Posts tagged Friuli Venezia Giulia

Last night I had a chance to taste another wonderful wine from this side of the “Bel Paese”, the beautiful region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, Italy. The Collio area is renowned for its SuperWhites: some still unknown to the wine world, certainly underrated.

This winemaker belongs to the natural wines family and the wine I sampled is part of the 2^nd of the two lines he produces. Its name is so poetic: Clàr di Lune, Moonlight!

Paraschos has been making wines in the heart of the Collio area since 1998 and adopted the biodynamic philosophy in the early days. There’s no use of herbicides nor fertilizer: the grapes end up in oak vats or terracotta amphoras without the use of yeasts, preservatives nor colourings.

Once opened, Clàr di Lune shows a wonderful amber colour result of natural wine making and an unfiltered, unclarified bottling procedure.

It’s so great still discovering top quality wines so close to my home town!

The food to match was marinated trout that I grilled and served to my hungry crew. We like fish as simple as possible and I generally create a marinade and then simply grill it. Good quality food generally need not much!

I feel that trout is so underrated and ignored nowadays: it’s a lovely fish, at all not expensive, nice and firm meat and very flavourful.

More recipes here if you like trout.

This time I had a little help from my favourite spice supplier: Seasoned Pioneers.

Wow! Vitovska, Schioppettino & Ribolla Gialla! Andrew, now you are talking. I never thought anyone in the UK would have ever mentioned these wonderful grapes. Andrew Barrow wrote a nice review - here - for three of probably the most representative grapes from this corner of North East Italy: Friuli Venezia Giulia, FVG.

I my humble opinion, though I’m a bit biased, there are many more superlative producers that I would like to mention:

Vitovska - Zidarich, Skerk, Vodopivec

Ribolla Gialla - Gravner, Radikon, Paraschos

Schioppettino - Giovanni Venica, Petrussa

Give me a buzz whenever you would like to visit this side of the World and sample these extremely nice wines.

(pic courtesy of spittoon)

Another fabulous review by Andrew Barrow @ spittoon
This one though, Bastianich Friulano, is very special to me because Andrew reviewed one of the many excellent winemakers from the corner of the World I was born and move back to two years ago: FVG, Friuli Venezia Giulia, North East Italy. 

This is probably Andrew’s first “Vino from Friuli” review!

I would have loved meeting you again, Andrew if it wasn’t you could not easily decide when/where to go.
I feel reassured though you may come back now that you sampled some of the greatest wines produced in Friuli Venezia Giulia. Don’t forget to give me a buzz and especially take good friend Douglas with you too.

Thanks for your words.

Click to read Bastianich, Friulano from A. Barrow

Invito a Pranzo 2011 - 20th Edition

Autumn is almost around the corner but the weather hasn’t noticed it yet: temperatures in this part of the World are still well above 25C° with no clouds and blue skies. Perfect conditions to wonder around the valley where the first of the autumnal events will take place.

Invito a Pranzo has been recently reviewed by Guardian Travel journalist John Burton and mentioned roughly two weeks ago here on this blog.

From the 1st of October food lovers will lazily spend their weekends tasting the most amaizing food paired with some of the best wines from hundreds of local producers.

Click the pic to access the list of trattorias and their menus: booking essential!