Piedmont that emigrates, like me. The agnolotti, a typical Piedmontese dish of pasta dough filled with roasted meat, that it’s a fixed appointment of our Italian Christmas lunch, this year it remained faithful to the line: even in this period of pandemic and “Christmas-not-with-your-family”, agnolotti could not missing on my Christmas table.
At this point, anomalous for anomalous, this Christmas must be all the way through. I went to my cellar and chose a wine to pair with these agnolotti, a choice that probably in Italy, sitting at the table among my family, would have created doubt, amazement, distrust or maybe even some fainting (!). I chose California, I opened a Motto Zinfandel Unabashed 2015.
A real explosion of aromas: ripe fruit, jam, plum. Very intense. Then notes of leather and spices, cloves and black pepper. In the mouth it is confirmed to be a wine of great structure, with toasted notes in the background. I define it a “male” wine, vigorous and irrepressible, no frills, overwhelming, also held up by its important 14.5% alcohol content.
I like to think that Zinfandel is finally an emigrant like us, a vine that shares its DNA with the Apulian Primitivo and that, arrived on the Atlantic coasts from old Europe, has found its best habitat in the beautiful and warm California. The American dream coming true.
Maybe I dared too much to pair my agnolotti, a little frightened, to the strong aromatic wave of this “Unabashed” wine, it would better accompany barbeques with friends in large American villas (and in small European gardens, too) … neverthless this Zinfandel made me rediscover, even if only for a moment, the pleasure of traveling, exploring, dreaming.