Taking a wok on the wine side

Two episodes of the show are dedicated to showing how to pair domestic wines with local dishes, which sees Walker visiting the winemaking regions of Shandong province, Shanxi province, the Ningxia Hui autonomous region and the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

"The shift away from domestically produced wine to imported wine has been very rapid and dramatic-from about 90 percent domestic wine in 2007, to just around 65 percent by 2017," says Walker.

Walker believes that the Western way of pairing wine with the food really does not work well with Chinese fare.

"I examine the key characteristics of local foods-whether they are salty, savory, sweet, complex or spicy. And then I decide what sort of wine would bring out the different aspects of the food," says Walker.

For Hunan dishes, she would choose one wine that would help tame the spiciness of the food, one wine that would bring out the salty, savory elements and another that would enhance the strong, spicy flavors.

"With most Chinese cuisine, the greatest influence on the taste of the food really isn't the basic ingredients but the cooking method," says Walker. "We need to look at the cooking style of the cuisine, and then select wines that either enhance or reduce its taste according to preference."

In the case of Hunan-style food, someone who doesn't like spicy food would need a mild wine to offset the spiciness of the flavors, such as a sweet wine like Moscato d'Asti. Someone who loves spicy food should pick a wine that enhances the heat and spiciness-like a Chilean Carmenere or Barossa Shiraz, Walker says.

"In my opinion, because of its complexity and layers of flavors and tastes, Chinese food goes even better than most types of Western food with wine."