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Leah Scurto and Chris Puppione.
Chris Puppione from Puppione Family Wines joins Steve Jaxon and Dan Berger on California Wine Country today.
Leah Scurto from PizzaLeah is also here, and she brought several different pizzas. We will try some pizza and wine pairings.
Chris Puppione starts telling the story of the family winery. He had worked in wine and thought of bottles of wine as time capsules. So when his first daughter was born, he made a wine for her to celebrate her birth. A neighbor in the Russian River area sold him one ton of Syrah grapes.
He even told a tall tale to his wife to get her to come out and prune the first grapes for their wine. When the second daughter was born he made another wine and they kept on making wine that connects to their family history. This wine they are tasting today is a 2017.
California Wine Country is brought to you by Rodney Strong Vineyards and Davis Bynum Wines.
Dan Berger discovered Puppione Family Wines when he was a judge in a blended red category at a recent competition. Immediately he liked it so much he found out who made it. It was a really low alcohol wine, which Dan likes. About 10 days later, Dan found the winery and met Chris for the first time. Chris Puppione mentions his day job, he oversees US wineries for Coravin, a company that makes wine equipment.
Pizza and Wine Pairings
Festa Bianco + Sicilian
We’re going to do pizza and wine pairing today. Leah Scurto has brought four different pizzas, each one with very different flavors. We will pair them with four Puppione wines.
The first pairing is a bottle of Festa Bianco, a white wine, with the Sicilian pizza. Festa was Chris’ grandmother’s maiden name. The Sicilian pizza has Castelvetrano olives, Italian salame, chili flakes, ricotta and a little red onion. The wine is a Friulano, which is a northern Italian white wine often mistaken for Sauvignon Blanc. It goes well with green vegetables and salads. It come from the Friuli region of Italy, which is the north-eastern part of the country, next to Slovenia.
Festa Rosso + Nico
The next pizza is the Nico, which is an award winner. It has confit garlic, fresh rosemary, black pepper and Italian sausage. This is paired with Festa Rossa, which is a blend of Syrah, Cabernet and Friulano. It is again, pretty low alcohol.
PizzaLeah’s Cold Fermentation Dough
Dan calls PizzaLeah’s pizza the most classic pizza in Sonoma County. A lot of factors make PizzaLeah’s pizza special. Importantly, the dough is made by a slow, cold fermentation process. She uses local flour from Central Milling. She makes dough fresh daily. Only after two or three days of proofing in cold storage does it become pizza. Extended fermentation makes bread more digestible. It also gives the dough the right texture. Some deep dish pizzas are not really even pizza, they are more like cake. For comparison, it’s almost more like a casserole. PizzaLeah does have two Detroit-style pan pizzas. The crust comes out looking like a brick but light as a feather when you eat it.
Juventus + Spade
Dan appreciates Chris Pappapietro’s wine for the abundant fruit flavors. To make their Friulano, he had to go up into the hills near Tahoe, to a vineyard called Snow’s Crossing. It’s an alpine wilderness. They foot stomp all of their fruit, just like his grandfather did. His kids get into the bins and stomp fruit. There are pictures of that on their site. Especially, they left the Friulano on the skins in order to get more flavors from it.
Next up is the Juventus wine, named after the goddess of youth and rejuvenation (not the soccer team). Instead, he wanted to make a red wine that would invigorate people instead of bringing heaviness. He made it in stainless steel which helps maintain the fruit flavors.
An American Pizza, An Italian Award
Syrah + Detroit Pepperoni
The Spade pizza won an award in the American category in a competition in Napoli.
The next wine is their Intero Syrah. Intero means “whole” in Italian. It is the first wine that his whole family stomped on, but also they stomped on whole clusters. Leah has paired it perfectly with the original Detroit pepperoni pizza, which is finished with their hot meatball sauce. It has a little bit of Pecorino Romano. Steve grew up in Detroit and doesn’t remember the term “Detroit” pizza, it was all just pizza. Detroit style is very popular these days.