Double Albarino Discovery at Kuma Inn
On a recent winter night, a short steep climb to Kuma Inn, a Phillipines-inspired restaurant in a Lower East Side ex-tenement, got me a cozy corner table loaded with the restaurant’s signature tapas-style dishes and two bottles of Albariño—a 2005 Adegas d’Altamira Selecciones and a 2007 Condes de Albarei—to taste them all with.
The food was served in quick waves, each plate overlapping the each to be sampled against one sip of each albariño: the d’Altamira with its tell-tale candied peach sign of aging and the Condes de Albarei’s young, crisp tinned-pineapple minerality.
The first plate, sharply vinegared pickled melon, mushroom, long beans and eggplant, wiped out both wines instantly, that famous acidity and freshness reduced to—and I had to really try to find even this much taste—watered down juice from canned fruit. If you absolutely cannot swallow pickled vegetables without an accompanying mouthful of albariño, young is your best bet: even with its acidity cancelled out, the Albarei’s soft minerality beat the pants off all that remained of the d’Altamira—that ripe fruit against all that vinegar falls flat and syrupy.
The next dish, a deliciously homemade version of a pork bun in the form of a brioche bun stuffed with bbq pork, and topped with pickled daikon made light of the d’Altamira as well. But it was perfectly matched by the Albarei, letting it show off its essential Albariño-ness: a sharpness that sliced through the bbq tang and soft bread.
Next, an oyster omelet that arrived still steaming—which made the bonita flakes on top wiggle wildly throughout the entire eating process and beyond. I tried to stop laughing, failed, took two bites anyhow, and followed each with a sip of each wine. The Albarei worked, salt and mineral being perfect for all that salt, fish and egg (which had no use at all for all the Altamira’s fruit, making the use of “cloying” and “albariño” in the same sentence an almost plausible hyperbole).
Then came chili-lime-sauced Chinese sausage slices and, on a separate plate, big crispy pieces of fried pork belly, and both wines immediately found their match. The rich, chewy bites of meat (especially the sausage with its added tartness) plumped up ripe peach flavors in the Altamira and were cut through beautifully by the Albarei’s slivers of acidity. Both wines show highlighted what frying did for each meat: amplify it into crisp, chewy bites of rich brightened flavors.
With a move deeper into fried territory, the Altamira got an unexpected chance to shine on its own. Dessert, an allegedly difficult partner for any albariño was sweet plantains, wrapped up spring-roll-style and deep fried sweet and golden and lightly crusty. The Albarei didn’t do much at all here; if pressed, I’d say it tasted a bit grey. But the Altamira did something strange: it stood up to the crackling sweetness by pretending to be a wine of noble rot, just for a sip or two—pushed, its peach and pineapple can taste of honeyed apricot, balanced even in disguise, by that famously generous acidity.
