Last Sunday in Hong Kong when there was still plenty of sunshine in the morning, it poured during the afternoon. Staying at home all day and don’t want to go out even for dinner, I ordered a Pepperoni pizza. To match with pizza, Chianti has always been my first choice. The high acidity of Chianti as well as its sour cherry flavours work very well with the tomato sauce in pizza. Unfortunately, I don’t have any Chianti at my home cellar and so I decided to open a bottle of Barolo instead. Although also high in acidity, I don’t think Barolo would work as well as Chianti given it is much more tannic. Yet, I hope it is still an acceptable match. I opened a bottle of 2004 Massolino Barolo Serralunga d’Alba.
Massolino has been producing Barolo for four generations already. Their vineyards are located in Serralunga d’Alba. This is the region producing Barolo with very high level of tannins, muscular in style and with long ageing potential. Probably for this reason, this 2004 Massolino Barolo Serralunga d’Alba is still too young to be consumed. It is still very tannic luckily they are ripe and fine. The nose is initially quite closed but opened a lot after decanting. Floral, rose, bitter cherry, dried herbs and mint in its nose. In palate, the flavour of sour cherry become much more dominant.
How it match with my pizza? As expected, not as good as Chianti. Really too tannic that work much better with red meat or hard cheese. I think I better keep a few bottles of Chianti at home in future!