Saturday, July 4, 2015

Food & Wine Pairing of Lazio: Saltimboca alla Romana w/Casale del Giglio Petit Verdot

Welcome to our 9th Italian Food, Wine & Travel (#ItalianFWT) event where we feature the food, wine and travel of a different region every month. This month our group focuses on the Lazio region located in central Italy. Earlier this week I shared some highlights and a preview of Lazio.
Map of Lazio wine region
Map of Lazio ~ Copyright of Federdoc
I always love to explore the wine and cuisine of each region and tie in my travels if I can. Mostly all my explorations of the Lazio region have been multiple times to Rome so I figured I have so much more to offer on the cuisine and wine of Lazio with my featured pairing: Chicken Saltimbocca alla Romana with a 2009 Casale del Giglio Petit Verdot.
Trevi Fountain in Rome
Trevi Fountain ~ Rome
Wine Pairing - Casale del Giglio Petit Verdot
The founding father of Casale delGiglio, Berardino, was a wine merchant. The three sons (Antonio, Isidoro and Emidio) began their partnership Berardino Santerelli & Figli in 1914. The business grew to include 11 wine and olive stores, “vini + olii”. In 1955 Emidio's son, Dino, founded Santarelli S.P.A where they sold wines of Lazio. In 1967 is when Casale del Giglio was established at Le Fernere, a hamlet in the provicne of Latina which is about 30 miles south of Rome located in the Agro Pontino Valley. Talking about generation after generation keeping it within the family, in the early 90's Dino's son, Antonio, then took over and with winemaker, Paolo Tiefenthale, from Trentino began producing wines under the Casale del Giglio brand.

The area where Casale del Giglio resides has much unchartered land where there weren't generations or years of what works and what doesn't when it comes to winemaking. In 1985 Casale del Giglio began a project where they partnered with other researchers and professors experimenting to figure out what would grow the best. They worked with 60 different vines and today the winery consists of about 160 hectacres where they mostly work with Bordeaux grapes.
2009 Casale del Giglio Petit Verdot
The 2009 Casale del Giglio petit verdot is purely made from petit verdot where part of the fermentation is in stainless and wood. It's aged 8-12 months in barrique with an additional 6 months in the bottle.  It's a full bodied wine with intense red berries and cherry.  Silky tannins with a little bit of pepper.

Food Pairing - Chicken Saltimbocca alla Romana
I paired up this month with a fellow columnist in the Boston Italian magazine that we write for called the Bostoniano. Francesca Bruzzese is a fellow american from Rhode Island whom is living in Rome and writes a food blog, Pancakes and Biscotti. Francesca and I discussed the best potential pairing with her expertise on Roman cuisine and came up with her Saltimbocca alla Romana recipe to be paired with my selection of the Casale del Giglio petit verdot pairing. I imitated her saltimbocca recipe, but made some substitutions. I'm not a huge fan of veal so I actually substituted her choice of veal with chicken. I also am a big fan of mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes so I added that to the sauce I made along with some garlic scapes from the local farmshare that I joined this year.
Chicken Saltimbocca alla Romana Lazio Food & Wine Pairing
The petit verdot was a nice pairing with this particular dish and complemented the flavors well.  Casale del Giglio also recommends another typical Roman dish known as costolette di abbacchio al forno, which is an oven-roasted lamb cutlet.  

Wait......there's more! Join my fellow bloggers with their feature on Lazio:
Italophilia – Visit Ariccia with Buona Sera Mrs. Campbell
Orna O'Reilly – A Foodie Easter in Rome
Cooking Chat - Orzo, Salmon and Pesto Paired with a Frascati
Food Wine Click - They'll Drink Anything in Rome
Rockin Red Blog - Live Like Caesar
Enofylz Wine Blog - A Taste of Lazio
Christy's Palate - Living La Vita Lazio
The Palladian Traveler - Civita di Bagnoregio: The Dying Town
Adventures of a Carry On - When in Rome Eat Like a Roman: Bucatini all'Amatriciana
Girls Gotta Drink - Eat Like a Roman (With a Roman): Unusual Things to do in Rome

If you're seeing this early enough make sure to join us live on twitter at 11am EST at #ItalianFWT. Tell us your food, wine or travel stories of Lazio. We look forward to chatting with you then. Next month on Saturday August 1st we'll feature the island of Sardegna in Italy. Feel free to reach out to me and join us! Ciao ciao!


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