<a href="https://ko.momofuku.com/">Momofuku Ko</a>&nbsp;is an award-winning restaurant in NYC that offers an exceptional dining experience. &nbsp;It won two Michelin stars in 2009 and has maintained that status ever since. It was also awarded three stars by the New York Times in 2015, and in 2019, it was ranked No. 76 on the World&rsquo;s 50 Best Restaurants list. With credentials like this, you&rsquo;d expect a top-quality wine list and you would not be disappointed.

So, if dining Japanese, which wines pair well?

Japanese cuisine is quite varied and includes a wide range of seafood dishes, tempura, sushi and sashimi, pork, chicken, ramen&hellip;, the flavors and textures are diverse, which means we need a wine list with a variety of options.

With sushi and sashimi, you can go wrong with a crisp, clean white wine like a gr&uuml;ner veltliner. A white wine with high acidity and lemony, citrus notes works well with seafood. Sauvignon blanc also pairs well with sushi, and, of course, Champagne also works well.

If you opt for a bowl of ramen or miso soup, the strong umami calls for a bolder wine that won&rsquo;t be overpowered nor overpower. Consider choosing a fortified wine like an Assyrtiko from Greece or even a Manzanilla sherry. However, many ramen dishes use soy sauce, in this case, a light-bodied pinot noir will also work well.

Fried, battered and grilled dishes like tempura, katsu, karaage and agedashi tofu pair well with aromatic and full-bodied whites, such as chardonnay or pinot gris. However, light to medium reds can also work spectacularly well. Think pinot noir, gamay or grenache.

If you are thinking of dining at Momofuku Ko, &nbsp;check out the CorkRules<a href="https://uat.corkrules.com/momofuku-las-vegas/episodes/23">&nbsp;podcast </a>episode with certified sommelier Michaela Quinlan. She navigates the wine list at &nbsp;Momofuku Ko and offers a few stellar suggestions.

Cheers!

&nbsp;

About the CorkRules Podcast:&nbsp;Each week we pour a glass and share top restaurant wine list picks, providing you with the knowledge to confidently navigate the wine list through sommelier recommendations, suggested food pairings and expert insights

About CorkRules:&nbsp;CorkRules, the first digital wine app experience, makes it easier for you to navigate the restaurant wine list, and provides you with personalized wine recommendations from your favorite restaurants. Through CorkRules you can find the perfect wine for every occasion based on your preferences. Connect with friends and wine experts to discover new wines to try and learn about wine. CorkRules makes it easier to discover and drink what you love. &nbsp;

Momofuku Ko is an award-winning restaurant in NYC that offers an exceptional dining experience.  It won two Michelin stars in 2009 and has maintained that status ever since. It was also awarded three stars by the New York Times in 2015, and in 2019, it was ranked No. 76 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. With credentials like this, you’d expect a top-quality wine list and you would not be disappointed.

Pairing Wine with Japanese Food at Momofuku Ko

Wines from grapes grown in higher altitude areas with cooler climate has become quite the trend recently. This specific growing environment gives intense flavor but elegance and freshness to the final wines. To highlight and champion these conditions more and more winemakers are starting to use alto as a marketing and labelling term to show their grapes were grown in high altitude vineyards.

Decoding the wine label: Alto

Brut is a word often seen on labels for different kinds of sparkling wine. As you may have discovered when drinking these wines, it indicates that the wine is dry, meaning there is no perceived sweetness in the wine. But how about Extra Brut or Dry, what do they mean and are they the same as Brut?

Decoding the wine label: Brut

Semi-sweet Riesling, a type of wine falling out of style. It’s a shame, since these wines are perfect to pair with flavorful cuisines like Asian or Mexican, or simply drink as they come under the summer sun. The higher level of sugar left in the wine also means that the alcoholic fermentation was stopped before finishing, providing a wine with lower alcohol level and therefor easier grabbing a second glass of.

Decoding the wine label: Spätlese

Have you ever heard the word Xinomavro? Most have not. It is however a word on many sommeliers’ lips today, as it happens to be considered the grape variety with the highest quality in Greece, and one that is trending at the moment. The fact that Greece have been making wine for a long time comes as no surprise, but they have never exported an amount to make sure wine lovers around the globe tried it. With the growing wine tourism many have discovered these wines and are serving them in wine bars and restaurants in many countries today.

Decoding the wine label: Xinomavro

Chianti Classico, Valpolicella Classico, Soave Classico… Why do all these Italian wine regions have the Classico addendum and what does it mean? What is the difference for wines labeled as Classico?

Classico is a wine term in Italy seen on a few wine labels and it indicates that the wine’s from the historic center of the region, the heart. Using Chianti and Chianti Classico and their Sangiovese-based red wines as an example, Chianti is a rather large wine district within the Tuscany region. Chianti Classico is located withing Chianti as the central part and the one that originally existed. Back then this smaller region was actually called Chianti, but as the region grew the quality of the wine plummeted and the well-known characteristics of these red wines were watered down. The reputation took a hit and sales diminished. Eventually this led to the creation of Chianti Classico, which would be drawn from the original Chianti borders to recover the typicity of these wines. Today the quality of both Chianti and Chianti Classico have risen a lot due to modern techniques and knowledge about pruning, planting and temperature control in the winery.

Decoding the wine label: Classico

In the rarefied world of fine wine, where bottles can command prices equivalent to luxury cars, authenticity is everything. Laurent Ponsot's gripping memoir "FBI: Fake Bottle Investigation" reads more like a high-stakes thriller than a traditional wine book, chronicling his relentless pursuit of one of the wine world's most infamous counterfeiters, Rudy Kurniawan.

From Burgundy's Vineyards to the FBI's Most Wanted: A Winemaker's Quest for Justice

Chablis – one of the more popular styles of wine today and a region known by many. Most are familiar with the word Chablis and the light, fresh white wine with a touch of minerality it brings. Even though it’s a renowned wine, few knows what it really is.

Decoding the wine label: Chablis

Many grape varieties around the world of wine have names local to the region or country they’re grown in, even though they’re exactly the same. The most famous example would be Syrah in France where the same grape is named Shiraz in Australia. Another variety with two names is Pinot Grigio, or Pinot Gris.

Decoding the wine label: Pinot Grigio

Have you ever seen the term sur lie on a wine label? It’s not a grape and not a wine region, but a winemaking method used to give certain styles of white wine a rounder texture and a more complex flavor profile.

Decoding the wine label: Sur lie

King

Grace Hood

King

RT: Hello and Welcome to CorkRules!&nbsp;

A podcast where&nbsp;we will review a wine list from your favorite restaurants. I&rsquo;m your host Robert Tas along with Grace Hood, wine educator and certified sommelier. Hello Grace,&nbsp;it&rsquo;s great to have you!

GH: Greetings and Salutations Robert haha

RT Before we jump in, let&rsquo;s talk about those wine lists. We created CorkRules to help demystify wine list&rsquo;s because we know from experience, that sometimes when we get that list handed to us, well&hellip; it can be intimidating, and even a little daunting.

Our aim is to help prepare you to navigate that list, find those hidden gems, or value wines or that special bottle that will take your dining experience over the top.

RT:&nbsp;Today we&rsquo;re chatting about an intimate New York Hot spot, King. Grace take us away!

GH: Ha ha thanks, Robert. I was really excited to talk about King in this episode because it&rsquo;s one of my favorite types of restaurants and one that&rsquo;s pretty rare to find. What makes this place so unique is that the menu changes every single day. And that is not an easy thing to do at all in a restaurant. Think about it &ndash; you have to be so dedicated and passionate as a culinary team as well as a front of the house personnel. From the back of the house learning new recipes and creating dishes every day, to the front of the house being able to convey that story to the guests. It&rsquo;s probably such a creative innovative environment to be in too as a staff member. I&rsquo;m definitely getting a reservation at this place asap.

RT: Yeah, I really love their unique fresh take on their daily menu. Now, what are you looking at in terms of wine?

GH: So, I read that their dishes are inspired by southern France and northern Italy, and that also rolls over into their wine menu &ndash; it&#39;s all French and Italian, which you know I am here for. It&#39;s only 3 pages but they pack a lot on those 3, but the great part is that the average bottle cost is still right around $100! I see some gorgeous wines on here for $70 which is an absolute steal in Manhattan where the markup for wines can be sky high. Makes the wine list more approachable for everyone and moves the juice! &nbsp;

RT: Price point really is everything. Now, what was sticking out to you on the list Grace?

GH: Oh man, where to start! There are so many of my favorites on here. &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start&rdquo; h&aacute; ha gotta go with some sparkling to kick it off. They have a nice condensed champagne list, but the one that stuck out to me was the 2017 Bereche Blanc de Blanc Beaux Regards. Bereche is a small production champagne house that sommeliers have a cult following for. And a 5-year-old vintage will be more subtle than a new vintage but will have some really lovely effervescence to it.

RT: Can&rsquo;t go wrong with Champagne. What should we be looking at when it comes to whites?

MV: So it&rsquo;s broken down into France and Italy. And then the next identifying factor would be what region it is from. We&rsquo;ve got all the main wine producing regions from France and Italy represented, now it&#39;s just a matter of what you&rsquo;re in the mood for! If we&rsquo;re thinking lighter aromatic styles, and you&rsquo;re tired of Sancerre or Pouilly fume (which is hard to be), another awesome alternative would be would pick one of the chenin blancs from the Loire, which is going to be either your 2017 Saumur Blanc Domaine Collier, or the 2019 Montlouis Bournais from Francois Chidaine. The Loire is a really amazing place to grow light aromatic wines due to its amazing silty clay and limestone soil. If you think about it, grapes are at the end of the day an agricultural product, and the soil that it is planted in plays a huge part in what you will be tasting on your palate. There&#39;s a big difference in a wine that&rsquo;s grown in a place that once was under a glacier, than grown in a place that was once an ancient sea bed, ya know? The mineral deposits, the soil type, and how much water and rainfall it does or doesn&rsquo;t get. All these small things matter.

RT: Totally &ndash; we don&rsquo;t talk nearly enough about soil when it comes to wine. Glad you&#39;re reminding us, Grace. What about if we wanted an Italian white?

GH: One man again &ndash; so many good options. But the ones that stuck out to me is the 2020 soave from Suavia, or the 2020 Verdiccihio from Fattoria San Lorenzo. So many people think of Italy just as a place for pinot grigio, and don&rsquo;t get me wrong &ndash; pinot grigio definitely sees the most international recognition when it comes to Italian whites. But they have so many more interesting indigenous grapes there &ndash; the thing about it is that a lot of those small production wines don&rsquo;t make it to the domestic marketplace, therefore we don&rsquo;t learn as much about them because we aren&rsquo;t exposed to them. But at a place like King, this is where you would really stretch your wings and order something new. I&rsquo;ve worked in restaurants for 20 years, and I would put money on half the staff of King at least having some sort of wine certification &ndash; that&rsquo;s what it great about working at a smaller intimate restaurant &ndash; since they have fewer tables and a smaller menu, the staff gets to spend more time on food and wine education, so a lot of the times the servers will be nearly as knowledgeable about the wine list as the sommelier.

RT: That&rsquo;s a great point Grace. Love all your insider information. Now we gotta move to reds at some point &ndash; where are we going from here?

GH: Whatever you pick, it&#39;s going to be fabulous. Seriously. I&rsquo;m nerding out over these choices &ndash; we can&rsquo;t pick all of them sadly. But some that stuck out to me on the French list &ndash; if you&rsquo;re wanting something light, I&rsquo;m gonna choose the 2019 Volnay from Marquis D&rsquo;Angerville. One of my sommelier friends who&rsquo;s worked for Thomas Keller and all the big names, he once described Volnay as an elegant dancing lady, and I just loved that. If to swing to the other side and go with something heavier, they have a 2005 Pomerol from Chateau Vieux Certan, which ohhh wee is going to be delish.

RT: Ooooo yum &ndash; both great choices. What are you thinking for Italian reds?

GH: Ayyyyy mama mia too many good choices! But if you&rsquo;re gonna twist my arm, I&rsquo;m going with the 2011 Barbaresco from Cascina Baricchi for something lighter, and then for your bigger bolder style &ndash; the 2007 Rosso di Toscana from Colle Santa Mustiola. 

RT: Amazing Grace. Great choices as always. Thank you for helping us navigate the wine list at King.

To our audience, thank you all for joining us here on CorkRules.&nbsp; If you would like us to review one of your favorite restaurants, please send us email to: <a href="mailto:Info@CorkRules.com">Info@CorkRules.com</a> or visit our web website where we have a request form available and we will do our best to get it in the queue as quickly as possible.

We are looking forward to being with you on another CorkRules episode soon. In the meantime, please check out our website for other episodes of your favorite restaurant wine lists. Follow us on social media @CorkRules and @wineswithgrace

And finally, drink what you love and please make sure you drink responsibly.

Thank you.

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BRAT

Bocca di Lupe

Gap Weekend: A Film Shoot in Wine Country

Alba Restaurant

Alba

10 Greek Street

L'Auberge Chez Francois

Andrew Edmunds

Salt Seafood and Oyster Bar

Matteos Ristorante Italiano

Matteo's

Priest Ranch is a family-owned and operated winery that is dedicated to producing high-quality wines that reflect the unique terroir of Napa Valley. Through a combination of traditional winemaking techniques and modern technology, Priest Ranch creates elegant and complex wines that are a true expression of their vineyards.

No-frills restaurant inside a strip mall plating sizable bites of pizza, pasta & basic Italian grub.

Meson

Brasserie Mon Chou Chou

BondST

Buenos Aires Restaurant

Buenos Aires

Meadowsweet

Casa Mono

Atera

La Cava

LAVO Italian Restaurant

Lavo

Quality Italian

homepage

CorkRules application allows you to discover wines at your favorite restaurants, learn with friends and be confident with price transparency. Order wine with confidence at restaurants and retailers. Get personalized recommendations. #DrinkWhatYouLove

Lorna's Italian Kitchen

Murphy-Goode

The Fume Sauvignon Blanc NV

Sauvignon Blanc

North Coast, California, USA

Benvolio

Pinot Grigio NV

Pinot Gris

Friuli Grave, Italy

Cultusboni Chianti Cetamura, Italy, Tuscany, Chianti NV

Sangiovese

Chianti, Tuscany, Italy

Casablanca

Calina Chardonnay, Chile, Valley NV

Chardonnay

Casablanca Valley, Chile

Bellafina

NV, Prosecco, Italy, Veneto / Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Prosecco NV

Glera

Friuli Venezia Giulia, Italy

Tinto Negro (TintoNegro)

Mendoza Malbec NV

Malbec

Mendoza, Argentina

The Hilt

Pinot Noir NV

Pinot Noir

Sta. Rita Hills, USA

Murphy-Goode

Merlot NV

Merlot

California, USA

Murphy-Goode Liar's Dice Zinfandel, Sonoma County NV

Sonoma County, USA

Kendall-Jackson

Jackson Estate Petaluma Gap Pinot Noir NV

Pinot Noir

California, USA

SIMI

Sonoma County Chardonnay NV

Chardonnay

Sonoma County, USA