Feudo Zirtari Inzolia Chardonnay 2011 (Sicily)

Lemon juice and curd, a bit of dry herb, a salty, briny lick of flavour, this attractively-priced Sicilian white blend of Inzolia and Chardonnay is a Costco offering. Not a wide, mouth-filling shape of Sicilian white, but there is solid flavour here, especially in the mid-palate. Length, not so much, but with a plate of sardines I think this might take some beating as a $10 white.

Gift, $10, screwcap, 13% alcohol.

Sort of Sicilian

Reading Giorgio Locatelli's book Made in Sicily this morning got me thinking about Sicilian flavours. This recipe is not his, or traditional Sicilian, but works with Sicilian reds or grenache. Try using a pasta like strozzapretti or casarecce with this sauce, or bigoli if you want something longer.

Get a pot on for the pasta. Soak some sultanas in a cup with half hot water and half marsala. Heat a frypan and then take a handful of pine nuts to light gold, before tipping them out to cool. Then gentle heat into the frypan and start melting butter (about 45g per serve). Toss anchovy fillets, sage leaves, garlic & a fresh red chilli (chopped) into the butter. Cook slowly while the pasta water is coming up and then the cup or so of strozzapretti (per serve) or similar is cooking. Gentle heat will break down the anchovy, cook out the sage and colour the milk solids, without getting too much bitter and colour with the garlic.

When the pasta is just short of cooked, add the soaked sultanas to the frypan and mix some pasta water into the soaking cup. Use this to thin the sauce out, shaking the pan to emulsify. Don't worry you are losing the crispness on the sage. All part of the plan. Drain the pasta and tip into the pan with the sauce. Add more of the pasta water/soaking liquid mixture if it needs it. Cook out for a minute or two to let the pasta take the sauce. Add the pine nuts and a little black pepper. The sauce should be salty from the anchovies, savoury from the herbs and garlic and a little sweet from the sultanas and marsala, with the nut brown butter pulling it together.

Serve with a good Sicilian red wine, or some McLaren Vale grenache. No cheese. Maybe a little breadcrumbs if you use bigoli. Resist the temptation to use lemon juice in the sauce - you want the wine to bring the acid to the table.

Occhipinti SP68 Rosso 2011 (Sicily)

A night out at Italian & Sons. A call for a red, something light, to go with the food. A section of the list as 'Pinot Nero & Others'. A blend from 2011 of Nero d'Avola and Frappato. Sicily. Occhipinti rings a bell. An asterisk to a footnote of organic, biodynamic or natural wine. Let's go then.

Beef carpaccio, garnished with fried capers. A beautiful dish, both with a 'wrong' negroni and then the first of the Occhipinti. Then a wet braise of lamb in the wood-fired oven, with peas, potato and globe artichoke. Pizza funghi on the table too. The wine so brightly red-fruited, so clean and clear. Raspberry and red currant from the nero. Sour strawberry from the frappato. So well stitched together. You don't even think about tannin, or analysis. You do think about a second bottle.

Hook in.

Cork. Purchase. Retails about $40 a bottle, more on a list. Brought in by Addley Clark. Occhipinti website here.