Zi bi bò Valdibella 2022

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 How can what we read influence what we drink?

If, on the one hand, it is already proven that listening to certain kinds of music can condition or influence not only how you perceive wine but also your shopping behaviour, as this study indicates,  can reading also play an influence on your daily wine decisions.

While recently reading Jhumpa Lahiri's Roman Stories I was often confronted with a tremendous desire to have Italian wines. This feeling has grown so much inside me, that yesterday at a tasting in the shop where I work I have ended up choosing four Italian wines out of five I have given the guests to try. 

Of course there was someone who has asked me the reason of my obsession and I just simply admitted that I was on the verge of finishing Lahiri's book. For the guests who knew me there was a complicity laughter. From the others, there was a rather puzzled look at me.  Nothing that you cannot conquer with the quality of Italian wines.

Even though not all the short stories include references to wine, or are not particularly gastronomic, I did feel the urge to accompany them with Italian wines. Even if Lahiri's book often focus on the not so romantic and actual side of a 21st century Italy with all its problems, the will to have Italian wine was there.

But Italy is not always Italy and my personal fascination for Sicilian wines has taken me to go back to one of the most fascinating grapes planted in the island. Zibibbo is nothing more nothing less than the Sicilian word for Muscat of Alexandria. 

In this one, there's a pleasant dominant rose water scent which dominates the bouquet without being too intensive or conditioning the other typical notes of muscat such as its decent and seducing orange notes or light dried apricot. In the mouth it reveals an amazing lightness as if a summer breeze has just invaded you. 

Despite this lightness, it is a good flexible gastronomic wine which can perfectly match seafood or even spicier dishes curry. In fact, I love this wine with Goan shrimp Curry where the coconut milk harmonizes perfectly with the rich scents of the muscat. 

Somehow, it is one of these wines that we always feel like having around as there are always moments to open it. 


16/20
Country: Italy
Region: Sicily
Grapes: Zibibbo
12,5%
Winemaker: n/a

Website: https://valdibella.com/de/prodotto/zi-bi-bo-2/


Location: Hamburg, Germany

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