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Photos from a past visit to the Valle d'Aosta.

Many of you have already responded with enthusiasm to our recent Valle d'Aosta offer. The Valle d’Aosta in the northwest corner of Italy is the country’s smallest region and produces less wine than even some single estates in Sicily. We first traveled to the Valle d'Aosta for the wine but left with a great appreciation for its cuisine. 

The cuisine of Valle d’Aosta is fortifying and features meat and cheese along with potatoes, rice, and polenta. Antipasti might be a simple slice of rye bread, slathered with fresh butter with a slice of mocetta (local cured meat from ibex or chamois). Main courses are based on cheese (namely Fontina) and nothing is more comforting on a winter day than the region’s famous Fonduta alla Valdostana. The region is famous for its sausages and carbonada, a stewed beef and onion dish cooked with wine, paired with a hearty Petite Rouge or Fumin. 

I recently wrote a few words about Valle d'Aosta on our website. Click here and scroll down to read more.

Pinot Noir might be the sommelier's most useful tool is his or her red wine arsenal. It's medium weight and medium to low tannin structure means it can be paired with dark fish almost without hesitation and light and even shellfish in many instances. Pinot Noir's high acidity means it can handle bright marinades, sauces and sharp ingredients. Old World Pinot Noir features moderate alcohol that plays nicely with mild spices while New World Pinot Noir offers a fruity profile (and often a few grams of residual sugar) that compliments the sweetness found in modern cooking.

My colleague, Evan Goldstein MS, in his excellent book Perfect Pairings writes that Pinot Noir goes well "with just about everything. Its combination of red-wine and white-wine qualities gives it incredible flexibility...". Goldstein goes on to point out that "tuna and swordfish are prime candidates (for Pinot noir). Indeed, the quintessential local pairing in Oregon is northwest salmon and Oregon Pinot Noir."

We prepared the Salmon with Soy, Ginger, and Sake recipe found in the book and paired this with the 2009 Joseph and Philippe Roty Bourgogne rouge "Cuvée de Pressonniers", a Pinot Noir we recently offered at PWMWINE.COM.

As I mentioned above, Salmon and Pinot Noir seem to have a natural affinity for one another. What really set this pairing off was the soy used in the marinade and sauce. Soy sauce, savory and umami-packed, is a useful bridge ingredient to red wine. More of these "bridge ingredients" can be found in Goldstein's book. Here are just a few:

• slow cooked garlic and onions help form a bridge between foods and wines with more weight and texture

• olives. Green olives create a white wine affinity while black olives create a red wine affinity

• herbs. Fragrant herbs (like chervil or tarragon) offers a bridge to whites like Riesling while more pungent herbs (like thyme) provides a link to Cabernet

• mushrooms add earthiness to a dish and can be an excellent link to earthy wines.

Those of you who subscribe to our e-mail newsletter recently received an offer for the delicious Viognier wines of Domaine Georges Vernay. Viognier is the white grape variety responsible for the small Condrieu appellation and even smaller Château-Grillet in France's Northern Rhône. It is known for its intoxicating perfume of stone fruit and orange blossoms and is often helped along by maturation in small oak barrels. The ripe intensity of Viognier's fruit is suggestive of sweetness but the wines are classically fermented dry. 

Viognier's aromatic exuberance and succulent apricot and peach flavor might at first seem to be limited in its ability to pair well with food. But as my colleague Evan Goldstein MS points out in his excellent Perfect Pairings book, this is not at all true. Goldstein writes, "Viognier is underrated in its ability to pair with food" and suggests "choosing foods that suggest sweetness but are not really sweet, like a Moroccan tagine of chicken, preserved lemons, and cinnamon." 

We prepared the Ginger and Orange Fried Chicken recipe found in the book and put Goldstein's theory to a test. The recipe calls marinating the chicken in buttermilk, orange and fresh ginger before coating with a seasoned mixture ground ginger and curry powder. Orange and fresh ginger played nicely with the fruit and spice found in the 2010 Domaine Georges Vernay Viognier Le Pied de Samson of course, but it was the last two ingredients (curry and ground ginger) really sealed the deal. Goldstein suggests pairing Viognier "with curried anything" and the curry and ginger certainly seemed to be the binding element in this pairing. 

Our chicken was accompanied by a simple green salad dressed with citrus vinaigrette and garnished with avocado and orange slices.  

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In a recent post on the wines of Piemonte I wrote: you will be hard pressed to eat better in Italy - in the world maybe - than in Piedmont. The typical dishes of the local osterias like vitello tonnato and agnolotti del plin have been honed to exacting precision over the centuries. Tajarin al sugo, for example, is really not open to interpretation--the point is to do it well!

Even bagna cauda, which seems nothing more than a simple relish tray, is a thing of profound culinary pleasure. On my first night here in Alba, I walked straight to the Ceretto-owned Osteria La Piola where I had hoped to satisfy my year-long craving for carne cruda, the Piemontese specialty of chopped raw veal. On this particular night, the restaurant was paying homage to bagna cauda, a dish that is normally taken at home among friends given its communal nature of dipping vegetables in a cauldron of hot oil and anchovy. Raviolo in brodo was promised at the end so I thought I could suffer through a platter of raw vegetables. Yet when I crunched into that last cardoon and the last piece of bread sopped up the last bit of oil--I wanted more!

Sunday was a day of snow in the Langhe. At least a foot had fallen by morning and all of my winery visits were postponed. Without wi-fi or even a magazine to read I ventured out onto the streets of Alba in search of an English language newspaper. What I found instead was a translated copy of Nonna Genia, the classic work of Luciano de Giacomi and Beppe Lodi on the cooking of the Langhe region. With a bottle of Barbera and a slice of bakery pizza I read the book cover to cover that afternoon before going back in the snow to find a plate of tajarin.

From Nona Genia:
"In the culinary world tradition is not accorded the same respect it enjoys in other arts. We have great museums proudly showcasing their masterpieces from every era of human endeavour, acclaimed orchestras performing classical music throughout the world and collectors avidly competing for old masters, thereby driving up their value.

But in the culinary world, value is placed not so much on tradition as on the new. Today's culinary culture has adopted the mentality of the fashion world, where "tradition" is almost an embarrassing word."

But here at the peak I decided I had to take it all in and stop for a coffee and a streudel and a roadside chalet advertising their bar.Skiers were decked out in their gear, fortifying for the day with pastry, granola and coffee. I watched as the ski lifts across the street carried the days first passengers to the top.

The Alps are a place of breathtaking beauty and travelling these high mountain roads with their spectacular views are worth the trip alone. My day of tasting that laid ahead would be equally inspiring.

I left the chalet and after several kilometers of switchbacks, weaving through tiny villages that seem to barely cling to the rocks, the valley began to open up. That's when I first noticed the mindbogglingly vertical vineyards of the Valtellina.

Nebbiolo has been cultivated in Valtellina since ancient times. No one would build these now. This is truly viticulture on the edge--the kind of wines we like--and we're happy to be working with some of Valtellina's best wines in the very near future.

Stay tuned for more!

If you follow me on twitter you know that I've arrived in Italy and have been visiting Tenuta di Angoris as well as some exciting new producers in Friuli–Venezia Giulia that we're extremely excited to be working with in the very near future. 

I met up with Angoris' trade manager Matteo Buranu and enologist Alessandro Dal Zovo in their Colli Orientalli vineyard named Stabili La Rocca. Stabili (meaning 'always here') and La Rocca ('the rock') refers to the Ponca soil that typifies the eastern hills of Friuli and gives Friulano wines their signature minerality. 

Ponca is a strata of clay and Eocenic marls, locally known as ponca, with low levels of active calcium. As Sandro demonstrates, this is very friable stuff and the Friulano vines dig deep into this stuff to give wines that ar unique to this place.

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Alto Adige (Südtirol) is the northern, German-speaking section of the Trentino-Alto Adige region of Italy. The Dolomites surround the valley on three sides where vines grow precipitously up the soaring mountainsides. Apple trees canvas the valley floor with villages. Houses feature decorated balconies and sharply-slanting roofs to fend off the heavy snows. Apples are featured in the cuisine of the region, as well as smoked speck and bread dumplings known as canederli served in a warming broth. Menus in Bolzano, the region’s commercial hub, are often written in both German and Italian, a telling sign that Alto Adige is at the crossroads between Italian and Austrian cultures. 

I recently wrote a few words about Alto Adige on our website. Click here and scroll down to read more about all the diversity and pleasure that Piedmont has to offer. 

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You will be hard-pressed to eat better in Italy—in the world, maybe—than in the region of Piedmont. Piedmont, meaning “foot of the mountain,” lies in the northwestern corner of Italy, bordering France to the west and Switzerland to the north. It is enclosed on three sides by the Apennines and the Alps, and the cuisine here reflects its Alpine climate and proximity to France. Although the costal tourist destination of Cinque Terre lies just an hour from Gavi, the cuisine of Piedmont is decidedly mountainous rather than Mediterranean. In a typical Piemontese osteria, butter, eggy pastas, rice, and red meat are cooked with such honed and loving skill that you might wish you’d eaten here instead of your last Michelin-starred experience. 

Such exalted cuisine requires equally glorious wine, and Piedmont produces more DOC/DOCG classified bottles than any other region in Italy. Barolo and Barbaresco are the best-known wines of Piedmont. These highly collectible and highly sought-after long-lived reds are the product of the calcareous strewn hills of the Langhe, and the grapes seem perfectly content in the environs of northeast Italy. Nebbiolo, named for the morning fog of the region called “la nebbia,” gives such a beguiling aroma and satisfying structure that its most avid admirers are the wine world’s most passionate fanatics. 

I recently wrote a few words about Piedmont on our website. Click here and scroll down to read more about all the diversity and pleasure that Piedmont has to offer. 

At the 48th parallel, Champagne is the most northerly wine region in France. The challenge of ripening at such a northerly extreme can be a challenge, and quality can vary widely from year to year. Through the centuries, the large merchant houses of Champagne developed a system of blending from multiple vineyards and vintages as a means of maintaining a consistency. And although the "méthode champenoise" process is mimicked worldwide to create sparkling wine, the distinctive flavor of Champagne has yet to be replicated anywhere else on earth. 

While 96% of all Champagne is produced by either a grande marque or a co-op, the popularity of "farmer fizz" has risen steadily. One can confirm that a wine was grown and produced by a small grower by looking for a tiny code on the bottom of the wine’s side label. If the code begins with "RM" (Récoltant Manipulant), it means the growers grew the grapes and made the wine themselves.

I recently wrote a few words about Champagne on our website. Click here and scroll down to read more about all the diversity and pleasure that the Champagne has to offer.