Eight German Bottles and One Very Strange Vinegar
Eight pours into a 15-course tasting menu in Bangkok, and the most memorable thing in a glass all night was technically a vinegar.
Most sommeliers at restaurants operating at this level default to France. Burgundy for the delicate courses, Bordeaux for the meat, Champagne to open. It works. It's safe. It's also a little predictable when you've sat through it enough times.
Sühring doesn't do that. The pairing here runs almost entirely on German bottles, which makes complete sense once you've spent time with the food. Thomas and Mathias Sühring are cooking from a very specific place, and the wine list follows that logic rather than reaching for the international prestige play. The result is a pairing program that feels like it was built for this menu rather than assembled from a greatest hits list.
The full meal is covered separately. This is just the wines.
The Sommelier
Julien Iannaccone did not take the obvious route to running the wine program at one of Asia's best restaurants. He grew up in the south of France, spent nearly a decade as a cocktail bartender, and came to Sühring to oversee the bar. Then German wine got him.
That origin story matters because it shows up in how the list is built. Iannaccone came to German wine as an outsider, without the ingrained assumptions most French-trained sommeliers carry, and fell for it hard enough to build his career around it. The program he runs now is heavily weighted toward German producers, with a particular depth in Riesling and Pinot Noir, plus a thoughtful selection from Burgundy, Austria, and Bordeaux for the courses that need something different. The wine list has won Wine Spectator's Best of Award of Excellence and was named Best Austrian Wine List in Asia 2025. Both of those feel earned.
The German Case
German wine has a reputation problem it hasn't deserved for at least two decades. The category got associated with sweet, low-alcohol Rieslings in the 1970s and 1980s, and a lot of people never updated that picture. What the best German producers are doing now, particularly with dry Riesling, is producing some of the most precise and interesting white wine in the world. High acidity, extraordinary depth, and a mineral quality that makes them work beautifully against food.
Sühring's pairing makes this argument bottle by bottle. By the end of the meal you'll understand why.
2020 Sekt Riesling Brut Nature — Griesel & Compagnie
The opener. A traditional method sparkling Riesling from a small family producer in the Bergstraße, no sugar added after disgorgement, so what you get is the wine exactly as it fermented. It's dry and lively, with fine bubbles, a little citrus peel, and a clean mineral edge that wakes up the palate without demanding your full attention. A good opening move.
2019 Riesling GG "Blaufüsser Lay" — Heymann-Löwenstein
This is the wine that tends to make people reconsider what they think they know about Riesling. From steep slate terraces along the Mosel, it's dry and tightly wound, with white peach and apricot on the nose but something more austere underneath. Mineral, precise, with a finish that keeps going. It doesn't taste like the sweet German wine of popular imagination. It tastes like a wine from a very specific piece of ground that someone has been farming seriously for a long time.
NV Champagne Krug "Grande Cuvée 173ème Édition"
The one French detour nobody argues with. Krug Grande Cuvée is blended across multiple years, the 173rd edition drawing from 12 different harvests. Richer and deeper than most non-vintage Champagnes, with toasted brioche, hazelnut, dried citrus, and a long creamy finish. It has the body to sit alongside food that would overwhelm a lighter bottle. At a meal operating at this level, it is the correct call.
2022 Riesling GG "Höllberg" — Wagner Stempel
From volcanic soil in Rheinhessen, which gives the wine a faint smokiness you don't get from slate or sandstone sites. Dry, full-bodied for Riesling, with grapefruit, white pepper, and that mineral smoke threading through the finish. It's still young and a little coiled. A few more years in the bottle and it will be something exceptional. Right now it's already very good.
2021 Chardonnay 1G "Bürgstadter Berg" — Rudolf Fürst
Fürst is better known for Pinot Noir, so this Chardonnay is a quiet surprise. It doesn't taste like most people expect Chardonnay to taste. No butter, no oak weight. Instead it's precise and clean, with nectarine, white flowers, and a fresh acidity that keeps it light on its feet. Closer to a good Chablis than anything from the richer end of Burgundy. The kind of wine that works across multiple courses without ever getting in the way.
2018 Saint-Émilion 1er Grand Cru Classé — Château Valandraud
Valandraud was founded in 1991 on a small plot in Saint-Émilion and built into a premier grand cru classé through sheer obsessive attention to the vineyard. The 2018 is the kind of red the game and duck courses need sitting next to them. Rich and structured, with black cherry, tobacco, a little graphite, and a finish that still has room to open. It doesn't disappear against big flavors. It holds its ground.
2020 Nuits-Saint-Georges "Les Belles Croix" — Thibault Liger-Belair
Pinot Noir from the Côte de Nuits, an appellation that produces more structured, earthier wines than the more perfumed styles from neighboring villages. The 2020 has dark cherry, dried rose, a little leather, and fine-grained tannins that sit well rather than scratch. It has elegance without being fragile, which is the right quality for this point in the meal.
2016 Gewürztraminer 1G "Latt" — Ökonomierat Rebholz
Gewürztraminer polarizes people, and usually for good reason. At its worst it's cloyingly perfumed and one-dimensional. This is not that. The nose is intense, lychee and rose petal and a little ginger, but the palate is drier and more restrained than the aromatics suggest. A decade of age has pulled everything into focus. The finish is long and slightly bitter in a way that actually works as a palate cleanser rather than a flaw. It arrived late in the meal and landed exactly where it needed to.
The Drinking Vinegar: Armeniacum die Aprikose — Dolomiti
Nobody sees this coming. A 10-year sweet drinking vinegar made from a Pinot Blanc base, fermented naturally and aged in oak barrels. It arrives in a tall narrow bottle that looks more like a laboratory instrument than anything you'd find on a wine list, poured into a tulip glass. Amber in color. Smells like concentrated apricot.
It is not wine. It is not a digestif in any conventional sense. The sweetness is real but the acidity underneath keeps it from sitting heavy, and the decade in oak has added a depth that makes it genuinely interesting. It is the strangest thing on the table all night, and the one I kept thinking about afterward. The fact that Sühring includes it in the pairing at all says something about the confidence of the people running this program. They are not trying to impress. They are just doing what they think is interesting.
Final Thoughts
The pairing works because it was built for this specific meal, not assembled generically. Julien Iannaccone came to German wine as an outsider and built a program around it that makes the case better than most German restaurants on the planet. The bottles carry the evening in a way that will surprise anyone who hasn't updated their picture of what German wine can do. The two French exceptions show up where the food actually needs them. And the vinegar at the end is the kind of thing you'll mention when someone asks how dinner was.
For the full picture of the food, that article is here.
Notes
Address: No. 10, Yen Akat Soi 3, Chongnonsi, Yannawa, Bangkok 10120
Reservations: +66 (0) 2107 2777 or reservation@restaurantsuhring.com
Format: 15-course contemporary German tasting menu; wine pairing available
Accolades: 3 Michelin Stars, No. 22 World's 50 Best Restaurants 2025
Instagram: @restaurant_suhring
About the Author
Kelly Gomez is a creative director who eats well, travels far, and lives with intention. She has sat at tables that required months of planning, flown routes that cross a dozen time zones, and found herself in rooms most people never find. She is precise about what she loves and honest about what falls short.
A WSET Level 2 Wine Certified writer and Advanced Open Water Diver, Kelly covers luxury travel, hotels, fine dining, wineries, diving destinations, and the trips built around them.
Her work reaches a US-based audience of travelers between 25 and 44, with a near-even gender split and a meaningful following.
