Pairing: Pasta with Fresh Tomato ‘Sauce’ Paired with a 2010 Castiglion del Bosco “Dainero” Toscana

Food:  With the unusually warm October weather here in New Hampshire, the tomatoes keep on ripening. It’s hard to keep up with them … oh, yeah … we can always can them. But finding ways to enjoy them fresh is always a great treat. When we are looking for inspiration for an Italian dish, our go-to cookbook is Lynne Rossetto Kasper’s The Italian Country Table: Home Cooking from Italy’s Farmhouse Kitchen. Her Tomato Sauce II recipe calls for 1/2 inch cubes of fresh tomatoes … a perfect use for our seemingly inexhaustible bounty of delicious heirloom tomatoes. It calls for making a soffritto only out of long, slowly cooked onions, with some garlic, fresh basil and red pepper flakes added at the end of the cooking. Stir in the cooked pasta and combine with the fresh tomatoes to just warm the tomatoes, not cook them. Sprinkle with grated parmesan cheese. Fabulous with the fresh, flavorful heirlooms … but you can even make this dish with canned tomatoes.

Wine:  And now it’s time once again for … true confessions. I’m not wild about Merlot. And that’s been true since long before the movie Sideways came out. However, Merlot from Italy (from France, too, for that matter) can be sublime and divine. Dainero is a Super Tuscan wine composed mostly of Merlot. Castiglion del Bosco uses 90% Merlot and 10% Sangiovese from their vineyards in the Montalcino wine area of Tuscany. Although Sangiovese is king throughout Tuscany (indeed the Sangiovese-based Brunello di Montalcino is among the most prized wines in all of Italy), Merlot is one of the grapes that is part of the blend to makes some of the finest Super Tuscans in Tuscany. This Dainero is a delicious and inexpensive example of this Merlot-based wine. A steal at $13

Tasting Notes:  A deep, dark red … almost black. A delicate aroma of ripe black elderberry … one might experience such a smell while biking past a hedgerow. The palate is a BLAST of blackberry and black elderberry, combined with a lovely earthy background. There is a also a hint of overcooked jam … maybe not so good in jam … but great in this wine! The combined flavors linger long on the finish. The black fruit really plays off well against the parmesan cheese, onion and tomato.

Other Wines That Pair Well with Pasta with Fresh Tomato Sauce:  Sauvignon Blanc (New Zealand), Pinot Grigio (Italy), Soave (Italy), Gewürztraminer (Germany), Amarone (Italy), Barolo (Italy)

Other Food That Pairs Well with Italian Merlot:  Mushroom Risotto, Cheese (Parmesan, Gouda, Gorgonzola), Pizza, Rabbit, Tuna

Read About Italian Merlot:  https://www.winewordswisdom.com/wine_reviews/best-merlots.html

A Source:  www. klwines.com