Tuesday, January 12, 2010

#23 - Zucchini Pie & '07 Prá Soave


We here at Food & Wine covered our love for zucchini pie here.

It's a combination of zucchini, onions, copious amounts of garlic, parsley, basil, grain mustard, mozzarella, parmesan and black pepper. Delicious. Every time.

With the first pairing, we gave a Trader Joe's Pouilly Fumé a whirl and it didn't work at all. The wine was killed by something unidentifiable, probably the pepper or garlic. It's a more delicate wine.

For this pairing, we gave an Italian white a shot, hoping that a touch of more acidity and bigger fruit would stand up.

While not an acidic Italian white in the traditional sense (a falanghina or a greco might be great) , Soave, a wine we only recently discovered and still have only had twice, seemed like a reasonable wine for zucchini pie.

Especially for the price ($13 Wine Discount Center), the 2007 Prá Soave Classico entirely held its own. A pleasing white with good balance, the Prá offers a nice touch of citrus fruits (lemon with a wee touch of orange) and a bit a green apple with a medium-long finish. Maybe a little spice and almond. I found a touch of peach juice only after reading the tasting notes. Good value wine.

Soave comes from the Veneto region in northeast Italy near Venice and is made from the garganega grape. The grape is pretty much exclusively used to make Soave with some wineries using it for blending purposes and some making recioto sweet dessert wines with it.

The pairing was goshdarn solid.

In short, the wine let the melding of the flavors in the zucchini pie stay true to what it is while the wine was heightened a bit with the food. We cracked and poured with only about ten minutes out of the refrigerator. A metallic taste came upon first sip but once the wine came up in temperature, it hit its stride.

Good stuff for the price and thoroughly outperformed the Pouilly Fumé.

Now we know.

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