Chè

A broad family of Vietnamese sweet preparations: sweet soups, puddings, or drinks, served warm or cold, made variously from mung bean, red bean, glutinous rice, banana, lotus seed, jellies, taro, coconut milk, and pandan, often with crushed ice in summer. The signature combination is sweet bean or starch base, coconut milk richness, and tropical-pandan-vanilla aromatic register. Light to medium sweetness, nothing as concentrated as European patisserie. It rewards wines with their own coconut, tropical, or pandan-adjacent character. Lower-octane sweet wines are preferred to anything as concentrated as Sauternes.