Umami ferments: miso, soy and XO — flavouring profile

Fermented savoury seasonings do something no other ingredient does: they change how the wine itself tastes, making tannin harsher and fruit thinner, so the wine has to be chosen for what it lacks as much as for what it has.

The compounds that matter. Free glutamate is the core of it, joined by the nucleotides inosinate and guanylate in dried fish, mushroom and aged pastes. Together they heighten the perception of bitterness, acidity and astringency. A tannic red poured against a miso glaze does not merely fail to match it: it tastes metallic and hollow, its fruit stripped out. Working the other way, these seasonings carry a great deal of salt, and salt softens tannin, so a well-salted dish partly undoes the damage. Where the ferment is sweetened, as most XO sauces and many miso glazes are, sugar arrives too and the wine has to answer that as well.

What it demands of a wine. Low tannin above all, or none. Enough body to meet food that is intensely savoury and usually rich. A little residual sugar where the seasoning is sweetened. Some texture or grip that does not come from tannin, which is the difficult part and the reason the usual answers disappoint. Oak is best avoided; its vanilla sits oddly on fermented salt.

Seek

This is the clearest case in all of food and wine for skin-contact white, because the maceration gives grip and savoury depth without the tannin of a red. A skin-contact Rkatsiteli from Kakheti in Georgia, made in buried clay, is the most structured expression and the best answer to a serious miso or soy glaze; a skin-contact Malvazija Istarska from Croatia is gentler and easier to find. After that: aged savoury reds with soft tannin and tertiary depth rather than young fruit, oxidative styles such as Fino Sherry where the dish is dry and salty, off-dry aromatic whites where the sauce is sweetened, and low-tannin reds served cool. Traditional-method sparkling works where the dish is also fried.

Avoid

Young tannic reds, which is the single most common error and the one this seasoning punishes hardest. Delicate light whites, which vanish. Heavily oaked wines of any colour.

Three to reach for. A skin-contact Rkatsiteli in the qvevri style from Kakheti, Georgia, for miso and soy glazes. A skin-contact Malvazija Istarska from Croatia as the easier and cheaper version of the same idea. A Fino Sherry from Jerez where the dish is salty and dry rather than sweetened.