Cantina Zaccagnini has a well publicized red wine that is often mentioned as one of the Wine Spectator's best values. I'm sure you've seen it in the stores; it has the twig cut from a grape vine twined around the neck of the bottle. Today we are writing about the white wine.
This wine is quite crisp, especially when well chilled. It has a mild nose but comes on with a bit of herb and minerals on the palate, a reasonable amount of fruit and a nice citrus finish. It is made from trebbiano and chardonnay grapes and as such has a nice round mouth feel. It is from the Abruzzo region in central Italy.
We had this wine with an interesting baked dish consisting of pieces of chicken, cauliflower, spinach, a variety of cheeses, breadcrumbs, garlic and herbs. As you can imagine, there were some pretty robust flavors going on in this dish but the Bianco di Ciccio turned out to be solid enough to stand up to them. It seems to have the right proportion of acidity to be a good companion to lively Italian dishes and has a clean, bright approach that would be unlikely to overwhelm a milder dish.
Served by itself as an apertivo this wine might not win many kudos but as a companion to food, it does a fine job. This is an aspect of Italian wines that we find to be quite common.
Taste: 8 out of 10
Value: 8 out of 10 if you get it on sale
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We are a typical suburban husband and wife with
two children, a dog and a cat. We also like good food and, not incidentally, good wine. It is no coincidence that we
met and fell in love over gourmet meals and fine bottles of wine. Wine tasting was one of our favorite activities.
There are two aspects to value. First, does the wine taste good? Cheap wine doesn't have to
taste cheap or nasty. Second, is it worth the money? Could we have found a similar tasting wine for a lot less money?
Could we have found much better tasting wine at the same price? These are subjective criteria but we'll give you our
opinion.
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