Wine column: Drink Chinese wine in Singapore

What wine do you pair with braised sea perch with bean gluten, lobster in chili sauce and pan-fried scallops on rice vermicelli?

Chinese wine, of course.

My wife, Kerry, and I found this out at Chinese restaurant Hai Tien Lo at the Pan Pacific Hotel Singapore.

While we'd chosen to eat dinner at Hai Tien Lo because it is considered to serve the finest Cantonese cuisine in Singapore and we were staying at the luxurious Pan Pacific, we didn't expect to find Chinese wine on the menu.

In fact, it never really crossed our minds that wine from grapes was made in China.

Rice wine is popular in China, but grape wine is in its infancy considering how ancient China's history is.

So, we ordered the seafood-friendly Tiansai Vineyard 'Skyline of Gobi' 2020 Chardonnay Muscat from Xinjiang Province to go with the perch, lobster and scallops.

And, you know what?, it was good.

It was light and fresh, albiet a little characterless.

But, nevertheless, it was pleasant and quaffable and the ideal match for the seafood tasting menu.

By Canadian standards, wine is pricey in Singapore.

The 'Skyline of the Gobi' Chardonnay Muscat was $28 a glass or $130 a bottle on Hai Tien Lo's menu.

The Singapore dollar and Canadian dollar are virtually at par.

Tiansai is so named because its 330-acre vineyard is in the southern foothills of the Tian Shan Mountains in the northwest corner of China.

The foothills' climate and soil allows for the cultivation of traditional grape varietals such as Chardonnay, Muscat, Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.

The 'Skyline of Gobi' on the label is in reference to the winery being on the edge of the vast Gobi Desert.

The winemaker at Tiansai is actually an Australian -- Lilian Carter -- who's also worked at another Chinese winery and two wineries Down Under.

Speaking of another Chinese winery, Hai Tien Lo had one other Chinese wine on the menu -- Grace Vineyard 'Tasya's Reserve' Marselan Red from Shanxi.

Marselan is a cross of the French varietals Cabernet Sauvignon and Grenache that's found niche growing spots in France's Languedoc and Provence as well as China.

Another off-the-beaten track wine on the menu was the Granmonte Viognier from the Asoke Valley in Thailand.

Otherwise, Hai Tien Lo's wine list if full of bottles from countries you traditionally associate with wine -- France, Italy, Spain, Chile, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and the US.

That brings us to another international crossover.

We were at a Chinese restaurant in Singapore because 77% of the city-state's population of six million is made up of people of Chinese decent and thus Chinese restaurants abound in Singapore, from cheap street food at hawker centres to fine-dining establishments like Hai Tien Lo at the five-star Pan Pacific Singapore.

You're not going to be able to find any Chinese wine at any BC government or private liquor store and you can't really order it online either.

So, the moral of the story is to try new wines whenever you can when you are travelling or even if you come across them at home.

Which brings us to the question of: Why was a couple from Kelowna in Singapore eating Chinese food and sipping Chinese wine?

Well, Singapore is a glitzy Asian megatropolis that we've always wanted to visit and new, non-stop, Air Canada flights between Vancouver and Singapore made it easy to jet off to the destination.

While there, we also did a bike tour of the city to see all the highlights, hit nearby Sentosa Island for some beach time, splashed in the pool at the Pan Pacific and drank Singapore Slings on rooftop cocktail bars.

Steve MacNaull is a NowMedia Group reporter, Okanagan wine lover and Canadian Wine Scholar. Reach him at smacnaull@nowmediagroup.ca. His wine column appears every Friday afternoon in this space.