Agronika food pairing experiment – video

To celebrate the upcoming weekend, I did a virtual food and wine pairing experiment with Novaripa‘s Agronika Terre di Chieti Passerina*. This lovely white wine from the Abruzzo region in Italy is dangerously drinkable, especially when paired with food!

*I capitalized the grape variety here because it is part of the wine’s title, as it appears on the label.

The video

Don’t feel like watching the video? Here’s a transcript for all you voracious readers:

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another Wining with Mel virtual tasting.

Today we’re gonna do things a bit differently. So rather than going through the official tasting process where I look at the colour and the aromas and
the flavours, we’re going to do a little bit of experimenting with food pairings.

Today’s wine is the Agronika Terre di Chieti. The grape is Passerina, which is an indigenous Italian grape. This particular bottle comes from the Abruzzo region, which is on the eastern coast of Italy. So if Italy is in the shape of a boot, then this would be on the calf, near the Adriatic Sea.

We’re going to give it a taste. Um num num! Okay, acidityAcidity is an important part of a wine’s structure that prevents a wine from being “flabby”. It’s what gives you that tingling sensation on your tongue and makes you salivate.... More! Crazy acidityAcidity is an important part of a wine’s structure that prevents a wine from being “flabby”. It’s what gives you that tingling sensation on your tongue and makes you salivate.... More. That mouthwatering sensation makes it great with food. It’s super citrusy. There’s a bit of flint, green apple and something nutty at the end.

Now we’re going to get our food. I’ve got a bowl of chips here. [Mel eats a chip]

So this wine becomes something completely different when you pair it with food. Before the wine was super lemony and crisp and acidic, but the food
seems to mellow that right out and I think it’s actually the salt in the chips that counteracts the acidityAcidity is an important part of a wine’s structure that prevents a wine from being “flabby”. It’s what gives you that tingling sensation on your tongue and makes you salivate.... More and brings out a rounder mouthfeel. It brings out more of the nutty, almond notes. And it’s really nice.

This is a perfect food pairing wine. You can pair it with chicken or shellfish, even cheeses.

So that’s today’s experiment. Let me know what you think. Let me know what your favourite Italian wine is, and we’ll see you again soon.

Happy wining!

The Wine

The Agronika Terre di Chieti Passerina featured in the video above is available at the LCBO for $14.10. What a steal!! It’s in the general listing so is available all year round.

A few wine pairing notes

• If you want to re-create this pairing experiment, I’d recommend using plain-old regular chips (crazy flavours like Salt and Vinegar or BBQ may lead to much different results).
• If you want to level up from chips, this wine also paired fabulously with baked chicken with lemon and herbs and a side of roasted root veggies. The lemony food really softened the citrusy side of the wine. The passerina also did nice things with this shrimp scampi.

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Happy weekend and happy wining!