Unlike Japan, a major market for Laurent-Perrier’s Grand Siècle, China is not an important market for the Champagne house. “The Chinese don’t like fizz, they don’t like cold, and they don’t like acidity,” said Lucie Pereyre de Nonancourt, Grand Siècle ambassador and a member of the family that owns the company.
She made the observation over a glass of 2018 Laurent-Perrier Brut before dinner at A Wong, London’s only two-Michelin-starred Chinese restaurant. The evening brought together three iterations of Grand Siècle and the 2012 Laurent-Perrier Alexandra Rosé with the inventive cooking of chef Andrew Wong. His dishes draw on research into China’s regional food traditions while combining Chinese techniques with British ingredients.
One example was Wong’s take on char siu, the Cantonese honey-glazed pork dish. Here, Iberico pork was served with caramelized walnut and freshly grated foie gras, bringing French richness to a Chinese classic.
Chinese food can be challenging to pair with wine. Its five recognized flavors—sweet, sour, bitter, spicy, and salty—may appear together in a single dish, and are meant to remain in balance. Sweet and savory are not kept apart as they often are in Western cooking: char siu is one example, while A Wong’s coconut ice cream with olive oil, Oscietra caviar, and sweetened Pat Chun vinegar is another.
Texture matters just as much as flavor. Wood ear fungus, for instance, is prized less for its mild taste than for its springy, gelatinous crunch. The aim is a combination of contrasting textures and flavors that creates depth without letting any one element dominate.
A previous lunch pairing Chinese food with Brunello di Montalcino had confirmed how difficult such matches can be. Champagne presented a different question: might its bubbles, chilled temperature, acidity, and lack of tannin make it more suitable? Andrew Wong cautioned that his cuisine was difficult to pair with any wine, given its variety of flavors, spices, and textures. He also challenged the familiar claim that dim sum simply goes well with Champagne: “When I ask how, they don’t know.”
A gastronomic tour of China with Champagne
The dinner was structured as a journey through China, with around 30 dishes served in four collections: The Banquet, Dim Sum, Five Flavors, and Fruits. Champagne accompanied the first three. The collections drew on regional and historical traditions, while emphasizing balance and textural contrast.
The Champagne house’s approach also reflects a spirit of innovation. Laurent-Perrier’s Bernard de Nonancourt created Grand Siècle in the 1950s as a dry blend of multiple vintages, intended to express an idealized “perfect vintage” and to be enjoyed with food. His other boundary-pushing initiatives included Ultra Brut and the use of maceration for the house’s rosés. The collaboration with A Wong builds on this shared interest in experimentation.
The latest release, Grand Siècle Iteration 27, was served with The Banquet. Iteration 24, from magnum, accompanied the Dim Sum collection, while Iteration 22 and 2012 Alexandra Rosé were poured with Five Flavors.
Laurent-Perrier managing director Adam Guy said the Champagnes’ acidity could cut through the food and their complexity should meet the dishes on equal terms. Wong had broad freedom to create the menu, though Guy acknowledged that some dishes were too hot and spicy.
Iteration 27 began with scalded oysters in “fish fragrant” aubergine sauce—a Sichuan seasoning of pickled chilies, garlic, ginger, scallion, and vinegar—followed by French beans with wasabi soy and Osmanthus-flower jelly. The oyster’s spicy, sour sauce was slightly overpowering, and the jelly a little sweet, but the Champagne’s purity and youth helped it cope.
A Zhou-dynasty-inspired dish of cured scallop and stuffed crab claw offered layers of seafood, roasted vermicelli, and Chinese kale, with a notable contrast of textures. Its delicate sweetness came close to overwhelming the Champagne. Yet Iteration 27 handled Yunnan sweet potato with tamarind and shrimp caramel well: the tamarind’s sourness balanced the dish, while the shrimp caramel added umami rather than excessive sweetness.
It also held its own with chilled Sichuan-style cucumber, crushed and served with trout roe, chili, garlic, and vinegar. Tiger salad with cumin lamb and split buttermilk proved more intense, combining spicy and salty umami flavors. The Champagne was challenged, but recovered.
For Dim Sum, Iteration 24 was poured from magnum. Its honeyed, mineral character and notes of potpourri, hay, citrus, almond, and toasted wheat made a strong match for smoked duck with foie gras. The first bite, topped with caviar, was sweeter than the truffle-topped second bite and slightly too sweet for the Champagne; the truffle, by contrast, worked especially well.
The best pairing in this collection was braised abalone with shiitake mushroom, sea cucumber, and abalone butter, alongside A Wong’s alternative to shark’s fin soup. Made with chicken broth and mung beans, with egg white providing texture, the soup delivered deep umami without using shark fin.
The classic dumplings siu mai and har gao were delicious, but an unexpectedly hot element—perhaps ginger or sweet chili sauce—startled both the diner and the Champagne. Other dishes, including tangerine fish in beef broth and fermented wagyu served with pear and Thai basil, proved more comfortable matches.
The Five Flavors collection paired two wines: Iteration 22 and the 2012 Alexandra Rosé. Iteration 22, a blend of vintages 2004, 2002, and 1999, had spent 15 years on lees. It retained lively acidity and minerality but showed an oxidative, caramel-like character.
The wine worked particularly well with sweet-and-sour corn-fed chicken, Thai basil, pineapple, and candied walnuts, whose flavors softened its oxidative edge. Other dishes—including soy chicken with ginger and scallion, garlic-steamed tiger prawn, and chrysanthemum tofu—made that character more pronounced. An intensely umami dish of squid, abalone sauce, and cashew nuts suited the Champagne better.
The 2012 Alexandra Rosé showed red-berry intensity, freshness, richness, and fine tannins. It proved a surprisingly versatile partner for the complex dishes. It was less successful with the soy chicken, while the sweet-and-sour flavors of the tiger prawn brought out its tannin, but it complemented most of the collection.
Of the wines served, Alexandra Rosé would be the preferred choice for a dinner at A Wong. The evening showed that Champagne can work with this intricate cuisine—but the success depends on the particular wine and dish, and on the balance between them.