Milder dishes tend to beckon cool, crisp sauvignon blancs, while spicier dishes call for more aromatic and sweeter wines
Using the words “wine” and “Thai food” in the same sentence is, I realise, a risky proposition, and one that’s almost always greeted with a chorus of “Why would you want to drink anything other than beer?!” But bear with, as they say, because there’s Thai and there’s Thai, and I’m guessing that the beer drinkers (of whom I am often one) aren’t always eating the real deal – more Thai-ish, with the emphasis on the “ish”.
Supermarket ready meals, for example, are quite mild and/or bland, depending on how pejorative you’re being. Ditto many takeaways. It’s really only in more authentic restaurants that you’ll find the characteristic combo of sweetness and heat that makes Thai food quite challenging for a wine match, yet many do have ambitious wine lists. At Kolae, for example, a new London restaurant I visited a couple of months ago, they serve several orange wines with their kitchen offerings, though I preferred a halbtrocken (or off-dry) German riesling from Rheinhessen, Köster-Wolf 2022 (12%), which is currently on offer at Strictly Wine for £12.59 a bottle.
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