James was recently featured in a Korea Times story about his visit to the Jeju Food & Wine Festival last week with his wife, Marie Kim-Suckling. James, given the Korean name “Jae-suck” by his fans in the country, was a special guest at the festival, where he met with Korean wine aficionados and presented specially selected wines to pair with dishes using local ingredients from Jeju Island.
The James Suckling Wine Dinner on May 17 featured a six-course menu paired with James’ wine recommendations for each dish. Among them, his pick for the pine nut porridge with abalone and caviar, made by Chef Cho Hee-sook of Korean Food Space, was the Salomon Undhof Riesling Kremstal Ried Kogl El 2022, while he paired the croaker with sargassum, by Chef Albert Leung of James Suckling Wine Central, with the Favia Chardonnay Napa Valley Coombsville Carbone 2020. The pomegranate-shaped dumpling filled with Jeju vegetables, also by Chef Cho, was paired with the Pio Cesare Barbera d’Alba 2021, and James chose the Dominio de Pingus Ribera del Duero PSI 2020 to go with the char siu pork made by Chef Leung.
James said his philosophy behind the pairings was to bring the maximum out of the food’s natural properties rather than abide out-of-date notions about pairing. “The old Western rule about wine and food pairing isn’t necessarily there,” he said. “We have to actually think about textures and freshness.”
Check out the story by clicking on the link above, and have a look at the original, in the Korea Tines‘ printed edition, below.
