A scene in Beijing during the last year of the rooster.NG HAN GUAN/The Associated Press
The question
I'm making coq au vin to celebrate Chinese New Year, since 2017 will be the year of the rooster. What wine would you recommend that I use in the dish?
The answer
The cock crows on Jan. 28, 2017, and this dish is an ingenious tribute to this Chinese New Year. Coq au vin, one of the best-known staples of classic French cuisine, is essentially a dish of chicken braised in red wine, bacon, pearl onions and mushrooms. As its name would suggest, it was originally made with rooster ("coq" in French), preferably an old rooster, in fact, whose meat especially would have benefited from a slow, tenderizing simmer in flavourful liquid. The dish originated in Burgundy, so if you're a stickler where regional authenticity is concerned, red Burgundy is the way to go.
Then again, you might want to think twice. Good, bargain-priced red Burgundy is about as scarce as hen's teeth, and you're going to need between roughly one and two bottles per large chicken or capon, depending on which cookbook or chef you consult. Red Burgundy is made from pinot noir, so you could cast your net a little wider and consider a decent pinot noir from elsewhere, but even here you should expect to pay upward of $18 to find something decent.
Even if you can afford a fine $50-plus premier-cru Burgundy, though, you'd be tossing your money out the window. Permit me to quote from the coq au vin recipe in my copy of Le Cordon Bleu Complete Cook Home Collection: "Wine for cooking should be of reasonable quality – one that you would be happy to drink. Cheaper wines will not add a good flavour to food and the flavour of expensive wines will be lost in the cooking process."
Other options to consider include any medium-to-full-bodied dry European wine. I'm particularly fond of Côtes du Rhône as a cooking medium. Good ones can be had for $12 to $16. They tend to display a proper balance of fruitiness to acidity and savoury characters – and are rarely as jammy or overbearing as big reds from sunny New World regions, which can reduce to a sweet syrupy essence that might not fit with the chicken. A good bargain-basement option is Montepulciano d'Abruzzo from Italy, often priced as low as $8 or $9.
If you think that using Italian wine would be sacrilege in coq au vin, then I feel obliged to invoke the hallowed name of the late Julia Child, who helped catapult the dish to popularity on this continent in her famous 1960s television show The French Chef. In a 1968 cookbook based on – and named after – that series, she recommends "Burgundy, Macon, Chianti or California Mountain Red wine." So, there you go.
And while I'm discussing "sacrilege," let me also suggest a paler alternative. Should you prefer white wine versus red, bear in mind that there is a well-established alternative known as "coq au riesling," popular in the northern French region of Alsace, smart variations of which have been offered in recent years by such noted cooks as Nigella Lawson, Nigel Slater and Laura Calder.
Frankly, I prefer the tangy-creamy riesling version of coq au vin. Besides, a white sauce would seem to symbolize a cleaner start to a new year, n'est-ce pas?
E-mail your wine and spirits questions to Beppi Crosariol. Look for answers to select questions to appear in the Wine & Spirits newsletter and on The Globe and Mail website.