If Italy is shaped like a boot, Piedmont is near the top. A Wine Blogging Wednesday Post

Note the distinctive boot shape, and where Piedmont is.

Thanks to David McDuff as he put this together

i had this great idea for this post.

i really did.

It involved me cooking an entire meal of entirely authentic dishes from Piedmont, drinking nothing but authentic wine from Piedmont. So to this end i went out and bought the best book on Italian cuisine i could think of and got to planning. This is where everything fell apart. Looking through the book i realized that the amount of stuff i actually wanted to make was way larger than Piedmont, and somewhere in my reading my stomach overrode my brain, and instead of a thoughtfully planned Piemontese meal, i had a frankenstein from all the boot.

Not that that matters.

Not in the least bit, i still have the wine and isn’t that the point of this thing?

i actually don’t know the answer to that. i have a hard time contextualizing wine without food, or at least the thought of food. So what did i drink, and what did i eat?

Wine:
2007 Pelissero Munfrina Dolcetto d’Alba

Dolcetto means “little sweet one”. Everyone that evers mentions this grape is compelled by the power of cliche to throw that one out there. Other cliches that have to be mentioned about dolcetto:

It is one of the world’s great value wines.
It is overshadowed by the regions two heavy hitters, Barolo and Barbaresco
It is both capable of wines that are light, “fun” (god, i hate describing things as fun) and rustic, and wines with more depth and power.

Now that these are out of the way let’s talk about this wine. Typically, if i were looking for a wine from France, i would go out of my way to find something less than typical, “odd” if will, given that my experience with French wines is deeper (but by no means near complete) and i can move outside of typicity easier. Not so with Italian wines, where my knowledge is limited to hit and miss tastings from all over the country, so when i search for Italian wines i tend to look for typicity first, oddball variations second.

This was no different, being a wine that was dolcetto through and through (if perhaps a little heavier than other dolcettos i’ve had in the past). i would say, not being any sort of expert, that if you were thinking of picking up a dolcetto blind, this would be a good one to get. If you like it, branch out, if not, throw a rock through my window. The nose was a mix of licorice notes and bright cherries (i know, sounds like medicine, but the flavors were bright, rather than sticky sweet). It was medium bodied, with some dehydrated cherrys and low acidity, rich at first but falling apart at the finish. This wine is the super popular kid in middle school who ended up copping a junk habit in 11th grade that you thought you saw last week at Safeway. Overall, good workaday stuff.

So…food? Or was I ducking you, hoping that a shitty ramble (“tasting notes”) will turn you off enough that you won’t feel like reading the rest?

Well pictures and words, as they say:

The book

Amalfi lemon bruschetta, gravy

Squabs pan roasting, ricotta fritter batter (god damnit i SWEAR i didn’t plan anything so obnoxious as the repetion of double Ts)


Finished products


Wine

serious blog pics:

What to listen to: sunday night, Italian/cooking/relaxing? The Dining Rooms

Cheers

I FINISHED BEFORE WEDNESDAY

Full WBW wrapup HERE, including my bloodied thumb. Apparently i won the Unofficial Photojournalism Prize. Thanks McDuff!

~ by Cory Cartwright on February 18, 2009.