Pizza Vino

If you missed my Let’s Do class at Domaine LA last week, it was all about Italian wine and pizza pies. We talked regions, grapes and general food and wine pairing tips.

Here are the wines I poured alongside some delicious Mozza pizza. I called them my Ultimate Pizza Wines. But really, only being able to choose 5? SO hard.

I knew I wanted a Lambrusco (or a Gragnano). For SURE. I also wanted a barbera and a sangiovese based wine. Nebbiolo? Definitely. Then I would need a somewhat oddball- so, I picked one of my fav Emilia-Romagna orange wines. It’s a style of white that can handle bolder flavors.

If I could have gone on, the list would’ve also included an aglianico, nero d’avola, montepulciano and some aromatic lighter reds like frappato or rossese.

My main criteria for pairing wine with pizza: good acidity and some semblance of structure and tannin. Anything nice and cold is also pretty dope. Red bubbly? Perfect. It’s like the wine version of beer or Coca Cola (which is apparently what Italians really like to drink with their pizza.) Main things I avoid and that sound super icky: jammy, oaky or incredibly full bodied flabby wines. Actually, I usually avoid those qualities in wine regardless of whether or not there is a pizza in front of me. Point is- there are more things in the world of Italian wines that work with pizza than don’t. So it ain’t rocket science.

Thought: Could one become solely a pizza sommelier? That would be an off the charts amazing as hell job.

Question: If you could attend any wine class or tasting what would you want the topic to be? I would love to know. And if you live in LA, maybe I can make it happen!