Pasta and Wine

[Randy Caparoso]

Re your question about wine matching: Take a look at your ingredients. Fresh tomato is both sweet/fruity and acidic. So is goat cheese -- earthy and slightly acidic. Spinach is a slightly acidic vegetable -- which is why it often wreaks havoc on lower acid reds (it looks innocent, but it isn't).

See where I'm going. If anything, drink a light to medium bodied red with moderate tannin and, most importantly, a slightly acidic edge. There are lots of wines like this, thank goodness. Chianti Classico and Rosso di Montalcino from Tuscany, and Barbera and Dolcetto from Piemonte are some of the more easy-to-find examples. Chianti is made from the Sangiovese grape, and now California wineries are putting out some very attractive Sangiovese varietal bottlings that can do the trick just as well as most Italian reds. And people like Louis Martini and Sebastiani have been making great California grown Barbera for years.

There is one more wine that might make an off-beat, but interesting, match. Because goat cheese is an earthy/sharp element, a pungently earthy, mildly weedy red varietal with a slight body and slightly crisp acidity which matches up happens to be Cabernet Franc. The classic Cabernet Franc based reds of the world come from France (Chinon, Bourgueil or Saumur-Champigny from the Loire River), although there is a small number of California wineries who also put out decent tasting varietal Cabernet Franc (Niebaum-Coppola, Cosentino, Nelson, and Crocker & Starr are among my current favorites).

Okay? Good luck!