Food and wine matching: Franciacorta sparkling match

I had a wonderful weekend, making dinner (two courses with a bought third course from a local pastry shop) and playing with some wine and food matching. It took some imagination as I spent a week just thinking about the menu, let alone the wine to go with it.

First course was pasta with saffron and bresaola, a special cured beef among some of Italy's greatest salame and cold cut meats. The spicy saffron should offset the sweeter bresaola.

The wine match turned out to be a bit of a challenge and my colleague and I mulled it over in the office. We discarded anything that was too alcoholic or full bodied, preferring a wine with higher acidity such as a riesling. Our enoteca, or wine shop, had a gerwutz traminer, sauvignon or champagne available.

After my colleague made a couple of phone calls to some expert drinkers, one of whom frequently eats in Michelin star restaurants, it was settled that a champagne would be the best bet, to clean the palate.

Given that champagne is a little out of my budget, and my local wine shop didn't have any, I went with a Docg Franciacorta brut from Le Marchesine. It turned out to be a good choice. The wine is a chardonnay, pinot bianco and pinot nero blend, with a floral bouquet and some strong bread overtones. I was particularly impressed by the perlage though, very fine and elegant.

The second course was beef fillet with a side sauce of tomatoes, french onion and sultanas and side dish of potatoes with rosemary. I didn't do any specific wine searching for this, pulling out a bottle of Triacca's "La gatta" 2001 vintage, which I already had at home.

Triacca lies in the northern region of the Valtellina valley, though I will write more on the valley later as it's a special place for me. Valtellina wines are made exclusively from the nebbiolo grape. "La gatta" is a reserve wine, which in Italy means it has undergone a longer ageing period prior to bottling. This went through 30 months in oak barrels, six months in steel vats, and finally another three months in the bottle.

This provided some good drinking pleasure as an intense wine but with good structure. Both the alcohol levels (13%) and the tannins were well-balanced.

And we pass to the third course which was a slice of ricotta cake and a "delizietta" which is cake with marmalade in the centre and curshed nuts and honey on the top. I opened a bottle of sweet that was given to me, a "Recioto" from the Cantina Valpolicella.

The Recioto is a sweet red wine, from local grape varieties, which has a strikingly intense, sweet but spicy nose. I was well impressed, and it made for a great match. The special thing about this wine is that the grapes are put out to dry before the wine making process begins. This is called "appassimento" and is a common practice in Italy, even for some of the big reds made for longer ageing.