Viticulturalism, Take Two, and Trust

It's a good idea to allow people who know the ropes to actually show you a thing or two.

And even if you're the tiniest bit a control freak, you should occasionally allow someone to show you the ropes without asking any questions in advance. 

Just trust, and let yourself be taught.

So when I was invited by some women for a girls' only night for wine tasting, I didn't ask questions.

I just said yes.

Enter, a wine tasting.

 A thorough one. 

First, an aperitivo, a before-dinner drink. The Aperol spritz is always a good fall-back (if you click on that link, don't do what I did and forget that the maker of Aperol is Italian and will therefore ask you to enter your birthdate in a slightly reversed order).  And God bless the Italians and plenty of other Europeans who know that a cocktail should come with snacks. 

It's a civilized practice (translation: alcohol should never hit your empty stomach).

Aperol is a bitter orange liqueur and it is hugely popular here (you can also get it in the States).  Mixed with some prosecco and sparkling water, added ice cubes (what? you say: Europeans don't do ice...oh yes, yes they do...just sparingly, and not voluntarily in very many drinks) and an orange slice, and presto, a refreshing drink.  The Spouse and I, on the evening we officially became Spouses, included this as our signature wedding cocktail, alongside Bellinis.  

And on to the wine tasting.

This one was held at Roscioli, a well known business with several outlets - a bakery, a restaurant, a coffee bar, and a popular wine tasting room - in Rome. 

And clearly, they've got things down to a science, with the place mats designed to organize your wine experience.  And the atmosphere in this case is designed for conviviality; we were seated with several other small groups of people from a wide variety of places around the world.

So, for a more authentic experience, you book a wine tasting with several wine and food pairings, plus a little pasta dinner squeezed into the middle. 

You'll note that there is typically some kind of bread or cracker present at most tastings, so that you can a) have something on your stomach to compete with the rather impressive number of wines you're consuming (although no full glasses are poured - you can ask for a second taste, usually) and b) cleanse your palate between wines.

And as it seems to be di rigeur, here, you begin with the bubbly: prosecco.  

For many - including me - it is a preferable alternative to Champagne.

Both are bubbly beverages that are only called what they're called IF the right grape is used.

Champagne uses select grapes from dedicated regions in France.

Prosecco - the same - in Italy.

Prosecco takes a lot less time to make. It generally costs less. Sometimes a lot less.

And I enjoy the flavor of it - which is a bit sweeter - better. (plus, less chance of a headache the next day)

And with the first white wine of the evening comes a pairing with select cheeses.

Mozzarella brings up the rear, then a soft, creamy Burrata (a very soft, wet and creamy cheese) in the middle (with some fire roasted tomatoes) and a goat cheese with fig jam in the immediate foreground.

Our tasting guide - who happens to be American - encouraged us to think a lot about how the flavors of food informed the wine, or vice versa. 

Have a small sip of the wine without the food to follow.  Taste what that's like.

Now try the actual pairing. And taste what that's like.

Each can benefit from the other, if a knowledgeable person has orchestrated the pairings to begin with.

One of many reds on the tasting menu, paired with a red tuna.

The Italians love their tuna.  There is plenty of canned tuna - just as you enjoy it at home - but there is also plenty of other types, of higher caliber. Here is a recipe for a different way to use your tuna and a few other ingredients that you might already have on hand (or can easily get). I love this anytime, but especially in the summer when I don't want to turn on anything that makes more heat happen.

The fish pictured here was a very dense, very rich-tasting tuna.  It was as meaty and substantial as a beef steak.

It completely changed my expectations for that type of fish.

Yum.

Another red, a deeper, spicier, almost chewier red paired with cured meats, like prosciutto, pancetta, speck, and salumi.

And with another red, here is the little dinner wedged in the middle:  Pasta all'Amatriciana...in honor of that ill-fated city, reduced to so much rubble in the first of the serious earthquakes that happened last August. This is a salty dish (a lot of commentators on Roman cuisine often mention the love affair that Roman chefs have with salt, in general), with a tomato-based sauce enriched by small bits of pancetta or another kind of salt-cured ham. The preferred pasta type is large and tubular, with ridges to catch the sauce and crevices inside those little tubes to cradle the pieces of ham.  I will confess to having ordered many dishes of this at several places in this country.  For me, it is a way to judge the quality of the restaurant.  It's ubiquitous - on many, many menus - and affordable, as it uses easily obtained ingredients and sparsely includes the most expensive one (the ham). 

After that pasta dish, we were introduced to another red wine and asked to write a few words about the associations we mentally made with the flavor.  Our steward said we could even write a poem if we wanted.

So, after having tasted a few wines already and feeling them in a slightly swimmy head, I did.

I didn't save it, and would like to think that this is precisely how that should have gone:  that the steward should have instead kept my scribbled word portrait of how I imagined being at a slightly trashy, small-town summer carnival at night, and tasting sweat on the lips of a boy I kissed as we sat on fragrant grass near the big-top. 

Pure invention, except for the grassy and salty notes of that wine.

But that invention won me a jar of those fire-roasted tomatoes, so here's to poetry-inspiring wine.

And honestly, I've little else to literally show for this experience, as the dessert wine was a disappointment (suddenly, way too sweet for my liking) and I was so thrown by it that I failed to capture a shot of my first tiramisu in Rome...which was excellent.

I stopped drinking coffee in 2011 or 2012, I think (when my Italian teacher heard me say this in class the other day, he half-jokingly pantomimed showing me the door and ushering me out!). But that cannot diminish my love for 'pick me up' tiramisu, which needs to be made by an experienced aunt or a grandmother, carefully but with some degree of abandon (because she knows the recipe by heart), so that it's not photogenically perfect but it is every bit authentically perfect in taste. There are tons of recipes for tiramisu, so just find one you like and make it.  It will require some work and quite possibly some searching for a few moderately special ingredients (don't panic), but on a warm day, a stolen spoonful from the beckoning container stored in your fridge is heaven. 

And no, I don't think I wrote that as if I have ever done such a thing before in my life. Ever.

This is not the tiramisu I had at Roscioli.  This is another tiramisu (because sampling a wide variety of examples of your favorite thing is a natural right, if not a mandate), which is a little deconstructed, with the ladyfingers rakishly placed this way, rather than fully embedded in the dish, soaking up coffee liqueur and sweetened mascarpone cheese and zabaglione and...oh, just go make some for yourself so that no one has to rely on imagination alone, which would never measure up to the real thing anyway.  

........................................................

Aside from that dessert wine snafu, this wine tasting told me a lot of things about how well you can orchestrate an artistic experience with food and drink.  

Not in all matters, but certainly in some, I need to trust people who suggest things like this to me, as well as the people who planned the liquid and solid pairings.  They curated my experience, and that's how it should be.

Save for one minor aberration, and in the company of good-humored women, it was exquisite.