Occhipinti SP68 Bianco with sushi rolls
Peanut butter and jelly. Strawberries and cream. Riesling and risotto. Some things just work. They’ve become classics, and for good reason. Combining complementing or sometimes contrasting attributes or flavors can profoundly enhance or alter your perception of flavor, and has the potential to ultimately elevate your dining experience and increase your enjoyment. Imagine for example the unexpectedly salted caramel over your creamy gelato, the sweet reprieve of finding a juicy chunk of pineapple in your spicy fried rice, or how a tart cherry gastrique becomes almost electric over a fatty, rich pork belly dish. Over centuries of gastronomy and viniculture, the bon vivants across the globe have graciously tested and established the basic guidelines for the pairing of food and wine. There are many winning classic combinations out there, and we wholeheartedly encourage you to find your own take on these trustworthy principles.
That being said, with a whole kaleidoscopic world of food and an infinite rolodex of wines from all corners of the Earth, there’s so much more fun to be had than just following the basic suggestions. Wine, with it’s structural elements of acidity, tannins, alcohol content, and fruit flavor, throws open the door to countless dynamic combinations. We’ve found that our favorite bottles are often the ones which surprise us in some way, and following that open-minded approach we’ve discovered many off-the-beaten-path possibilities in food pairing. Please join us as we savor the tried and true pairings, as well as the more outside-the-box successes we’ve found. Vaucluse and hotdogs, anyone?
For my inaugural rendition of this series, I would like to share a recent pairing, one that I stumbled upon first by accident many months ago and then found to be just as pleasurable this time around. Occhipinti SP68 Bianco with sushi rolls! Having grown up helping her uncle Giusto Occhipinti make some incredible wines at the benchmark COS estate, today Arianna Occhipinti is one of the largest operating, as well as one of the most respected, biodynamic winemakers in the world. Like her uncle at COS, she creates distinctive, authentic, and beautiful Sicilian natural wines. Her SP68 Bianco is an unfiltered, no-sulfur white (of low-yielding Zibbibo, aka Moscato di Alessandria, and Albanello grapes, grown in Sicilian red sand and sub-Appenine chalk) which is fermented with indigenous yeast, rests on its skins for fifteen days, and then spends its 6 months of aging in cement tank.
I was first delighted by Occhipinti SP68 Bianco last summer with some quick sashimi outside, and earlier on this particular day, we at Spencer & Lynn had just recieved the good news of our incoming delivery of Arianna’s current wine release. With homemade sushi on the dinner menu, I naturally decided to open the last bottle I had of the previous 2019 vintage for the occasion. We ate three different sushi rolls consisting of various combinations of salmon, tuna, cucumber, avocado, daikon radish, chili, radish greens, sesame seeds, and scallions, all served with our locally-made, robustly flavored, Moromi rye soy sauce. To our delight, the SP68 Bianco once again proved an incredible compliment to the entire meal. Much like how a subtly nuanced sake doesn’t overwhelm the delicate nature of raw fish, the 12%abv Bianco was a perfect match.
The wine pours a medium straw-gold, with intriguing pastoral and verdant aromas of straw, hay, granny smith or crab apples, unripe banana skin, and a raw dough/lees-y yeast-iness. With only about fifteen minutes of air and the cold bottle sweating on our table in the warm June evening, new aromas and flavors of stone fruit, like almost-ripe nectarines or peaches, later joined in on the fun. There is a nice underscore of chalky minerality and the palate follows the nose perfectly. We once again remarked on the similarties to our beloved Basque sidra, the tart, unfiltered, traditional alcoholic apple cider of Northern Spain. Stay tuned for those pairings, yeehaw!!
Of course, this wine is so unique unto itself (and it’s freakin delicious!!), so any comparison doesn’t accurately portray the full effect. Overall, the SP68 Bianco is dry, light-bodied, and low alcohol, with a medium acidity, and a definite yet gentle, tannic astringency. Those green, meadow, and fruit flavors are quite pronounced, which served to stand up to the bold soy and scallions. A higher-acid white, which I have a tendency to reach for when drinking with fresh seafood, probably would’ve exasperbated the chili’s heat and the soy sauce’s tang instead of accentuating the cohesive combination of all the flavors together. Combined with low levels of alcohol and a refreshingly light body, the medium acidity perfectly suited the food, since it had plenty of flavor intensity and complexity to keep up with everything happening on our plate.
With thoughtfully produced wines, an open mind, and a hungry appetite, the possibilities really are endless. I’m so excited to try this next vintage - I’m thinking either smoked fish crostinis or a burrata salad with grilled peaches and a touch of aleppo chili. Please share your favorite wine and food pairings below, or tag us on instagram when you’ve found something unexpected!
— Kim