Food, Wine, Books..the Perfect Combination

Favorite thing I enjoy  about  being on my book tour for my latest release The Basic Art of Italian Cooking: Holidays & Special Occasions-2nd edition  is meeting so many ..and hearing of new little towns and places and traditions and foods..most Italian and some from other parts of the World..every culture in the World is somehow related to food.
At an event last weekend someone shared with me their Romanian grandmother’s recipe for a type of eggplant dip..A pizza maker,so proud of his pizza told me  a story of how he found out that one of his customers enjoyed his pizza with ketchup on it..so insulted he was that he told this customer he would never sell him pizza again…and on and on the food stories go…
My second favorite part is that I get to share my knowledge of wines and cooking with wine recipes and tips.. And when speaking about wines..my first suggestion is to read the label of the wine..just as if you would read a food label.. But I realized that many terms used on wine labels are in Italian and some terms are technical similar to  musical terms…you know Allegro…con vivace…con dolcezza…and not always easy  to decipher.

Here are some of my favorite wine terms you can find on bottles or  or you may over hear these terms at your next wine tasting:
Abboccato- lightly sweet
Amabile-semi sweet
Azienda Agricola or Vitivinicola-the farm or estate that produces all or most of the grapes for wine sold under its’ label
Cerasuolo- cherry-hued rose wine
Chiaretto-deep rose
Dolce- sweet
Consorzio-consortium of producers
Enologo-an enologist with a university degree
Fattoria-farm or estate
Invecchiato-aged
Frizzante-bubbly,sparkling
Imbottigliata- bottled
Passito or Passita-partially dried grapes and the strong sweet wines made from them
Rosso-red wine
Secco-dry
Spumante-sparkling dry or sweet wine
Uva-grape
Vino Novello- literally means new wine. But it is a wine that must be bottled and sold within the year of it’s harvest.
Vino da Tavola-table wine, not usually with a DOC or trademark. Most homemade wines are vino da tavola
Vendemmia- harvest
See you: 
November 13th at Borders Express in Woodbridge, NJ
December 3rd -Feast of the Seven Fishes Dinner and Book signing at Copper Fish Restaurant in Cape May, NJ
Peace, Love & Pasta,
Maria