Enjoy Sparkling Wine with Pasta

We all love pasta, (and those in the know love it al dente) but how many of us go further and check the quality of the product itself? If you know about wine, you’ll laugh at German Liebfraumilch – and if you know about food you’ll avoid popular brands of inferior pasta.

In the wine world, it’s pretty simple: you read the back label and can evaluate the contents before you taste the wine. For example, Chilean wine bottled in the UK (bulk wine) is less likely to please than a wine bottled in Chile.

I am not a native Italian, so I have despaired of ever understanding fully the niceties of their cuisine, but one answer – about pasta – seemed very simple. I found out on a recent visit to Benedetto Cavalieri.

In craft pasta, even cooked al dente, you will feel the difference in your mouth, for it absorbs easily any liquid from the sauce. The pasta gets plumper because durum wheat is so small-grained. You can’t see this, perhaps, but you feel it on the tongue as the surface feels velvety. Commercial pasta doesn’t change its structure and doesn’t absorb liquid; it stays glossy and the same texture inside and outside, a consistency like chewy rubber, while artisan pasta tastes sometimes interestingly nutty. Like the finest wines, which use the best grapes and give low yields, good pasta needs top grade wheat plus a slow process at low temperatures to preserve its flavour and nutritional values.

Which sparkling wine goes well with a pasta dish? Here are some suggestions:

• Creamy/mushroom style pasta sauces would be beautifully complemented by a Chardonnay blend fermented in barrels.
• For seafood, try crispy and spicy not floral character wines, like a young Cava.
• Pasta salads …Prosecco. Look for Valdobbiadene DOCG area, for example, Zonin 1821.
• Truffle Pasta. Look for vintage sparkling wines with fantastic complex aromas.

Written by Tatiana Mann