Better to drink than pack, 11/60: Alba

As in Dolcetto d’Alba. As in the gastronomic capital of Italy’s Piemonte, and the heartland of the Dolcetto grape variety (among others that are much more expensive).

Dolcetto is my favourite wine grape and my favourite wine, bar none. Surely pricepoint is a factor. But it’s been at least five years since I’ve been calling it my fave, so it’s shocking that it took until my 11th day of rummaging around my 5+ cases of wine that I need to drink-not-pack before I finally settled on a Dolcetto with dinner.

(What will be truly shocking is if Dolcetto’ll be my favourite at the end of this 60-day adventure to drink everything I own: Dolcetto outnumbers any other wine varietal or wine style in my collection. To be frank, aside from a few Sicilians and some Germanic-influenced wines from The Boot, it is my entire Italian red wine collection.)

Dolcetto with dinner... Dolcetto with dinner... It has a ring. I’d definitely Saumur-Champigny for lunch, but only as long as I can Dolcetto at dinner. Pio Cesare Dolcetto d’Alba 2012 is a case in point — it’s such a great accompaniment. I made roasted bell peppers and toasted walnuts on a chickpea thyme salad with garlic confit, and also served roasted broccoli and with grated Parmesan cheese on it.

Dolcetto isn’t a vegetarian wine — if there is such a thing — at all. Not at all in fact since it is so often paired with stews. But vegetarian is where it will start on Better To Drink Not Pack, and good ones, such a Pio Cesare’s classic example, demonstrate the grape’s congeniality at mealtime.

I really commune with it; I’ve totally stopped taking notes on Dolcetto.

13% alc/vol, $22.50.