Weekly Wine Notes From Brian Kemmerle
photo © Jen McCabe SakeOne.
Bentley’s Wine Steward, Brian Kemmerle regularly offers his insight and experience to help select the perfect wine to accompany Chef Derek Ridgway’s dishes. This week, Brian recommends trying something new: Sake!
This week’s featured pairing is for the Tempura Shrimp on the Small Plates section of our menu. Gulf shrimp are coated with a wasabi infused tempura batter and then fried. Cucumber salad, sweet plum sauce and hot mustard accompany the shrimp. You could of course pair this with an off-dry to fairly sweet white wine but what would be the fun in that.
How about sake? How about a local sake? You bet! We are very lucky to have a sake brewery right here in Oregon, SakeOne. They have hand crafted a line of Junmai Ginjo sake in the Japanese tradition and named them Momokawa. We offer four sake in the line for pairing with this dish, the Silver the driest, the Diamond which is off-dry, the Ruby which is slightly sweet and the Pearl which is unfiltered, so it is cloudy and very sweet. Each is served chilled, in our special 4 ounce sake cup. Cheers! -Brian Kemmerle
