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At this time of year, my favorite meal has always been our Christmas Eve dinner. As a boy growing up in a New York Italian-American family, I would anticipate it almost as much as the gifts on Christmas morning. It wasn’t only the meal that was exciting; it was the days of preparation before the dinner. The soaking of the salt cod a day or so before, the live lobsters squirming around in the sink, the tons of shellfish in every nook and cranny of our Frigidaire.
And then, the dolci, or desserts. The “hidden” (but always found) boxes of Perugina torrone, assorted chocolates and Baci, the panetone, the panforte. My aunt Carlotta’s dried figs stuffed with walnuts, candied citron, a tiny chip of dark chocolate, and lemon rind and drizzled with honey; her almond brittle; and, of course, her struffoli, like no other struffoli in the world. Guests and neighbors would always praise these wreathed-crowns of tiny honeyed fritters interspersed with pieces of candy citron and sprinkled with multi-colored anise-flavored diavolini. When they would ask for her recipe, however, she would either avoid answering or perhaps, if she did, would leave out her secret ingredient (baking-powder) that made her puffs of dough so much lighter than anyone’s.
Cooking for the feast would always start early in the day with cleaning of the fish and the greens (broccoli rabe), the shucking of the clams, the roasting of the peppers, and it would continue throughout the day. Both my mother and my aunt would be in the kitchen for hours, boiling, baking, and frying fish. And then, when I was about 11 or 12 years old, came my contribution to the meal. I got to slaughter the live lobsters. “Go ahead,” my aunt would say. “Don’t be afraid. Hold down the tail and aim the cleaver between its eyes. Non esitare, don’t hesitate.” It’s a job that remained mine until only recently, when I handed it down to my best friends’ son.
Alas, nostalgia has made me go on way too long about this special meal and I’ve lost sight of the focus of this month’s feature, which is wines for the Vigila Napoletana as well as other seafood dinners.
In the 50s and 60s, our family’s wine selection was often limited to what was available in those days. For the whites, there was usually Soave, Trebbiano, Lacrima Christi, Verdicchio, and for the reds, Chianti Classico, Bardolino, or Valpolicella. (Barolo and Amarone were just too big for this dinner.) Later on, as lesser-known Italian wines became available in the US, the selections would vary and my dad would take a long time selecting and tasting. My mother was glad because it kept him (and me) out of the kitchen during the day. Ah! What happy times.
The popularity of this southern Italian seven-fish feast has spread throughout the United States. During the season, it’s often a topic on the morning talk shows or Martha Stewart. Some Italian restaurants are recreating it and making it available to their guests on Christmas Eve. There’s even a blog devoted to it.
The number of fish included in the meal seems to vary from 5 to 13, as do the explanations for the number 7 (the 7 sacraments, deadly sins, virtues, etc.) A great and quite authentic menu with recipes by Mario Batali is available on Epicurious.
For this tasting, our schedules did not allow us enough time to prepare such a feast. But we wanted to taste wines with one dish that we thought would at least have hints of the flavors of this meal. So we prepared a Neapolitan recipe from Arthur Schwartz, author of Naples at Table. It’s a tasty spaghetti dish with swordfish cooked in a fennel-seasoned tomato sauce. You can download the recipe here.
We also chose to look beyond Italy for our wines and so our tasting includes wines from the United States, France, and Argentina as well. The vast selection of wines available today, both domestic and international, makes finding just the right wine either for a dish layered with different flavors, like our swordfish pasta, or for a menu comprised of courses with conflicting tastes, like many holiday meals, a little easier provided we keep a few basic principles in mind.
• Consider the weight of the dish. I’ve said this in an earlier feature. We’re not talking about calories here, but rather about the robustness or delicacy of the ingredients and the preparation. Heavier foods fare better with heavy wines. For example, roasts, stews, and even chops tend to shine when paired with heavy, full bodied wines like Cabernets and Rhone wines. Simple, light-bodied dishes like chicken breasts, flounder fillets, or sea food do better with lighter whites like Rieslings, Muscadets, or Sauvignon Blancs. Grilled salmon, because of its fatty quality, goes better, in my opinion, with a medium bodied Pinot Noir, and pork chops might do well with a fuller bodied Pinot Blanc or medium bodied Dolcetto D’Alba. These wines work well because they cut through the fats and bring out the flavors in the food.
• Consider the sauce. Think about the ingredients, the texture, the herbs and spices. Creamy white sauces generally call for fruitier whites, with good acidity, like Vouvray, Viognier, or Chenin Blanc. These fuller flavored wines enhance the sauce, while their acidity helps cut through the fat. Sweet sauces and relishes do better with crisper, more acidic wines like Rieslings or Sauvignon Blancs to provide a counterpoint and enhance the flavor of the underlying dish. Spicy sauces, on the other hand, do better with spicier wines like Zinfandels or Rhone-style wines for reds or Gewurztraminers and even Tokay-Pinot Gris for whites.
• Consider basic tastes like salty, acidic or sweet. Salty dishes don’t do well with tannic wines. The salt just accentuates the bitter, puckery tannins. For example, a baked ham or sliced prosciutto would be wonderful with a fruity white like a Viognier, or with a dry Cabernet Franc, which is relatively low in tannin. Some salty foods go extremely well with sweet wines like Roquefort with Sauternes. More often than not, acidic foods (or dishes with acidic sauces) should be matched with acidic wines and sweet foods with sweet wines.
One of the best books on the subject of food and wine matching, and one on which I’ve recommended here before, is Joanna Simon’s Wine with Food. Not only does it explain the basic principles of wine and food matching, but its final chapter is a handy reference guide arranged alphabetically recommending foods to go with wines and then wines to go with foods. It’s a great starting point.
These principles seem to have been validated by the wines that stood up best to the swordfish recipe. We found that the most successful wines were the ones chosen to match the fattiness of the swordfish, the acidity of the tomato sauce, and the spice of the fennel.
As is our custom at TableWine, we always taste the wines first by themselves and then again with food. We tasted the whites followed by the reds and in each category went in order of the weight of the wine.
Our best wishes for this Holiday Season!
| Henri Bourgeois Petit Bourgeois Sauvignon Blanc Val de Loire Vin de Pays 2008 $10.99 Light gold in color, this Sauvignon Blanc has an attractive grassy, gooseberry nose with subtle hints of honeysuckle. It’s light bodied with tart grapefruit-citrus notes and structured with good acidity. A nice citrus finish. With the food, this wine wove its flavors into the flavors of the fish. One taster, however, felt that the food and the wine were like “two ships passing in the night.” |
Henri Bourgeois Petit Bourgeois |
| Sartori di Verona Ferdi Bianco Veronese 2007 $14.99 Yellow diamond in color, this wine made solely from Garganega has an alluring honeysuckle bouquet. Medium bodied, its flavors are initially sweet, with some hints of honey, and almond; however, it finishes totally dry, with a nice minerality that reflects the volcanic soils of Soave. This wine was a perfect match for the dish, complementing the food while retaining its own personality. (In the interest of full disclosure, I represent this producer in the United States but thought it would be a good addition to this tasting.) |
Sartori Ferdi |
| Conundrum Proprietary White California 2008 $18.99 Pale gold in color, with a muscat bouquet, this wine is medium bodied, with fruity white-grape flavors together with some tart acidity. It has a lingering, sweet fig finish. This wine was a lovely match with the food and nicely complemented the spicy sauce of the dish. |
Conundrum Proprietary Blend |
| Angeline Chardonnay Sonoma County 2008 $14.99 Light gold in color, this Sonoma Chardonnay has a very subtle nose of toast and vanilla. Medium bodied, it offers butterscotch and lime-citrus flavors. It’s nicely structured with good acidity and a lingering finish consistent with the initial flavors. A judicious use of oak. This wine was very good with the fish, but perhaps a tad too delicate for the spiciness of the sauce. |
Angeline Chardonnay |
| Alamos Torrontes Argentina 2008 $9.99 This wine is pale straw in color with greenish hues. It has an aggressive herbaceous nose with some floral notes. Light to medium bodied, with flavors of fennel or anise, this wine is well structured and balanced and has a lingering fennel finish. It was the perfect match for the food: its flavors complementing those of the dish, and the fruit working with the spice. |
Alamos Torrontes |
| Saintsbury Garnet Pinot Noir Carneros 2008 $17.99 Opaque garnet in color, this California Pinot Noir has a forward nose of bramble and berry with attractive hints of raspberry. Light to medium bodied, with red-fruit and strawberry flavors, it has a good finish with smoke and spice. A real WOW! with the food. A perfect match for the tomatoes in the dish. This was a case where the wine enhanced the food, and the food the wine. |
Saintsbury Garnet Pinot Noir |
| Regaleali Lamùri Nero d’Avola Sicilia IGT 2005 $17.99 Deep dark red in color, this wine has an earthy mushroom nose with nuances of black fruit. Light bodied, it offers dry, earthy flavors with notes of dried plums and has a persistent fruit-and-spice finish. Great with the swordfish, it seemed to add a dimensionality to it, picking up the spice. |
Regaleali Lamuri |
| Mas Carlot Les Enfants Terribles Costieres de Nimes 2006 $13.99 Deep ruby in color, this equal belnd of Mourvedre and Syrah, from France’s Languedoc region, has an earthy, rustic nose. Medium bodied and smooth, it offers plenty of spicy black-fruit flavors. It has a lingering finish, with notes of leather, cedar, and fruit. It provided a nice counterpoint with the fish. |
Mas Carlot Les Enfants Terribles |
| Areo Malbec Patagonia 2007 $9.99 Deep, dark opaque purple in color, this wine has a restrained nose of burnt sugard and grape jam. It’s medium to full bodied with black-berry flavors. It has a long, lingering finish, with hints of caramel and berry. This wine shined with the food; a perfect duo. One taster commented, “Like a tango with the pasta–the masculinity of the wine and the femininity of the pasta.” |
Areo Malbec |
| Newton Claret Napa Valley 2006 $19.99 This cuvée (Merlot 43%, Cabernet Sauvignon 41%, Cabernet Franc 9%, Petit Verdot 4%, Syrah 3%) is opaque garnet in color. It has an alluring yet subtle nose of woodland berries, mushroom, and leather. Full bodied and elegantly structured with balanced fruit and acidity, it delivers plenty of mocha and black-cherry flavors with an underpinning of spice. It has a long finish, with mocha and cherry. Another winner with the food, showing more of a European character. |
Newton Claret |
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