What's Your Vintage? ...A Better Way to Taste Wine in Rome

My "learning station" in the cozy little wine nook that is Rimessa Roscioli.

Recently my friend and fellow southern gal, Liz, aka @lizinrome, writer of romeifyouwantto.com, invited me to a wine tasting.  

Let me start by saying that wine tastings in Rome are a dime a dozen. I have always been curious about trying one, but have just never gotten around to taking one up: a lot of them run for several weeks, which for me always sounded like too much commitment, and others that I had heard about sounded like they needed to be vetted – I mean, how would I know if the sommeliers leading them were really any good? Read: also too much commitment. 

If you think about it, when you live in Rome, everyday leaves ample opportunity for wine tasting; from eating out and eating in Italian friends’ homes to special events and parties, traveling in Italy in general, visiting vineyards and age-old cellars, everyday can literally be a course in wine.

     However, when Liz mentioned it was a food and wine pairing event in Rome’s Historic Center, I could not help but be excited: mostly because I know Liz has good taste, and it’s always fun to do these things with a good friend. Not only: the pairing was to be with an important and highly-reputed restaurateur in Rome, Roscioli, in collaboration with CityWonders, which offers a select list of excellent tours to visitors and locals in Italy and a handful of other countries.

The wine pairing went down with me, Liz, and just four other people, in a recently-inaugurated space that Roscioli created ad hoc for wine tastings, Rimessa Roscioli. A room tucked away on a little side-street just a couple minutes’ walk from Campo de’ Fiori and from the Roscioli Forno and the Salumeria, it looks and feels like a cozy nook crammed floor-to-ceiling with bookshelves – that is, bookshelves filled to the brim with bottles of wine. 

They looked exactly like books in my opinion, a sort of archive of glass bottles containing reams of knowledge, history and culture in every last drop.

The master of the house is expert sommelier Alessandro Pepe, who has spent the last eight years of his professional career with Roscioli (previously he worked with renowned chef Filippo La Mantia of the former homonymous restaurant on Via Vittorio Veneto, and he's even opened a series of successful enoteche in Dublin).

Sommelier Alessandro Pepe awaits the tasters with his magical potions and Italian delicacies.

I sat down to my setting at the table, my “learning station,” if you will, prepared with six wine glasses, bread, water, and flatware. The first and best thing one notices about Pepe is that he strongly opposes any snobbism when it comes to wine, which for me should be the appeal of any wine tasting: Pepe’s philosophy points to EXPERIENCE, and SENSATION. Essentially, tasting and drinking wine is personal, and should be lived that way.

Some of the things I have learned about wine during my time in Italy? (A few of these were on Pepe’s list as well, as were other secrets unbeknownst to me, but for which you should take the class if you want to find out): 1) Wine does not have to be expensive (or old) to be good. At all. (Caveat: this is not the case with bubbles. Bubbles are a completely different beast so beware those cheap price tags!). 

2) Of course reds should usually go with red meat, while whites should go with fish, but as with all things, the rules should be broken, with taste. 3) Choosing a wine because it is made by a large, household name producer is often not a good idea. Mass production means possibly lower quality and added chemicals.

So let's begin: Pepe, in his rather personable and humorous way, presented us with our first piattino or little platter of burrata cheese and mozzarella, along with a glass of Catalanesca white from the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius. I admit that with this first Kata’ my usually-imaginative head had very few adjectives to which to cling: the wine was simple, which is good in cases that you do not want to overpower your cuisine. Made sense. 

As an aside, if you want to know where in Italy burrata originates and where to eat it, Andria, in the Region of Apulia or Puglia, is one of the most important epicenters for all things mozza, burrata, and other soft, moist cheeses. Believe me, the first time I ever went to (gorgeous) Puglia, my first stop was in Andria. 

Instead of eating lunch, my travel buddy and I popped into a caseificio, or cheese and dairy shop, bought one palm-sized burrata (white and shaped like a sack) and a bunch of little mozzarellas shaped into knots (nodini) and ate them on the street, direct from the box, streams of milk running onto the sidewalk with each bite - which, I must admit, added immensely to the fun. 

(By now you may think I have a problem, or you may not – it’s your call.) 

So that was tasting 1, followed by tasting 2, a slice of Cravanzina di Langa, a brie-like cheese made of both sheep’s and cow’s milk from the Region of Piedmont. I loved this because it was paired with a glass of Veronese Soave Classico Gini (Gini being one of the three-oldest wine-producing families in Italy, as our somm informed us). Pepe asked us to note the smoky flavors of this white, which I certainly did, but only right after bites of my Piedmontese brie (ahem, Cravanzina). 

Why the smokiness, you ask? It might surprise you to know – as it did me – that the Soave region of Veneto is characteristically defined by its volcanic soil, the remnant of the area’s ancient volcanic ranges (Isn’t Italy amazing?). As I alluded before, a bottle of wine once-opened is a repository of history and geography, air and geology, culture and traditions (and memories!). And the fun was just beginning.

We moved on to red tuna fish aged since 2010 and produced by the house 3 Torri, to pair with a red (yes, a red! Remember what I said about breaking the rules); the pairing was ideal because the fish was dense and bore a dark, meaty flavor. 

Wine #3 was Nero d’Avola, a wine I am not crazy about – but many are – although this Nero d’Avola boasted an excellent ruby flavor bordering on rich and sweet, though not dessert-sweet. Produced by Marabino, in Noto (one of the Baroque pearls of the Noto Valley, a UNESCO World Heritage Site), it is a wine that speaks of the sun, grown amidst very little humidity, and fermented without the grape skin, so it consequently contains very few sulfites (the lowest of minimums at only 10 mg). 

Our fourth glass was from the Region of Tuscany (note: when drinking wine from Tuscany, always go red.). No, it was not Chianti (which Pepe seemed to shun in a way, declaring that in the ancient Etruscan language Chianti signified 
water). 

Contucci Nobile di Montepulciano 2009, with Culatello and Capocollo. (Photo Courtesy of Liz Knight at Rome If You Want To.)

Rather, it was Nobile di Montepulciano 2009 vintage, produced from the Sangiovese grape variety known as prugnolo gentile and grown in the vineyards belonging to 1,005-year-old Contucci family. Pepe had us first taste two slices of Culatello salame, and black pig capocollo cured ham. I preferred our Montepulciano with the culatello; it actually leant the wine a softer, less aggressive taste than when paired with the capocollo. 

Usually I like a Tuscan red full of buttery and oak barrel flavors, so for me, this Montepulciano was right on the money, particularly because it made me think of rustic and noble country houses in Tuscany, the venues, in my own quintessential and stereotypical fantasies, where I dine on Chianina steak to the sounds of opera and the pour of a rich red from the carafe.

As for the last two tastings, and although I know for a fact that Pepe varies each and every one of his lessons, I will not spoil it all for you, in case you are lucky enough to enjoy two hours of instruction with the man himself. I will only say that 36-month-old Parmigiano Reggiano (from red cows and red cows only), 12-month-old Pecorino romano, black pig salame from the Nebrodi, deliciously-dotted with lard, and prized Extra-Virgin Taggiasca Olive Oil from Liguria were all on the latter portion of the menu.

It goes without saying that I will definitely repeat this pairing class, especially when visitors come to town. 

The exciting and lovely thing about wine is that you can never learn too much. As Pepe and another sommelier friend of mine told me, it is not about knowing more than someone else, or choosing the right, fixed names and vintages and settling on them forever. It is about enjoying, learning, appreciating history, place and tradition, and exploring new flavors and consistencies. 

My experience of having in lived in Italy all these years has taught me that wines from the north – Veneto, Friuli and Trentino Alto-Adige – are among my favorites (Ripasso and Amarone from the Veneto in particular), as is a good Vermentino (white, from Sardinia and Liguria) and, at times, Vernaccia. I would also never shun a Lazio Syrah, which for me is local.

As you continue to try, your tastebuds are supposed to evolve and your preferences change. Perhaps that is true, and I am curious as to whether such will happen for me in the future. For now, yours truly is stuck on her favorites, although she will never stop exploring.... Still, if I can leave you with just one last thought, it would be to try the Amarone. You can thank me later!

Romulus, Remus, and Rimessa Roscioli. (Photo Courtesy of Liz Knight, Romeifyouwantto.com).

Something Extra: Get to know Alessandro and take a preview of the neighborhood that hosts Roscioli!


P.S. I am very much looking forward to my next City Wonders brand tour in Rome. There are a plethora of different offerings, but I am thinking something even more underground this time - the Dark Rome Crypts and Catacombs tour, perhaps?