Ever ordered a dish off a menu at a restaurant or café and found yourself thinking, “I could make that”?

Well, InterWined did last weekend, while sitting outside Carluccio’s, the popular Italian café chain, and trying to make the most of the sporadic sunshine that fell along Market Square near London’s Oxford Street. The dish was a simple Emilia-Romagna-inspired serving of parmesan cheese with balsamic vinegar.

As home to the city and Modena, the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna is rightly famed for its automotive companies. The likes of which include such exclusive brands as Ferrari, Maserati, and Lamborghini.

But the region is also home to some of Italy’s most well-known and renowned foods. After all, who isn’t familiar with parmesan cheese, proscuitto di Parma, tortellini, Bolognese sauce, and mortadella? What’s more, the region and the provinces of Modena and Emilia Reggio are home of two of the coveted balsamic vinegars “Tradizionale di Modena” and “Tradizionale di Reggio Emilia”.

And as soon as the serving reached the table, InterWined’s mind went to work. Only, instead of stopping at “I could make that”, it went a bit further and asked, “What wine would pair with that”?

Regardless of the fact that they are often served together, cheese and wine are not exactly well-suited to each other. The dairy in the cheese coats the mouth and dilutes the flavour of the wine, making it harder to distinguish quality and easier to mask impurities and imperfections. In fact, the best wines for cheese-pairing tend to be those highly fortified and concentrated in sugar, such as Port, Sherry, and…aged balsamic vinegar.

You see, balsamic vinegar is made from the must of Italian Trebbiano white wine grapes, aged and fermented over time, until they reach optimal maturity, acidity, and viscosity, and flavour. As with wine, balsamic vinegar is measured and prized in terms of age and manufacturing technique.

Because of their similarity to one another, pairing vinegar and wine proves almost impossible. But, in terms of balsamic vinegar, it can be done. The challenge is to find a wine, high in sugar able to match the concentration of fruit in the vinegar.

One such wine is the 2005 Maculan Torcolato made from 85% Vespaiola, 10% Garganega, and 5% Tocai, (13.5%), £16.99 from Oddbins and reviewed here. Made in the Italian passito-style, the wine grapes are air-dried and shrivelled, prior to vinification and maturation, to ensure a high concentration of fruit and acidity. The result is a wine with a sweetness to match that of the balsamic vinegar without being sickly: 8.8.

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