Matching wine with Japanese food can be fraught with difficulty. A refined, oak-aged Bordeaux paired with a cool plate of sashimi, for example, can come across as brash and overbearing, completely drowning out the subtle spectrum of seafood flavors. But that's not to say great matches are impossible. They do exist; but like all forms of cross-cultural communication, it helps if you're flexible — both with your choice of wines and your seasoning.

This month, I take a look at how to best combine washoku (traditional-style Japanese food) and wine.

Wines that are designed to suit Japanese cuisine are almost nonexistent, but there is one winemaker who has made an effort to adapt his product for such dishes. In a phone conversation, Greg Brewer, owner and chief winemaker of California's Diatom winery says, "I was raised with a heightened sensitivity toward a Japanese aesthetic. Transposing that cultural sensitivity to here is a driving force behind what I do."