Wine Pairing from “A Casa Come al Ristorante,” July 13, 2020
Partly to practice my Italian, and mostly because I like Italian food and wine, I’ve been listening to Decanter, a program devoted to food and wine on Italy’s RAI Radio 2. Fede and Tinto are the hosts and Andrea Amadei is a wine expert who also appears on the show. During the pandemic, each broadcast has featured an Italian chef who presents a recipe that listeners can prepare at home, and then Andrea Amadei describes an Italian wine to pair with the recipe. I found that the wines weren’t the ‘usual suspects’ found here in the US, and the descriptions were interesting and often amusing, so I extracted the audio and created English subtitles.
The subtitles are an approximation. In addition to my inevitable translation mistakes, it is sometimes hard for me to make out what they’re saying, especially when they talk over each other. Any suggestions or alternative guesses are appreciated.
Wine Pairing: Aglianico del Vulture il Rogito Rosato
Tinto: Andrea Amadei, what wine should we pair with the very fresh recipe from Paola Colucci, which also contains cucumber?
Andrea: Attention, we need to pause carefully because we have acidity, and then there’s yogurt, then the juice of green apples and lemons, which are two particularly acidic fruits, so we can’t pair a wine that’s too fresh, too acidic, because if we do, our mouths would be like Wile E. Coyote’s mouth when he bit into starch, practically imploding on itself. I chose a Lucano wine, because Fede is in Basilicata, so we’ll give him some advice, then he’ll bring us home a few cases. It’s called Basilicata IGT Rosato, ‘Il Rogito’. However, now need to be afraid, because you will spend pleasant moments with it, guaranteed, and the price is more than affordable. It’s a rosè that tends toward red, that is, it’s between a rosè and a red, and it’s something truly special.
Tinto: Varietal?
Andrea: The varietal is Aglianico, because we are in the zone of Vulture, in the north of Basilicata. Today we are used to thinking of Aglianico as a grape that makes very dark, impenetrable wines, but during the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, it made rather light wines, almost rosè, because especially in that zone it matures very late, near the end of October, in November, so in the end, those that are picked towards September don’t have a lot of color and make drinkable wines. This is harvested when perfectly ripe. It’s left to macerate in contact with the skin and must for about a day, resulting in a smooth nectar that spends up to 12 months in wood inside these cellars that are dug into the ashy volcanic rock, rock that also feeds the vines, because it absorbs water, retains it, and then in periods of drought in the south it nourishes the vines with the liquid and the freshness inside. It has a color of pink coral, beautifully intense, with aromas that recall wild strawberries, that currants, and red flowers which could be roses or hibiscus. And it has this spicy flavor that reminds you a bit of cinnamon, and of cloves, and is beautifully smooth in the mouth which combats the acidity that’s in Paola’s dish.
Tinto: The pairing we made and the dish by Paola Colucci can be found on RAI Play Radio, but not this Aglianico wine we found. We salute Gerardo Giuratrabocchetti, our friend who took us to visit these incredible wineries where we drank and ate. Soon we’ll return to Lucania with its stories of food and wine, these radiophonic postcards from Fede, live from Policoro.
