February marks the 54th installment of Wine Blogging Wednesday – a monthly online tasting/gathering of wine bloggers started by Len of Lenndevours. This month’s Wine Blogging Wednesday is hosted by David McDuff of McDuff’s Food & Wine Trail blog – and the theme for this month’s WBW is ‘A Passion for Piedmont.’
For the last few months, My wife and I have used Wine Blogging Wednesday as an occasion to have a ‘veg out at home date night’ where we cook a dinner together focused on the wine theme of the month. Unfortunately, my travel schedule this month precluded us from our cooking date – so I’m going solo for this month’s Wine Blogging Wednesday. 😦
Since I don’t know much about Piedmont wines (or Piemonte depending on your origins), I considered this month an opportunity to learn more about the wines from this region.
I’m in Maryland this week and stopped by one of my favorite wine shops, FineWine in Gaithersburg, for my Piemonte red. I opted for the Annata 2007 Dolcetto D’Alba …
Dolcetto, a northern Italian varietal, is a lighter bodied red and roughly means ‘little sweet one’ in Italian (although it produces dry wines for the most part). Piedmont is in the Northwestern region of Italy – bordering France and Switzerland.
Annata 2007 Dolcetto D’Alaba
I picked up this wine at FineWine for $21.99. 14% alcohol with real cork closure. Rich purple in color along with dark cherry, prune, tea and a pungent vanilla aroma. Not the standard oak type of vanilla, but a distinct vanilla that you would get by smelling a bottle of ‘real’ vanilla extract. Strong tannins with sour cherry in the mouth. This one definitely needed more time to open up, but I didn’t have a decanter available at the hotel. I paired this with a simple pepperoni from CPK.
Another great WBW topic!
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Drink What YOU Like 
Thanks for participating, Frank. Glad to hear you got to try something new. Dolcetto and pepperoni pizza is one of my all-time favorite food pairings, by the way.