Wine Pairing from “A Casa Come al Ristorante,” July 22, 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: Pian del Tè Timorasso Val Borbera
Tinto: Andrea, yesterday evening you chose a wine and the night before another wine. For tonight’s pairing, we remind our listeners of Simone Salvini’s hummus.
Andrea: So, what do have in the dish? We have beans, we have celery root, so fundamentally softness and sweetness. We need to contrast them, because for savory food-wine pairing of we almost always use contrasts, and therefore we look for the edges, and we find them in a varietal that is very typical of Val Borbera, where Fede is, which is Timorasso. Timorasso dei Colli Tortone…Colli Tortone…
Tinto: Tor-tona, tor-tona…
Andrea: I’m like: “t-t-t-t… ti ca ta tàcat i tacch…” (You that attach the heels…) that tongue twister of the fashion designers where I come from. However, it’s the beauty of this grape that has so much civility and so much savoriness, therefore it fits perfectly into that arc of flavors that integrates all the tastes which are then united in our palates. We’re at a higher altitude than the classic Colli Tortonesi, because Val Borbera is 500 meters above sea level. There are wider variations in temperature, so we have more aromas, and also this enormous biodiversity because this is a territory where, in the Napoleonic era, there were many vineyards, it was just an expanse of vineyards. Then, after World War II, unfortunately, this tradition of wine production in Val Borbera was lost. But since 2012 a winery has reestablished these vines of 50, 60, or even 70 years and restarted making wine from them. Pian del Tè is a pure Timorasso which has about 60 days of maceration on the skins, with spontaneous fermentation with the yeasts that occur naturally on the grapes. In the glass it presents a beautiful golden color with orange reflections, and the aromas recall yellow wildflowers, peaches, tobacco shops, pears.
Tinto: Horseflies?
Andrea: No, there are no horseflies, but they are fundamental to the reproduction of the vines. You also find a bit of balsamic, this elegant type of sage that matches very well with the aromas of celery root, and then also some puffs of black pepper, and a bit of sweet almonds on the finish, and the aromatic picture is complete. I told you it was a wine that spoke of its roots, because it is a young, very young wine. But these guys, which did they do? They practically change their lives. Why?
Tinto: Well done.
Andrea: We are talking about people that lived in the city and transferred to this rather isolated valley to learn how to make wine. What did they do? They asked questions. They asked the farmers which vines they used to plant in the middle of the previous century, and they were inspired. Then, obviously with all of today’s approvals and criteria, they’ve obtained this nectar that really must be tasted, and has only recently been in markets. Therefore, I recommend Pian del Tè Timorasso Val Borbera.
Tinto: You see they’ve done well, they did it like Antonella Clerici from Rome, who moved into the woods, to a house in the woods, in that part of the province of Alessandria.
