Pair This: Love & Squalor Riesling with Spicy Thai

A little spiciness is all you need to go with that Love & Squalor.

I’m not talking about the trials and tribulations that love has to sometimes endure, I’m talking about a glass of piquant Willamette Valley Riesling along side a dish piled high with some slightly spicy Shrimp Pad Thai.

I don’t drink Riesling very often. Not because I don’t like the varietal, but because I don’t come across the style of Riesling I prefer all that often. Rieslings are usually too sweet or too dry for my personal taste, so when I find one that is, in my opinion, perfectly in the middle, I don’t hesitate taking home a bottle…or two.

After sampling Love & Squalor’s Riesling at a wine tasting I recently attended, I knew I’d be taking home a bottle to enjoy with my favorite Thai dish, Shrimp Pad Thai. What I didn’t know was how incredibly the two would actually be together. The following pairing is now one of my all-time favorites:

The wine: Love & Squalor 2010 Willamette Valley Fancy Pants Riesling ~ not too sweet, not too dry. Honeysuckle aromas are followed by crisp, refreshing flavors of lemon zest and apple, but the bright and lively finish is what really captured my attention.

The food: Shrimp Pad Thai ~ crushed red pepper adds spiciness into this popular noodle dish from Thailand.

The pairing: Talk about harmony. The citrus flavors in the wine actually enhanced the flavor of the shrimp while the spiciness from the crushed red pepper brought out the slightly sweet apple flavors in the wine. With each bite and sip, the flavors popped and I savored every last bit of shrimp and sip of wine.

The Shrimp Pad Thai recipe is one I’ve been enjoying for years. I clipped the recipe from a 2002 issue of Cooking Light, but it can also be found here.