Pizza & Wine: A Texas Twist

My pizza and wine tasting panel thoroughly enjoyed two wines that were suggested to me (albeit unknowingly) by what I like to call the “Texas Wine Blogging Trinity”—three people with amazing palates whose love of food, wine, and each other is downright infectious.

I’ll talk about the wines in a minute—a red and a white from southern Italy—but first up, the blogs: Do Bianchi (Jeremy), My Life Italian (Tracie), and On the Wine Trail in Italy (Alfonso, a.k.a. Italian Wine Guy).

These three bloggers found each other through blogging and a shared love of the food, wine, art, culture, language, and most certainly the romance of Italy—Jeremy and Tracie are getting married this weekend, thanks in part to a little help from Alfonso.

Their blogs pulled me in with unusual wine suggestions (not all are Italian), and images of game meats, mollusks, and other delicacies. Then there’s the writing—an eclectic mix of wine and life sprinkled with dialect (complete with etymological references), country music lyrics, film clips, philosophical meanderings, and sassy humor (courtesy of Tracie) written with a Texas drawl that this Jersey girl could never dream of delivering.

So how does this all tie into pizza and wine pairings? A few months back, Jeremy caused a little stir in the blogosphere by suggesting that Italians (in Italy, that is) drink beer, rather than wine, with pizza—a fact that I verified with my son, who lives in Perugia.

Then in the comment section of Jeremy’s follow-up post, there were several wine and pizza suggestions—two that intrigued me: Falanghina (which I love) and Piedirosso (which I had never tried). Both wines are from Campania—the birthplace of Neapolitan-style pizza and home to many ancient grape varieties not to mention volcanic soils and a privileged geography that is perfect for viticulture.

Piedirosso is planted throughout the region, including on the islands of Ischia and Capri. For our first pizza making and tasting night we opened a wine from the DOC (Denominazione di Origine Controllata) Campi Flegrei. It reminded us of wines served by the carafe in the trattorias of Rome.

The La Sibilla Campi Flegrei DOC Piedirosso 2008 ($11.99) is dry and light with slightly stewed red fruits (cherries, raspberries) and laced with herbs, smoke, and minerals, plus a touch of licorice. It was perfect with our pizza topped with fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, and ham. With that little bit of smokiness, I bet it would be great with a plateful of Texas barbeque.

Falanghina, another ancient variety, makes crisp, white wines that are so fresh and full of character, I could almost picture myself sitting in the heat of a tiny osteria on the Gulf of Naples cooling off with a glass alongside some of Campania’s fresh produce and seafood.

But instead, we sat in my Montclair kitchen, a light snow falling, sharing a bottle of the Cantina del Taburno (Taburno is also the name of the DOC) Falanghina 2008 ($13.99) with a pizza (no cheese or sauce) of potatoes (sliced razor thin), olive oil, onions, fresh rosemary, salt, and pepper.

The wine was all citrus, stone fruits, and mouth-watering acidity. It was perfect for this style of pizza but also for seafood pies (like a white clam pizza) and other vegetable toppings or perhaps—in the absence of Lambrusco—it would pair nicely with the impossible—Tracie’s delectable looking chicken and dumplings.

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