Pizza and Valpolicella

With time stretching like an aching chasm from one end of the week to another I've no idea how it’s possible to miss out my regular match of the week post but there you go. (Last week’s should have been chilli con carne and Robert Oatley Shiraz which I can heartily recommend)

Still, onto this week and a reminder from one of my favourite local Bristol restaurants Pasta Loco what a delicious wine Valpolicella can be. I’d ordered their Black Truffle meal kit cos why wouldn’t you? - and they turned up with a complimentary bottle of Valpol which was very nice of them.

I’m going off-piste and matching it with pizza not because it didn’t go with the pasta sauce - Valpolicella goes with practically everything - but because it was particularly good with the focaccia (above) which was studded with tomatoes and sage. It doesn’t take a massive mental leap to appreciate you could drink it very happily with most pizzas too. You just might have forgotten how deliciously thirst-quenching it can be.

You can buy this particular bottle which is the Montresor San Pietro from Pasta Loco's sister website as part of their La Sorella Selezion (for £105) or £8.64 a bottle from the rather wonderfully named Fiveoclocksomewhere in Essex.

And if you live in Bristol you can pick up pasta from one of the group’s other restaurants Bianchis which also offers a lunchtime special on the days when it’s open (Wednesday-Sunday, I think). Check out their website for the latest menu and opening hours.

For other pizza pairings click here.

Pizza and Franciacorta

Expensive Franciacorta might not be the first wine you’d think of drinking with a pizza but bear with, as they say … And not just because it’s Italian.

If you think how well a light gassy lager goes with pizza it doesn’t take a massive leap of imagination to realise that sparkling wine would work too.

But a sparkling wine as posh as Franciacorta (which, if you're not aware comes from Italy, just north of Milan)? OK, it is a bit of an extravagance but if you happened to have one open and felt a bit peckish and that pizza would hit the spot you wouldn’t be disappointed.

How do I know? Cos I had a couple of tasting samples over after a Franciacorta tasting and suddenly had the urge for a takeaway pizza (an aubergine parmigiana from one of Bristol’s best pizza restaurants Flour & Ash) and it worked amazingly well.

The Franciacorta was an organic zero dosage Barone Pizzini Bagnadole Riserva 2011 so vintage quality but remarkably good value (for Franciacorta) at around £35 though I haven’t been able to find a UK stockist.

I’m not sure I’d drink prosecco with pizza - for my taste it would be a bitt too sweet but cava and crémant, for sure. And champagne? Yeah, sure, why not? Champagne goes with (practically) anything!

For other pizza pairing suggestions see The Best Wine and Beer Pairings for Pizza

Alta Langa spumante and pizza

Last week I was in Piemonte exploring the world of vermouth with Roberto Bava of Cocchi. I discovered many startlingly good pairings about which more about in due course but the one I was most intrigued by was their Alta Langa sparkling wine with pizza, not a combination I would have expected at all.

The pizzas, which we sampled at a pizza restaurant in Asti called cRust (no I wouldn’t have been encouraged to go there either by that name), weren’t your average pizza by any means though. The toppings were mostly fresh or very lightly cooked but what made them so especially good with sparkling wine was the incredibly light, airy crisp base, the result, apparently of a triple-fermented dough.

We tried several different toppings of which the standout combinations were the Toto Corde which is made from pinot noir and chardonnay with a napoletana-style pizza with two different kinds of tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella and a basil sauce and the gloriously fruity Rosa (made 100% from pinot noir) with a topping of gorgonzola, treviso and honey.

Frustratingly the wines, which are interestingly fermented in tank rather than in the bottle, aren’t available in the UK. I suggest someone contacts Cocchi and offers to import them ;-)

You can read more about the Alta Langa denomination here.

Other good pairings with pizza

Black truffle and fontina pizza and Puligny Montrachet

It’s easy to get into a mindset with food and wine pairing where you automatically revert to a tried and tested combination. Like pizza with Peroni or a Sicilian red

But with the incredible number of variations on pizza toppings these days maybe we need to be a bit more adventurous and my experience at the newly opened Jean-Georges at the Connaught last week suggested just that.

One of his pizzas (for which you pay a princely £29) is topped with fontina cheese and black truffles. Frankly lager would be wasted on that, ditto most run of the mill reds by the glass. A Barolo maybe or a glass of champagne but neither I suspect would compare with the quite stellar 2014 Bachelet-Monnot 1er Cru Puligny Montrachet (Hameau de Blagny) which was picked by sommelier Raffaele Silvestre and was just sublime. White burgundy and pizza - who knew? (Try it at home with a mushroom pizza and a drizzle of truffle oil)

PS Lucky guests at the Connaught can actually order the pizza on room service - it apparently arrives in a box. So if you win the lottery you know what to do …

*Actually you can also order it to take away although that that rather misses the point. Part of the fun (and the price) is to get to eat it at the Connaught - in fact if you're minded to go I'd go just for that. And/or the extraordinarily good crispy sushi!

You might also enjoy

The best wine and beer pairings for pizza

I ate at Jean-Georges as a guest of the Connaught.