Cacio e pepe and Frappato

I’ve never known quite what wine to pair with cacio e pepe, the fashionable pasta dish that’s just based on cheese (usually pecorino) and cracked pepper.

It’s not creamy like a carbonara but it is very (deliciously) cheesy and the pepper adds a spicy hit that would fight with anything tannic.

I’ve drunk English sparkling wine with it when it was paired with fried chicken but I think that was more about the chicken than the pasta and could have gone down the white wine route. The dish originally comes from Rome so I could have drunk a Frascati if I’d been able to get hold of decent one.

I was thinking along the lines of a light red like a Valpolicella but Francesco at my local Italian deli, Divino in Bristol, where I buy my pici (the thick spaghetti-like pasta you need for cacio e pepe) suggested a light juicy Sicilian Frappato (the Sibiliana Roceno 2018) which went perfectly. You seem to be able to buy it online from Alivini (for £9.19 a bottle plus delivery) though they’re normally a trade supplier, I believe.

By the way cacio e pepe is really easy to make if you want to try it at home - Felicity Cloake gives a recipe in her excellent The Perfect series. Be warned though: it is addictive!

Three surprisingly good pairings for sparkling wine

Last week I had three dishes that went unexpectedly well with sparkling wine - for slightly different reasons:

The first was a food and wine pairing exercise at Denbies Vineyard Hotel in Surrey where they paired their Cubitt blanc de noirs with baguette and Marmite butter which I can strongly recommend to Marmite addicts. Why did it work? The combination of the umami in the Marmite and the toasty fizz (which came from the 2013 vintage).

Then I had the most incredible dish of macaroni cacio e pepe (a cheese and pepper sauce) with deep-fried crispy chicken wings at Wild Honey St James. This was perhaps more predictable match as deep-fried foods generally go with fizz but the cheese added an extra dimension too. The wine was another English fizz - the Westwell Estate Pelegrin Brut.

And finally - this was an exceptionally good week, wasn’t it? - a cheese course at a game dinner at the Pony & Trap in Chew Magna which was essentially a giant gougère stuffed with Baron Bigod, a British Brie-type cheese with gooseberry purée and walnuts with an Etienne Fort Crémant de Limoux from Vinetrail who supplied the wines and devised the pairings. This was really quite bold as we’d just been drinking a substantial Rhône red - the Fréderic Agneray Mitan with the main course of pigeon. It was the pastry of the gougère - also crisp and cheesy - that made the match sing.

Champagne would, of course, have worked equally well with these dishes.

I ate as a guest of Denbies Vineyard Hotel and the Pony & Trap. Wild Honey St James gave me a complimentary glass of the Westwell though I paid for the rest of the meal.