You don't have to drink beer with Chinese food, not when it pairs so well with everything from Pinot Noir to Champagne.

The world would be a much simpler place if there was only one wine to match with each cuisine. Italian? Chianti, logical, French? It would probably have to be Bordeaux. American hamburgers? Popular consensus would point to White Zinfandel. This all sounds quite silly, of course, until you consider that one of the world's most complex cuisines, the one with the most daunting combination of flavours (hot, sour, salty and sweet—sometimes even in the same dish) has become inextricably linked with a single wine. Eating Chinese food? The wine has got to be a Gewürztraminer!

I'm not sure who made the first match or how such an oddball varietals with aromas of lychees and roses won a starring role. The idea certainly didn't originate with the Chinese, according to my unscientific research, most Chinese drink tea, Coke or Sprite with their meals.  Did I ever drink Gewürztraminer with dinner in my pre wine days? Never!
Most likely the combination of Chinese food and Gewürztraminer came about as a result of the work of sommeliers who found in the grape the same spicy notes they found in much of the food; they probably believed the wine's richness was a compliment to the strong flavours of the cuisine.

It's not that I've got anything against Gewürztraminer; in fact, I'm one of its biggest fans. I love Gewürzs from all over the world, Alsace to New Zealand.  I'm just not convinced it's the best choice for Chinese food. I find its assertive character more often competes with rather than complements the food, and its sweetness (and Gewürz is more commonly sweet than it is dry) fails to refresh the palate. In an effort to prove that there are plenty of more appealing alternatives, I tried many Chinese dishes—accompanied by a range of non-Gewürztraminer wines.

One of my first dinners was with a Mumm Grand Cru N/V. It was rich and deeply flavoured but also possessed of a bright and surprisingly youthful acidity; it went beautifully with all kinds of dishes, though it paired with the fried pork trotter particularly well. (A good rule of thumb: Anything that goes well with beer goes well with Champagne.) The only problem was is when you pair it with dishes that have a vinegar sauce. 

The Champagne and the crab fried with salted egg yolk were brilliant together.  They seemed to be created just for Champagne.  In the meantime, we had opened another bottle of wine, Hugel Riesling, the famed Alsace producer. Riesling is one of my favorite wines to pair with Chinese food, but some can be too austere but not this one. It meant there was enough richness for the food. There was lots of acidity, but there was enough fruit, wonderful!

For our next meal we tried a wonderful Chardonnay, the 200.., (name of wine). In this case, the wine was so good that no one really cared if it went with the food. Though, surprisingly, it did, and beautifully so. The lobster in ginger and scallion sauce was rich, yet the wine was richer still—showing plenty of new oak but lots of gorgeous fruit, too, not to mention a long, intensely mineral finish. Was Chardonnay, in fact, a great wine with Chinese food? Yes, indeed.

Meanwhile, I had opened two wines to try with the Peking duck: a New Zealand Pinot Noir from a boutique producer Highfield and a Penfolds Grange. While the latter is a legendary bottling with a price tag to match I was more excited by the Pinot. "Of all the combinations, I thought this would work best," I said. Indeed, the Pinot had lots of lively acidity to cut through the fatty duck and the sweet hoi sin sauce and enough fruit to stand up to its strong flavors, too. In fact, it was such a natural match we barely tasted the Grange.

At the end of these meals and with the more wines I tried, the more convinced I became that there was an enormous range that would be delicious with Chinese food. I found Rieslings, Grenache and Chenin Blancs, not to mention Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs too.