rioja and Nebbiolo.

What to drink with what you eat, when what you're eating is Cambodian-French food? The possibilities are endless.

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About the Author

Cathy Huyghe
Cathy Huyghe

Cathy Huyghe writes about drinking wine every day in the Boston area. She finds the quirky characters, the after-hours events, and the surprising stories that make up Boston's vibrant local wine scene. But no matter where she is, what she's doing, or who she's with, she mostly just wants to drink the stuff.

Her first restaurant gig was at Chez Panisse, when she knocked on the kitchen's back door and asked if she could work there. She's also worked for Jean-Pierre Vigato in Paris and Thomas Keller in Las Vegas. She went to graduate school at Harvard (twice), and her writing has run in Boston magazine, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Edible Boston, and on Nevada Public Radio and Grist.org.

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