Cheesy Bites, a Colorful Board, and a Barbera...from California #ItalianFWT

Linda of My Full Wine Glass is hosting the Italian Food Wine Travel bloggers as we explore Italian grape varieties that are cultivated and made into wines outside of Italy. You can read her invitation here. What a fun topic! 

If you are reading this early enough, feel to  join the group for a live Twitter chat. We'll be live on Saturday, March 6th at 8am Pacific time. Just follow the hashtag - #ItalianFWT - and be sure to add it to anything you tweet so we can see it. In the meantime, all of these posts will go live before Saturday. Cin cin!

• Camilla at Culinary Adventures with Camilla: Cheesy Bites, a Colorful Board, and a Barbera...from California
• Wendy at A Day in the Life on the Farm: Italian Grapes Grown Outside of Italy and Served Out of a Box? Che Diamine!!!
• Andrea at The Quirky Cork: Tuscany Meets Turkey with Chateau Murou Montepulciano Sangiovese
• Jeff at FoodWineClick!: Italian Grapes from Unti Vineyards at the Winter Grill
• Martin at ENOFYLZ Wine Blog: A Splendid Cal-Ital: 2016 Giornata Nebbiolo Luna Matta Vineyard
• Jennifer at Vino Travels: Remy Wines: Italian Grapes in Oregon and a Winery After my Heart
• Terri at Our Good Life: Italian Grapes in Lodi Paired with Grilled Salmon Tacos
• Nicole at Somm’s Table: 2 Italian White Wine Blends Born in California
• Gwendolyn at Wine Predator: Italy in California: from Aglianico to Zinfandel and Italy in California: Nebbiolo from Humboldt's Terragena and Santa Barbara’s Silver
• Susannah at Avvinare: Vermentino, A Star In and Out of Italy
• Lynn at Savory the Harvest: Honoring An Italian American: Palmina Wines in Santa Barbara County
• Linda at My Full Wine Glass: Native Italian grapes find a home in the land of Pinot Noir

Cheesy Bites and a Colorful Board

I love making and serving cheese boards. It's sort of like a painting where food is my palate. There is no  recipe for  this, but here's a video, from my Culinary Cam YouTube channel, showing you the four simple steps that I use in making my boards. And the boards I paired with the wine were from a virtual cooking class I led recently.

After  the class, my tech support got to eat. Not bad for a couple hour's worth of work, right? 

Jake helped run the camera and D manned the Zoom meeting for us. And I was super appreciative to just get to assemble the boards, demonstrate the savory goat cheese truffles, and interact with the class participants without having to figure out how to spotlight the presenters, etc. I mean, we've all been doing virtual meetings for a year now, but there are intricacies to the platforms with which I am completely unfamiliar. Thank goodness for tech-savvy teens and husbands, right?

These colorful boards included everything from comte, coffee-infused cheddar, goat milk brie, fontina,aged manchego, hard boiled eggs, fresh radishes, Moroccan olives, carrots, cucumber, dried apricots, marcona almonds, cornichon, onion chutney, anchovies, brioche, crackers, and fresh herbs. 

A Barbera from California

Initially I was going to share the Stolpman Vineyards 2019 Love You Bunches Carbonic Sangiovese from California, but I am saving that for another day. Instead I decided to share a wine from California that's made with one of my favorite Italian grape varieties: Barbera. 

I have always loved Barbera, but until I found this bottle, I have only ever had Barbera from Italy! Two  years ago - back in March 2019 for #ItalianFWT - I posted Braised Short Ribs + 2016 Nuova Cappelletta Barbera del Monferrato. And I've even poured and paired a Barbera blend from Israel in Peppered Brisket, Honeyed Onions, and the 2016 Galil Mountain 'Ela'.

Barbera is a red Italian grape variety that is the third most planted grape in the country. And I've read that it's probably a millennium older than Cabernet Sauvignon. Even still, until very recently, Barbera was virtually unknown in the American markets.

In Italy, Barbera is cultivated in the Piedmont area - the same region renowned for the Nebbiolo grape variety and the Barolo and Barbaresco wines that come from the Nebbiolo grape. But the wines from the Barbera grape are much more affordable.  I haven't come up with a reason for that yet. However, it means that Barbera can easily be an everyday sipper. And though usually very intensely colored, Barbera is surprisingly light in taste. Because it's also usually low in tannins and high in acidity, it's a perfect match for the richness of cheeses and meat dishes.

This Barbera from Boeger Winery which is a historical estate that was homesteaded during the 1849 California Gold Rush. Like many who headed to California in the middle of the 19th century the Fossati-Lombardo family arrived to try their luck in the gold mines. But they quickly realized that the real money was to be made in selling foods and supplies to the miners versus doing the actual mining themselves. Later all of the wineries in the county were shuttered during Prohibition. But in 1972, Greg and Sue Boeger discovered the property and decided to become the first post-Prohibition  winery in the El Dorado AVA.

Boeger began to experiment by pioneering lesser-known varieties such as Barbera, Carignane, Refosco, Charbono, and Aglianico though there are now nearly three dozen varieties that they grow. This wine is made from grapes grown at vineyards that sit over half a mile above sea level. On the nose, you get a  berry patch of aromas from strawberry to blackberry. But on the palate, the wine is much more balanced and soft with generous acidity that makes it a beautiful partner with a variety of flavors.

I can't wait to track down more of the Boeger wines. And when the world opens back up - Vafanculo, COVID! - I might just head up the El Dorado county for a wine-tasting adventure. It's only a few hours from where I live and on the way to Lake Tahoe. I miss traveling, don't you?

Well, that's a wrap on our Italian wines grown outside of Italy event for the #ItalianFWT group. We'll be back next month as Katarina of Grapevine Adventures leads the discussion of wines from Lazio. And, in May, I'm excited to see what the group shares when the focus will be Barbera. Stay tuned....