1 Dish, 5 Wines: Chicken Adobo and Rice
This month’s edition of “1 Dish, 5 Wines” celebrates my Filipino heritage with no other than the national dish of the Philippines–Chicken Adobo.
I recently learned that April is Filipino Food Month. Filipino Food Month was established via Proclamation 469 to celebrate and promote the country’s culinary heritage. If there was a dish synonymous with the Philippines, it’s Adobo.
Adobo is a dish where meat–typically chicken–is marinated and braised in a mixture of soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, bay leaves, and black peppercorns. It comes from the Spanish word “adobar” (meaning to marinade or season). It’s believed that indigenous Filipinos cooked meat in vinegar and salt as a preservation method before the Spanish took over. Spanish colonizers adapted this method by adding soy sauce from Chinese traders, garlic, and bay leaves. There are different variations of adobo including using pork instead of or in addition to chicken, coconut milk and squid. But chicken is the standard, and you can’t serve this without rice. Rice is the ultimate vessel for soaking up all of the Chicken Adobo sauce.
With so many wines to choose from for Chicken Adobo, here are my favorites.
Sparkling Wine: Crémant de Loire
Chenin Blanc has a bright acidity and minerality that is slightly earthy among its ripe peach and apple flavors on the palate. When Chenin Blanc is made in a sparkling style, the additional mousse texture elongates the flavor experience. This sparkling wine enhances the sweet and savory acidity of Chicken Adobo and cleanses that palate so you can have more of it.
Recommended wine: Langlois-Chateau, Crémant de Loire, Brut Reserve NV (MSRP: $29)
This sparkling wine is a blend of Chenin Blanc, Chardonnay, and Cabernet Franc with 10 percent reserve wine making it even more complex. The wine has a round texture with classic Chenin Blanc notes of peach, yellow apple, and crushed rocks. However, it also has some nutty, floral, and red apple aromas that bring out more spice from the black peppercorns in the dish.
White Wine: Riesling
Riesling is an obvious choice for every Asian food known to mankind. That’s because Riesling, whether it is made in a dry style or sweet style, has a balance of acidity and fruit that mirrors a lot of Asian dishes–especially Chicken Adobo. The apple cider in Chicken Adobo preserves and flavors the chicken while the small amount of sugar balances the apple cider. It’s a complementary match made in heaven.
Recommended wine: Knoll, Riesling Smaragd, Wachau DAC, Austria 2020 (MSRP: $60)
While you can pair any Riesling from any region (such as Mosel, Germany or Finger Lakes, New York), I like the dry yet medium-to-full-bodied style of Austrian Riesling. Knoll is a legendary producer from Austria making both approachable Riesling and age-worthy Riesling. In this specific bottling–classified as Smaragd, the grapes are harvested a little later so there is a richer texture and more complex, concentrated flavors of pineapple, kaffir lime leaves and peach. Those concentrated flavors as well as the crushed stone aromas of the wine bring out the slight bit of sugar, bay leaves, and peppercorns in the marinade.
Rosé Wine: Any Medium-Full Bodied, Juicy Rosé with a Slightly Darker Hue
The super pale rosés are too acidic it enhances the vinegar in Chicken Adobo that you feel like you're eating Warheads with chicken and rice. Super dark rosés can have too much astringency and there’s not enough fat in chicken adobo to balance that astringency. Rosés that have a little more color than pale rosés but less than dark rosés that emphasize juicy textures and tropical fruit are best with Chicken Adobo. That juiciness balances out the acidity in the dish while not clashing with the texture of the chicken.
Recommended wine: Maison Noir, “Love Drunk”, Willamette Valley, Oregon 2022 (MSRP: $23)
Celebrity sommelier turned winemaker Andre Mack knows what people want–which quaffable wines that drink like the high-end bottlings. “Love Drunk” is a rosé that pays homage to the Provencal rosés but has that tropical fruit flair fuller, juicier, and slightly darker rosés have. Those tropical fruit flavors such as watermelon and kiwi along with the fresh strawberry aromas beautifully balance the Chicken Adobo and transport you to the Philipinnes.
Red Wine: Cru Beaujolais (Specifically Morgon, Julienas, Moulin-a-Vent, and Régnié)
A dish like Chicken Adobo needs a red wine that doesn’t have a lot of tannin, ripe red fruit aromas, subtle earthy with underlying spice flavors, and elevated acidity on the finish. Cru Beaujolais wines hit all those notes making it the perfect “condiment” with Chicken Adobo. Cru Beaujolais wines are wines from specific areas within the region of Beaujolais known for their complex flavors and aging potential. Depending on farming decisions and terroir, each Cru produces wine with nuanced flavor profiles that make it unique. I prefer Cru Beaujolais from Morgon, Julienas, Moulin-a-Vent, and Régnié as those crus have more pepper spice and savoriness.
Recommended wine: Marcel Lapierre, Morgon, Beaujolais 2019 (MSRP: $40)
Marcel Lapierre is one of the best-known producers of Beaujolais because he takes a lot of pride in his vines so they can produce wine that’s drinkable when young or age-worthy. His vines in Morgon are older (average age of 70 years) so they can produce fruit with concentrated blood orange, raspberry, and thyme flavors. When this wine is aged a few years, there is a slight truffle aroma and savory black peppercorn flavor that complements Chicken Adobo.
Sweet Wine: Moscato d’Asti
Chicken Adobo doesn’t require heavy wine since the dish is heavily flavored with soy sauce and vinegar; you’ll get overwhelmed with flavors and palate fatigue might set in. A lighter sweet wine such as Moscato d’Asti has a bright acidity to complement the acid in Chicken Adobo but candied peach and elderflower syrup flavors to balance the dish’s savoriness. I do recommend you use a fattier cut of chicken or make a fattier variation of Adobo (such as Pork Adobo) to make the flavor experience more unique.
Recommended Wine: Cordero San Giorgio, “Exergia”, Moscato d’Asti DOCG, Piedmont 2023 (MSRP: $23)
Cordero San Giorgio is the project of the Cordero siblings Franchesco, Lorenzo, and Catarina. They are the grandchildren of Barolo power couple Luciana Vietti & Alfredo Currado and children of the original estate owner Mario Cordero. While the siblings’ specialty is Pinot Nero and Chardonnay from Oltrepò Pavese in Lombardy, their Moscato d’Asti rivals well-known producers. The grapes are harvested from older vines (average age 40 years old) so there are more concentrated flavors of acacia and peach and an underlying flavor of ginger to refresh your palate from Chicken Adobo.
Like I said earlier, there are so many wines to choose from for a creative Chicken Adobo pairing. Have fun with it!
JPC’s Recipe Roledex
This new sub-segment gives you all of my original recipes so you can test the pairings for yourself. Of course, my inaugural one is Chicken Adobo. Find the recipe below.
“Tita Jordana’s” Chicken Adobo and Rice
Whole chicken. Chicken breasts. Soupy sauce. Non-soupy sauce. The variations of Chicken Adobo are just as endless as the variations of Adobo itself. The best variation I had was on Memorial Day Weekend 2016 in Washington D.C. My Aunt made a variation with shredded chicken. I was blown away by its underlying sweetness among its savory tartness. She said …