To be completely honest, before heading over to the restaurant with some friends last night, I never had the chance to experience wine with food. USUALLY, it was a lot more just for sake of the taste of the wine and the grape that went into making the wine. Below, you'll see a bit of reflection, photos, and videos, on everything that we got to do last night as part of the Zeppoli's wine tasting.
Title: Dinner - Zeppoli's (Italian)
The restaurant has been nice enough to provide us with the opportunity to immerse ourselves in international wine culture right here in Blacksburg. As I learned in my winery tourism class last semester, we talked a lot about American Viticultural Areas, and there are many more of those internationally than the ones that you have access to here in Blacksburg.
Not only did they provide us with wine - but they also provided us with food!
This smorgasboard of food consisted of garlic and olive oil infused bread, crackers with cheese and cilantro, pizza bread, pasta shells, ravioli, veggie salad, and pasta salad - which consisted of onions, tomatoes, and green pepper. Yeah, it was delicious.
The first wine that we tried was some crappy table wine. It was dreadful. I had nothing to do with it, and even was trying to chug it by the end of the tasting. Although classified as "vino de tavola" (simple table wine), this fresh mixture of Garganega and Trebbiano displays a light greenish color and pretty floral aromas. Garganega is the primary grape used in more expensive Soave, and this non vintage wine is similar with light, fresh honeydew melon flavors. According to the Roanoke Times, you should serve this clean white wine with hearty seafood dishes such as roasted salmon, because it's only five dollars. Well, Zeppoli's sells it for 7 and it's still crap if you ask me, at 11.5% alcohol. I don't think it's excellent for a big gathering, as the notes implied, and yeah...I'm sorry. I just didn't like it.
The next two that we tried were both made from Pinot Gris grapes - one was the La Fiera (2010) and the other was Nals Margried (2012). The La Fiera was probbaly one of my favorite wines from the entire tasting - and it said that it had peach and apple flavors, which I completely agreed with. It implied that you should serve it with grilled chicken and seafood, which I would be agreeable with, but I thought it was great enough to taste by itself.
The Nals Margreid was not far behind, also reflecting hints of apple. After a bit of research, I discovered that Nals Margreid is a cooperative of about 100 small growers located in the Alto Adige region of Northern Italy. The cooperative was formed in 1985 by the merging of The Cellars Nalles (established in 1932) and Magre-Niclara (established in 1954) – two well-respected entities, both steeped in tradition. They stressed to us in the tasting that both of this Pinot Grigio wines were grown right next each other, as evidenced in this map.
But, their tastes were still pretty different - because of the different time that they were picked. That was pretty eye opening!
The Lodali Moscato that we tried was the last of the white wines for the evening. It literally tasted like Sprite. Not kidding.
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It was nicely carbonated, too and very tasty. Definitely a dessert wine. It was tasty though! It's considered a "Frizzante," which are wines that have small bubbles that offer a refreshing tingle while helping to mask the wine’s sweetness, and are slightly less effervescent than champagne. The wine also had a pretty good bite in my opinion...a pretty different finish, but you really had to have an appreciation for the acidity, which I guess would go really well the dessert compliments that the guy in Zeppoli's suggested.
SO! Onto the few red wines that we tried of the evening. The primitivo grape was one that we tried throughout all of the wines.
The first one, was the Luca Primitivo del Salento Puglia, and the second was the SUD (2012) Primitivo Puglia. Cherries, herb, vanilla, and ruby were common throughout both of those, but the second was definitely more tart than the first. Again, as was the theme throughout the tasting, the taste in these two grapes were very different and even though they were the same kind, there were some distinct differences in the entire body of the wine.
The last two were easily the nicest that we tried: the Morli Neri 2009 Chianti and the Bibi Graeta 2010.
Overall, there was one general theme that I found when complimenting the foods with wine - the flavor of the red wines was definitely enhanced by the red dishes we had - the pizza bread, the pastas with the red sauce, and what not. The red wines were just made so much more spicy when complimented with those foods. The white wines were complimented by vegetables and pasta a lot better, and made a great impression on my palate by emphasizing the rooty flavors of the vegetables, especially.
So, after it was all said and done, we all enjoyed a very tasty and delicious dinner, along with some equally tasty and delicious wines. Photos of all of the bottles will be included in a separate post, when I go into more detail about each of the flavors, per the 'tasting blog' guidelines in the syllabus. :)
Happy Wine Drinking!
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