Pasta Carbonara may be the classics of all classics of Italian first courses. Intense, creamy, and enveloping – it is the perfect form of an exhalted comfort food with eggs, cheese and cured pork coating strands of golden pasta. Hailing from the area around Rome, there are numerous tales and explanations for its origins – just like today there are countless variations adding modern twists. But what wine pairing works best with Pasta Carbonara? Sensorial Wine Analyst Luca Maroni provides three worthy options.
Pasta Carbonara with a Merlot
Quattordicisei Merlot Colline San Biagio
“The wines of Colline San Biagio’s are of exceptional richness and smoothness, oxidative integrity and executive oenological clarity. The Quattordicisei Merlot is among the best pure Merlots in Italy with its fleshy, chocolaty black cherry that lends a spicy cacao splender to its veins.
There is blackberry and black cherry on the nose alongside its first grape, ripe, spicy, sumptuously pulpy. A perfume of excellent clarity that highlights both the oenological technique of execution – truly admirably respectful of a raw material so aromatically exuberant and fragrant – and the basic viticulture, of exalted selection and density.
Thus this sample of maximum viscosity and spice power, perfect in terms of acid/soft/tannic balance of flavor, utterly absent of rusticity and bitterness of any kind, shines as densely powerful as it is harmoniously enveloping. A great red wine of near maximum analytical and sensory quality.”
Pasta Carbonara with a Franciacorta
Franciacorta Brut Millesimato Arcadia Lantieri De Paratico
“Franciacorta Brut Millesimato Arcadia by Lantieri De Paratico is among the most balanced and integral Franciacorta wines.”
This sparkling wine chosen by Luca Maroni for pairing with Pasta Carbonara has a pale lunar yellow color, with very fine perlage, which is persistent and continuous. The nose is a perfect bouquet of elegant and fresh yeasty scents; it is striking for its fragrance and fullness, combining a fruity vein with tones of vanilla and brioche bread. On the palate it expresses a caressing effervescence, a nice acid edge supporting an intense and soft fruitiness, with tropical notes of ripe exotic fruit; on the finish it appears long satisfying and persistent.
Pasta Carbonara with a blend of Malvasia del Lazio, Trebbiano, Malvasia di Candia, Trebbiano, Bombino
Eremo Tuscolano Frascati Superiore Valle Vermiglia
“Eremo Tuscolano Frascati Superiore from Azienda Agricola Valle Vermiglia proves to be among the most persuasive, soft and balanced Frascatis around. Dense because of its excellent extractive availabilities, the enological clarity of its transformation amplifies the expressive purity of its raw gifts of aroma. It’ fruit, flower and spice in limpid, stainless effusion.”