Grape Expectations

Newsflash: Gewürztraminer is not the best-or only-wine pairing for "Asian" cuisine

- Aman Dosanj

RECENTLY, I CAME ACROSS a video of my first birthday party-also known in my big, fat British-Indian family as the day I had my first few sips of sparkling wine under the "supervision" of my dad. Sporting a curly bob and a maroon velvet dress with frilly white lace, I experienced wide-eyed bewilderment as my chubby cheeks swelled and my lips smacked together; next came the nosedive into his glass, demanding more. Shortly after, it was lights out for me for the rest of the party. Aside from that first taste, wine wasn't really a prominent part of our home table when I was growing up in England. That changed when my family moved to the Okanagan Valley, B.C., in 2008 and when, the following year, we opened Poppadoms, a seasonally minded Indian restaurant in Kelowna.

Our first-time restaurant venture was meant to demonstrate what diasporic Indian cuisine could be outside of Western expectations about takeout butter chicken. Much of that revolved around supporting local Canadian farmers and growing into our new community. There were hiccups along the way, especially with the acceptable value of our labour-intensive cooking style. No matter how ethically sourced our ingredients were or how much time and care we took in preparing them, we were still just the Indian restaurant owners with English accents.

In Poppadoms' early years, sales representatives were reluctant to show us-let alone let us sample-bottles of wine that cost more than $20. The idea that we'd actually stock them seemed far-fetched to many vendors despite our thoughtfully curated all-B.C. wine list. After all, Indian cuisine is supposedly cheap, right? Event planners would match us with Indian-owned wineries because their wines "suited our food better," even though they hadn't tasted the menus we'd planned.