My husband came home with a bottle of 1998 Gróf Degenfeld Tokaji Aszú 5 Puttonyos. We met in 1998, just about an hour from the Degenfeld estate in Tarcal, in Hungary's Tokaj-Hegyalja region. He had clearly been thinking about this bottle for a while. I, meanwhile, had to decide what to serve with it. A cheese plate wasn't going to cut it. Not for this one. Gróf Degenfeld Wine Estate and Castle Hotel | The Terézia Chapel (Theresa Chapel), Tarcal, Tokaj-Hegyalja region, Hungary have written about my foie gras obsession before. More than once, probably. So when the question of what to eat with this Tokaji came up, there wasn't much deliberation. Foie gras it would be. Only this time, instead of buying it ready-made, I decided to make foie gras torchon myself. This seemed like a good idea until I was standing in the kitchen with a very expensive duck liver, a pair of tweezers and absolutely no certainty that I knew what I was doing. Torchon means cloth in French. The foie gras is seasoned, rolled into a cylinder, wrapped in cheesecloth, cured and briefly poached. The finished torchon can be sliced into neat rounds, with a texture that's quite different from a pâté: smooth, delicate and firm enough to hold its shape. I followed J. Kenji López-Alt's recipe for Serious Eats, with a few adjustments of my own. Making the torchon You need good foie gras, a scale, cheesecloth, kitchen twine, patience and, as I discovered, a bamboo sushi mat. The first job is the fiddly one: separating the lobes and removing the veins with tweezers. The liver needs to be soft enough to work with, which makes the whole operation feel rather like handling very expensive Play-Doh. Mine looked a bit of a mess by the time I had finished. Apparently, this is normal. You can push it back together.Then come the salt, sugar, pepper and a little brandy. This is not the moment to improvise wildly with the quantities, so I stuck to the recipe. Rolling it into a cylinder was another matter. The bamboo sushi mat turned out to be surprisingly useful, helping me coax the liver into something resembling a proper torchon rather than a lumpy sausage. I wrapped it in cheesecloth, tied it tightly with butcher's twine, tightened it some more and put it in the refrigerator. A day or two later came the brief poach, followed by an ice bath. Then more tightening, back into the refrigerator and another night to set. By the next day, I could finally unwrap it and slice it. A thin knife warmed in hot water did the trick. It looked good. More importantly, it tasted good. Rich, smooth and delicate, with just enough structure to make those lovely little rounds. I served it with toast, a little relish and some jam. Nothing complicated. The foie gras had taken quite enough of my attention already. The final result And then there was the Tokaji The 1998 Gróf Degenfeld Tokaji Aszú 5 Puttonyos was deep gold in the glass, with honey, dried apricot and a touch of orange peel. At twenty-eight years old, it had developed beautifully without losing its freshness. The acidity was still there, balancing the sweetness and giving the wine plenty of life. With the foie gras, it was exactly what I'd hoped for. The wine's sweetness worked with the richness of the liver, while its acidity kept the combination from becoming too heavy. A little toast, a slice of torchon, a sip of Tokaji. There's something lovely about opening a wine that connects so directly to a place and a time in your own life. And there is another little piece of history in that bottle. When this wine was made in 1998, the Degenfeld family had only recently returned to Tokaj. After losing their estates after the Second World War, Count Sándor Degenfeld returned in 1994 and acquired an estate in Tokaj; the family rebuilt the winery and produced its first harvest in 1996. So this was still a young estate finding its feet, making a wine that would eventually sit, twenty-eight years later, on our Thanksgiving table in Calgary. Not a bad journey for a bottle. As for the romance, my husband gets full credit. I just made sure it had foie gras. Egészségedre! - To your health. Cheers! Happy sipping and savouring!

👩‍🍳 - Jump to recipe, but fair warning: you’ll miss all my brilliantly unnecessary (and deeply entertaining) ranting. Fall has arrived, which means it's time to put away the salad ambitions and get serious about food that comes in a bowl. And if there is one thing Hungarians are very good at, it’s taking that bowl of comfort food very seriously. Yes, we can be a little confident about things. We have a tendency to believe we invented all the good stuff, and naturally, our paprika is the best. Obviously. We can argue about plenty of things. But gulyás - pronounced GOO-yahsh - is one of those things Hungarians tend to claim without much hesitation. It’s Hungarian. Of course it is. Except, like most food with a few centuries behind it, the story is a little more complicated than that. Better known around the world as goulash, gulyás is more than just a bowl of soup. It started in the pastoral world of the Hungarian Great Plain, became associated with Hungarian national identity, crossed borders, changed along the way, and eventually gave the rest of Europe a word it could use for a whole family of paprika-scented stews. That's a pretty impressive career for a pot of soup. And yet, ask ten Hungarians for the “authentic” recipe and you'll get at least twelve answers. Someone will insist it absolutely must contain caraway. Someone else will tell you that's nonsense. There will be an argument about csipetke, those tiny pinched dumplings. Someone will have very strong feelings about potatoes. Or paprika. Or whether the beef should be browned. By the end, everyone will agree on only one thing: everyone else is making it wrong. That's gulyás for you. There is no single recipe carved in stone. There are family versions, regional versions, restaurant versions and whatever your grandmother happened to make while telling you that nobody knows how to cook anymore. The History of Gulyás Hortobágy shepherds cooking in a cauldron | 1958 I can’t pretend that the Magyars arrived in the Carpathian Basin carrying a finished gulyás recipe in their saddlebags. It would make a wonderful origin story. Unfortunately, history is rarely that cooperative. What we can say with more confidence is that gulyás grew out of the pastoral life of the Hungarian Great Plain, the Alföld. Cattle herders spent long stretches away from settled communities, moving with their herds and cooking outdoors over an open fire. Their kitchen was necessarily simple: a fire, a knife, a few practical ingredients, and a large iron cauldron — the bogrács. The meat was close at hand. Everything else had to travel well. And dinner, ideally, happened in one pot. Even the name points back to this world. Gulyás means cattle herder - a word still used in Hungarian today. The dish took its name from the people who spent their days tending the herds, cooking outdoors on the plain, rather than from an aristocratic kitchen or a carefully written recipe. A quiet tanya on the Hungarian Great Plain (Alföld), with the iconic Nine-Hole Bridge (Kilenclyukú híd) in Hortobágy. And the early versions certainly weren't the paprika-heavy gulyás we know today. Because paprika came later. Paprika originated in the Americas and reached Europe through several routes, including the Ottoman world and the Balkans. It gradually made its way into Hungarian cooking and became increasingly important during the 18th century. By the time Hungarian cooks were turning paprika into one of the defining flavours of the national cuisine, the old pastoral meat dish had acquired a very different identity. And, because apparently I have things to say about paprika, I've devoted an entire article to it. I'm not saying it's my magnum opus. But I'm also not saying it isn't one of my more important contributions to civilization. You can read my paprika oeuvre here. Then things got interesting. During the late 18th and 19th centuries, Hungarian national identity was taking shape, and food became part of that story. Dishes associated with rural Hungary, the Great Plain and ordinary people suddenly had a much bigger cultural job to do. Gulyás, pörkölt and paprikás all became part of the emerging idea of Hungarian food. And there is a lovely irony here. These weren't grand aristocratic dishes. They were associated with herders, peasants, rural life and the Great Plain. Precisely because they were associated with rural Hungary rather than an aristocratic court, they became useful symbols of Hungarian distinctiveness within the Habsburg world. They looked Hungarian. They tasted Hungarian. And, importantly, they weren't Austrian. National Goulash Competition and Shepherds’ Gathering Hortobágy, Hungary, 2022 Look, there's nothing Austrian about this guy. Those indigo gatya are about as far from lederhosen as you can get. No alpine hat, no suspenders, no questionable amount of felt. We're in Hungary, people. And this is the 21st-century version of the dude. Now imagine him 250 years ago. The large animals behind him are our very own szürkemarha — Hungarian Grey Cattle. With their enormous horns and slightly prehistoric appearance, they are hard to miss. The breed is now protected as part of Hungary's agricultural and cultural heritage and is officially recognized as a Hungarikum. But the Grey Cattle were more than a picturesque backdrop. From the Middle Ages onward, they became an important Hungarian export, connecting the Great Plain to a much larger European trading network. Along those routes, people, money, goods and ideas moved in both directions. I'm not suggesting a Hungarian cow wandered into Vienna carrying a recipe for gulyás. Although that would make an excellent children's book. By the 19th century, gulyás and its relatives were appearing in cookbooks, dictionaries and restaurants, and the food was increasingly treated as distinctly Hungarian. The modern gulyásleves - literally “goulash soup” - developed along the way. The name carried forward the memory of the herdsman's dish even as the recipe, terminology and setting changed. So the soup in your bowl today isn't some perfectly preserved recipe, carved in wood and embroidered in silk, passed down unchanged from a 12th-century herdsman. Lovely story. Probably not how it happened. Its roots are pastoral. Its ingredients changed. Its terminology shifted. And eventually, the dish became a national symbol. Then the 20th century gave goulash another strange little career. After the suppression of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the Kádár era brought a more consumer-oriented and economically flexible form of state socialism. The Western nickname for it became “Goulash Communism.” From herdsman's cauldron to national identity to political shorthand. Not bad for soup. Gulyás vs. Pörkölt So how did we get from a pastoral meat dish cooked by herdsmen to the thick paprika-heavy stew that much of the world now calls “goulash”? This is where things get confusing. Historically, gulyás, pörkölt and paprikás weren't always separated into the neat categories we use today. The terminology shifted, recipes overlapped, and regional usage wasn't always consistent. But if you're sitting in a Hungarian restaurant today, the distinction matters. Gulyás is soup. Pörkölt is stew. The gulyásleves most Hungarians would recognize today has a rich, savoury broth, chunks of beef and plenty of vegetables: potatoes, carrots, parsley root and celery root, with csipetke depending on the cook. Hearty, absolutely. Thick, no. The broth is the point. Pörkölt, on the other hand, uses relatively little liquid. It's a thick, paprika-rich stew built around meat, onions and paprika. Beef, pork, chicken, lamb, mushrooms — almost anything can become pörkölt. My personal favourite is csirke pörkölt. Its close relative, csirke paprikás, is the dish better known internationally as chicken paprikash. Same extended family. Very different things in the bowl. And if you're in Hungary and want to understand the difference, forget the argument. Order both. Have the gulyás as your first course and the pörkölt as the second. Problem solved. Menza, Budapest Goulash Goes Travelling The thing the world calls “goulash” isn't necessarily Hungarian gulyás. This is where I first ran into the goulash problem: I was researching food pairings for Lagrein from Alto Adige, and goulash kept appearing as a suggested match. I was intrigued. Then I discovered Goulash Triestino on a family trip to Trieste. Notice something? The goulash is a stew. I told ya. Goulash Triestino at Trattoria Al Moro Trieste | Traktoria Rustiko | Sbecolez Osteria And yes, it makes perfect sense. Trieste spent centuries inside the Habsburg world, and its goulash reflects that Central European history. It is a stew, and while it feels familiar, it isn't Hungarian gulyás. Tomatoes and rosemary can show up. Sometimes there is creamy polenta or gnocchi instead of bread. Suddenly you're somewhere else. That's what happens when food travels. Across Central Europe you'll find Austrian Saftgulasch, Czech hovězí guláš, Slovak guláš, German Gulasch and plenty of other relatives. They aren't simply Hungarian gulyás copied into another language. They're dishes that developed elsewhere, carrying a name and some culinary ideas that travelled across borders and were adapted to local tastes. The name travelled farther than the original dish. Schnitzel met a similar fate. A Few Rules Gulyás cooked in bogrács, Hungary Now, before I completely ruin my “nothing is fixed” argument by giving you rules, let's establish something. There are plenty of legitimate variations of gulyás. Families argue about them. Regions argue about them. Cooks argue about them. I am perfectly happy to join in. But corn, eggplant, okra and tofu? That's where I'm drawing the line. This is not a vegetable free-for-all. There are potatoes, carrots and celery. There can be csipetke. And yes, people will still argue about the rest. There is babgulyás, the bean version, which adds beans and makes an already substantial bowl even more substantial. And there is caraway, depending on who you ask. Which, of course, means someone will tell me I'm wrong about that too. Traditionally, and still today, especially in summer, gulyás is often cooked outdoors in a large bogrács, gently bubbling over an open fire. Restaurants get in on it too, especially the touristy ones. And yes, sometimes your soup arrives in its very own little bogrács. A little theatrical? Sure. But I kind of love it. What to Drink with Hungarian Gulyás Gulyás is hearty, but I wouldn't automatically reach for a huge, tannic red. There's already plenty happening in the pot: beef, onion, paprika, caraway, vegetables and broth. I want something juicy, savoury and reasonably fresh. Something that joins the conversation rather than taking over the table. Hungarian Wines Kadarka is where I'd start. Light-bodied, spicy and relatively low in tannin, it doesn't fight with the paprika. It has enough character to keep things interesting without making the whole meal feel heavier than it already is. Kékfrankos — known as Blaufränkisch elsewhere — works too. It brings more structure, lively acidity, dark fruit and spice. Still fresh enough for the dish, but with a little more muscle. If you want to dive deeper into Hungarian grapes, traditional wine regions and the wines themselves, I have a very lengthy article for you here. You've been warned. Beyond Hungary - If Hungarian wine isn't available Blaufränkisch, Austria: Technically the same grape as Kékfrankos, but Austrian Blaufränkisch can be wonderfully peppery, juicy and savoury. Enough structure for the beef without turning the paprika into a wrestling match. Gamay, Beaujolais, France: A very good choice if you like lighter reds. Juicy, fresh and low in tannin, with enough savoury character to work with paprika and caraway. Go to Morgon or Moulin-à-Vent if you want a little more depth. Mencía, Bierzo, Spain: This is where I'd go if you want something darker without going heavy. Black and red fruit, herbs, pepper and good acidity, usually without massive tannins. Zweigelt, Austria: Another easy match: juicy red fruit, peppery spice, fresh acidity and moderate tannin. It won't bully the stew. Cinsault, France: Soft, fragrant and not particularly tannic, with red fruit and spice. Particularly nice if your gulyás is on the more paprika-forward side. The rule, if there is one, is pretty simple:Don't let the wine make the gulyás heavier than it already is. Now, let's make gulyás. Gulyásleves - Traditional HungarianBeef Goulash Soup Serves 4-6 | PREPARATION: 30 min | COOKING TIME: 2-3 hours The Meat - For the Love of Gulyás, Read This Please, do not buy the little plastic tray of pre-cut “stew meat”. You know the one. A mysterious assortment of beef cubes, trimmed within an inch of its life and packaged as though the label were an actual cut of beef. It isn't. It's basically the butcher's way of saying, “Here are the bits we couldn't sell as anything else. We've cut them into cubes, so now they're a product”. Buy a good piece of beef chuck and cut it yourself into generous bite-sized pieces. Yes, you have to get out the knife. This is not a hardship. It takes about five minutes, and your gulyás will thank you. Chuck is my first choice because it has the marbling and connective tissue you want for a long, slow simmer. That collagen melts into the cooking liquid while the meat becomes tender and juicy instead of turning into little cubes of boiled disappointment. Beef shank is another excellent choice, especially if you like a broth with plenty of body. Beef cheeks are wonderfully rich, and cross-cut shank works beautifully. Brisket is another option, although it is generally leaner than chuck. Whatever you buy, look for some fat and connective tissue. This is not the moment to choose the leanest piece of beef because you have suddenly decided stew should be virtuous. Gulyás is slow food. Give it something to work with. And although beef is probably what most of us picture first, gulyás isn't limited to beef. Pork shoulder and mutton have their place in Hungarian cooking too. Just please don't buy the pre-cut stew meat. Ingredients For the soup: 600 g / 1.3 lb beef chuck or shank, cut into 2–3 cm (¾–1¼ inch) cubes 1 large onion or 2 medium onions, finely diced 3 cloves garlic, minced 2 large carrots, sliced 1 large parsley root, sliced (or 1 large parsnip, if parsley root isn’t available) 1 small celery root or 2–3 celery stalks, sliced 2 to 3 medium-sized potatoes, peeled and diced 1 small tomato, diced 1 Hungarian wax pepper or green bell pepper 1 tbsp sweet Hungarian paprika powder ½ tbsp hot paprika, optional 1 tbsp salt or to taste 1 tsp ground caraway 2 bay leaves, optional 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper 2 tbsp lard or neutral oil 2 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped 2.5 L / 10½ cups water, approximately For the csipetke Csipetke means “little pinched pieces” —- small pieces of firm egg dough pinched off by hand and added directly to the soup. 1 egg 80 g / ⅔ cup all-purpose flour 1 tsp salt Instructions: 1. Start the base Heat the lard in a large heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat. Add the onions and cook until soft and translucent, about 5–7 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat and stir in the sweet paprika and, if using, the hot paprika. Add about 150 ml / ⅔ cup water and return the pot to low heat. Cook gently until the onions and paprika form a thick, glossy base. Paprika burns easily. Don't rush this bit. 2. Add the beef Add the beef and stir thoroughly so it is coated in the onion-paprika mixture. Cook for a few minutes, just until the meat begins to lose its raw colour. Add the salt, black pepper, caraway, garlic, tomato, whole pepper and bay leaves. Cover and simmer gently for about 1½ hours, or until the beef is beginning to soften. Check the pot occasionally and add a little water if the mixture starts catching on the bottom. You want the meat cooking gently in a concentrated, paprika-rich base at this stage — not swimming in soup yet. 3. Add the vegetables and water Once the beef is beginning to become tender, add the carrots, parsley root, celery root and potatoes. Add enough water to make a generous, brothy soup — approximately 2.5 L / 10½ cups in total, depending on the size of your pot and how much liquid has already cooked away. Bring back to a gentle simmer. Cook for another 40–50 minutes, or until the beef and vegetables are completely tender. Taste as you go. The cooking time is a guide; tenderness is the boss. 4. Make the csipetke While the soup is cooking, combine the egg, flour and salt to make a firm dough. Pinch off tiny pieces with your fingers. They don't need to be perfectly identical. In fact, they shouldn't be. Set them aside until the soup is nearly ready. 5. Finish the soup Add the csipetke to the simmering soup and cook for about 8–10 minutes, until the little dumplings are cooked through. Taste and adjust the salt and pepper. Add the fresh parsley toward the end so it retains some of its flavour. Serve hot, with plenty of broth in every bowl. And preferably a piece of bread nearby. Because you are going to want it. A Bowl of Gulyás, Then Something Sweet Gulyás can easily be a meal on its own. A hunk of fresh bread is never a bad idea, particularly when there is that much paprika-scented broth sitting in the bowl. Something pickled on the side is also very welcome for a little acidity. And then, if you're building a more traditional Hungarian meal, things can take a decidedly sweeter turn - and they usually do. Gundel palacsinta, Budapest | Strudel House, Budapest | Mákos Guba Restaurant, Budapest | Túrógombóc, Horgonyzó, Tiszalök Palacsinta - Hungarian crêpes, thin and tender, usually filled with apricot jam or túró, the slightly tangy fresh cheese that turns up everywhere in Hungarian cooking. Or, if you want to make things properly decadent, there’s the Gundel palacsinta: walnuts, chocolate sauce and a little rum, made famous by Budapest’s century-old Gundel restaurant. Rétes - strudel. Mákos guba - poppy-seed bread pudding. Túrógombóc - sweet cottage-cheese dumplings. In other words, you have a bowl of beef, potatoes, carrots and paprika, mop up the last of the broth with bread, and then someone brings out pancakes. Apparently, this is what we call moderation. And this is where Hungary's famous sweet wines get their moment, too. A glass of Tokaji alongside the sweet course is a pretty convincing argument for saving room. (I couldn’t very well write about Hungarian dessert and leave Tokaji out of it.) Egészségedre! - To your health! - Cheers! Happy sipping and savouring!

When people daydream about a year sabbatical in France, they usually don’t picture themselves in the Alps. Paris, yes. The cafés, the grand boulevards, and the monuments. Or maybe the Côte d’Azur. Now, if you’re going to France specifically to learn about wine, Haute-Savoie probably isn’t the first place that comes to mind. It’s high, it’s Alpine, and it’s much better known for mountains, lakes and skiing than wine. We, however, ended up in the Alps. Well. Almost. We were closer to Grenoble, but let’s not let geography get in the way of a good story. My husband spent a season at Domaine Dupraz in Savoie, working long days in the vineyards, coming home tired and obsessed with the mountains. One day, he stopped to take in the view and, in his charmingly limited French, told the winemaker, Maxime: “Wow. What an absolutely gorgeous view you get to enjoy every day!” Maxime looked at him, puzzled, and replied in his equally charmingly limited English:“These are just some peaks.” Just some peaks. Because, yes, to Maxime they were just the mountains. He sees them every day. They’re there when he starts work, there when he goes home. Since he was a kid. Just some peaks. I’m not sure I’ll ever get over that. Domaine Dupraz Domaine Dupraz is a family-run estate in the Reposoir area of Apremont, with vines climbing steep hillsides at around 350 to 450 metres. The Dupraz family has been here since 1880, passed from father to son, and the estate has been certified organic since 2021. They make Altesse and Mondeuse, but Jacquère is really the heart of the place. The winemaker calls it a “mirror of the terroir”, which sounds a little grand until you’ve actually stood there and looked around. "some peaks" | Photo credit: Domaine Dupraz, Apremont, Savoie, France Bastille Day, Closed France and the Pétanque Club That year, when my husband was working in Apremont, July 14, Bastille Day, fell on a Saturday. You know, the French national holiday when everyone celebrates liberté, égalité, fraternité. We thought it would be a perfect day for a little adventure, just the two of us. The kids were off in Hungary with friends, and we’d already been in France for a few months, so naturally, we thought we knew what we were doing. The car was full of gas, we had snacks packed, and off we went into the mountains. Of course, everything was closed. Still, Chignin was beautiful. The village sits at the foot of the Bauges Mountains, surrounded by vineyards and those enormous Alpine views that make you almost forget, for a moment, that you’re hungry and nothing is open. Almost. But as luck would have it, we came across a group of gentlemen in the middle of their Bastille Day celebrations. They were the local pétanque club - oui, oui, men throwing metal balls around with the sort of concentration you’d expect from people negotiating a peace treaty. They welcomed us as if we were old friends. We were a little surprised, actually. Coming from a big city, we were used to people being rather more reserved with strangers. Here, apparently, you could just wander into a village pétanque game and be welcomed into the group. And then came the wine. Local wine. Quite a lot of it, actually. Mais oui, who needs dinner when there’s wine in a park? Thanks to the boules club, I ended up tasting several local wines. It turned out to be a much better introduction to Savoie than the carefully planned wine education I had imagined beforehand. And naturally, we took a family photo to commemorate the day, because apparently nothing says “romantic getaway” quite like an impromptu wine party with a bunch of friendly French guys playing pétanque. So, What Exactly Were We Drinking? Altesse, Jacquère, Mondeuse and Persan sound less like grape varieties and more like the cast of a Belle Époque cabaret. You can almost hear the accordion. These are grapes that belong to the landscape: the mountains, the steep vineyards, the cool Alpine climate. The y are crisp, lively whites, and reds that can be surprisingly light on their feet, and a whole collection of local varieties that seem to have completely ignored the international wine industry’s memo about becoming famous. Good. Jacquère Jacquère is probably the grape that best represents the Savoie I remember. Light white, fresh, crisp and very easy to drink. Not a lot of fuss. You’ll find it in wines from Apremont and Abymes, often with citrus, green apple and that clean, almost stony freshness you want from an Alpine white. Altesse or Roussette There’s more weight here with these whites. More texture. You can get honey, nuts, ripe fruit and sometimes something a little exotic. Roussanne or Bergeron in Savoie Another white. Roussanne is a Rhône grape, but in Savoie it’s traditionally known as Bergeron. Chignin-Bergeron can be quite a different animal from Jacquère, richer, more textured, with stone fruit, floral notes and that slightly waxy quality. Chasselas Chasselas - particularly around the French side of Lake Geneva, it’s delicate and floral white, usually quieter than some of the other Savoie whites. I know Chasselas from Switzerland, so finding it here felt a little like running into an old acquaintance in a completely different neighbourhood. Mondeuse Mondeuse is the red grape I most associate with Savoie. It makes dark, peppery wines. It doesn’t taste like Burgundy, and it certainly doesn’t taste like Northern Rhône Syrah. I have nothing against either of those wines - au contraire! But I don’t need Mondeuse pretending to be something else than the Alpine red. And there are also Gamay makes lighter, fruitier reds, and Persan, one of those old varieties that has started to make a bit of a comeback. The Appellations Savoie wine can appear under several appellations and crus, including Vin de Savoie, Apremont, Abymes, Chignin-Bergeron, Arbin and Roussette de Savoie. There is also Crémant de Savoie for sparkling wines. It sounds like a lot, and it is, particularly if you're trying to understand the region from a Calgary wine shelf rather than standing in a vineyard looking at the mountains. But that's also part of the fun. Savoie isn't a region where you can walk into a wine shop and casually choose from an enormous wall of familiar labels. Much of the wine is consumed close to home — by locals, by skiers, by people who have spent the day in the mountains and have sensibly decided that wine is part of the recovery process. I fully support this logic. The result is that Savoie can feel strangely elusive once you leave the Alps. And that's a shame. Finding Savoie Wines in Calgary In Calgary, I’d start with the independent wine shops. Metrovino Fine Wines and Market Wines are good places to look if you’re after the less obvious French bottles. Sometimes the best wine education is the one you never planned on having. Ours just happened to involve a metal ball, a village park, a bunch of French guys and no dinner whatsoever. Santé! Wines from Domaine Jean-François Quénard and Domaine de la Chancelière, both in Chignin, Savoie and the Mondeuse grape Happy sipping and savouring!

I’ve been thinking about Hermitage again. This usually happens around the same time I start thinking about lamb. Put the two on the table and I’m unlikely to ask for much else. Maybe roasted potatoes. Definitely. Hermitage and Crozes-Hermitage are two of the Northern Rhône’s great wine appellations, centred around the small town of Tain-l’Hermitage, on the left bank of the Rhône. Looking across the Rhône at the famous vine-covered slopes of Hermitage, with Tain-l’Hermitage nestled at the foot of the hill. The Tour de la Vierge, watching over from the other side of the Rhône on all that very important wine. The town sits at the foot of the Hermitage hill, with its steep terraces rising behind it. Cross the river, and you’re on the right bank, where Côte-Rôtie, Condrieu, Saint-Joseph and Cornas take over. It’s a remarkably small piece of France to contain so much wine history. And so much Syrah. We knew this part of the Rhône well. We lived close enough to come to Tain-l’Hermitage often, usually with the kids. We’d wander through town, stop in wine cellars, climb the terraces. There was always something to look at, some bottle to discover. There was also Valrhona, the world-renowned French chocolate maker founded in 1922. A very serious institution, obviously, and an excellent way to keep the children interested while their parents were busy with wine. Everyone had their priorities. Getting there was part of the adventure. Tain sits on the Rhône, opposite Tournon-sur-Rhône, and the two towns are connected by a single road bridge. If there was an accident, you were going nowhere for a while. And given the French enthusiasm for motorcycles, overtaking and treating speed limits as loose suggestions, this was not entirely theoretical. Tain-l’Hermitage Bridge | Chapelle Saint-Christophe and view from the Hermitage terraces | Caveau M. Chapoutier | Cité du Chocolat Valrhona One very small hill The remarkable thing about Hermitage is just how small it is. Hermitage AOC covers roughly 130 hectares of vines, concentrated on one steep, south-facing hill above Tain. Crozes-Hermitage, by comparison, wraps around it in a much larger crescent of more than 1,700 hectares across eleven villages. It is one little hill with a rather outsized reputation. The steep south-facing slopes, varied soils and exposure help give Hermitage its concentration and structure. The reds are based on Syrah and can be deep, powerful and tannic, with the capacity to age for decades. The whites are made from Marsanne and Roussanne, and they can age beautifully too. Crozes-Hermitage tends to be lighter, fresher and more approachable when young. It can offer excellent Northern Rhône Syrah at a fraction of the price of Hermitage, but it isn't Hermitage on sale. That distinction matters. The two appellations share a neighbourhood and a grape, but they aren't interchangeable. There is also the slightly odd question of the spelling. You may see Hermitage or Ermitage on a label. Ermitage was the older form, associated with the long-standing story of Gaspard de Sterimberg, the hermit who supposedly planted vines on the hill after returning from the Crusades. The history of how the H entered the picture is less tidy than the legend sometimes makes it sound, but Hermitage eventually became the standard spelling. Syrah: the Rhône in red Syrah Grape Syrah feels particularly at home here. The Northern Rhône is widely considered its ancestral home, and from here the grape travelled around the world, picking up different accents along the way. You’ll often see Shiraz in Australia. Same grape, very different personality. Northern Rhône Syrah tends to be savoury, peppery and fresh, with black and blue fruit held together by acidity and structured tannins. Violet, olive, leather, earth and that slightly iron-like character can appear as the wine develops. Young Northern Rhône Syrah can have something wonderfully wild about it. Not untamed exactly, but definitely not interested in behaving like a fruit bomb. And that is precisely what I want with lamb. And then there is the price. Hermitage isn't exactly a bargain wine. Finding a bottle under CA$100 takes some hunting, and the famous names can climb into the several-hundred-dollar range. The vines clearly know what the neighbourhood is worth. So when we opened a bottle that offered a way into the appellation without requiring a special occasion -or a small bank loan - I paid attention. Domaine Jean-Louis Chave - Sélection Farconnet Hermitage, 2021 For a more accessible taste of the appellation, we reached for the 2021 J.L. Chave Sélection Farconnet Hermitage, made from 100% Syrah. The Chave family has been making wine in the Northern Rhône since 1481, so they have had a little time to figure out what they’re doing. The family’s Domaine Jean-Louis Chave Hermitage comes from historic estate vineyards, including celebrated parcels such as Bessards and Clos Florentin. The Sélection wines are a different proposition: a négociant range made from fruit sourced outside the domaine’s historic holdings, offering a more accessible expression of the Chave style and of Hermitage itself. And “more accessible” doesn't mean stripped of personality. The Farconnet still has the character I want from Hermitage: pepper, savoury spice, dark fruit, earth and that slightly mineral edge that makes Syrah so good with food. There is structure and plenty of depth, but it isn't all muscle and tannin. There is freshness underneath it, which is exactly what you want when dinner involves lamb, butter and a fairly serious amount of flavour. What makes Farconnet particularly interesting is that the blend draws from three parts of the Hermitage hill: Diognières, Péléat and Greffieux. And there it is again: one very small hill, several distinct vineyard sites, and Syrah behaving slightly differently depending on where it is planted. This is part of the fun of Hermitage. You don't need a hundred vineyards spread across a huge region to find complexity. Sometimes one hill will do. The lamb If there is one thing I want with Hermitage, it is lamb. Roast lamb, slow-roasted lamb, lamb shanks. I’m not particularly fussy about the cut as long as there is enough of that savoury, slightly gamey flavour for the Syrah to get its teeth into. My favourite, though, is a rack of lamb. It’s tender, cooks quickly, and somehow manages to look impressive without requiring much culinary heroics. There is also the small but undeniable pleasure of eating meat from a bone. We can dress it up with herbs and call it dinner, but the primitive part of the brain is still quietly delighted. This is where the Hermitage earns its place. The lamb brings richness and savoury depth; the Syrah brings pepper, acidity, structure and enough earthy character to make the pairing feel almost inevitable. And since I was already going to open the bottle, I might as well make the lamb worthy of it. Herb-Crusted Rack of Lamb This is one of those dishes that looks as though you spent all afternoon cooking when, in reality, you didn't. A Frenched rack of lamb looks inherently fancy. Give it a quick sear, brush it with Dijon, press on a little herb crust and finish it in the oven. That’s it. About 30 minutes from start to finish, and it looks like a million bucks. Or, more accurately, about $80 a portion at today’s restaurant prices. Suddenly the bottle of Hermitage seems like the economical part of dinner. Serves: 2–3 | Prep time: 10 minutes | Cook time: 15–20 minutes | Resting time: 5 minutes Ingredients 1 Frenched* rack of lamb, about 450–600 g (1–1¼ lb) Salt and freshly ground black pepper 15 mL (1 tbsp) avocado oil or another neutral oil with a high smoke point 30 mL (2 tbsp) Dijon mustard 30–40 g (2–2½ tbsp) unsalted butter, softened 30 g (¼ cup) breadcrumbs or panko 30 mL (2 tbsp) finely chopped fresh herbs: parsley, thyme and / or rosemary 1–2 garlic cloves, finely minced 1 tsp (5 mL) lemon juice, optional *A Frenched rack of lamb is a premium cut with the meat, fat and connective tissue trimmed away from the rib bones, leaving the bones clean and exposed for that classic, elegant presentation. Ask your butcher to do it for you, or, if you're feeling ambitious, do it yourself! Instructions Heat the oven to 200°C (400°F). Season the lamb generously with salt and pepper on all sides. Sear the lamb. Heat the oil in a large oven-safe frying pan over medium-high heat. Start with the fat side down and let it render for 2–3 minutes, until some of the fat has melted into the pan. Use the rendered lamb fat to sear the remaining sides, turning the rack as needed until nicely browned all over. Make the crust. While the lamb is searing, mix the butter, breadcrumbs, herbs, garlic, lemon juice - if using, salt and pepper in a bowl. Remove the lamb from the pan and brush the meaty, rounded side generously with Dijon mustard. Press on the crust. Cover the mustard-coated side with the herb mixture, pressing gently so it adheres. Finish in the oven. Return the lamb to the pan, crust side up, and roast for approximately 10–12 minutes for medium-rare. Because racks vary in size, start checking the internal temperature around the 10-minute mark. For medium-rare, remove the lamb at about 52–54°C (125–130°F); it will continue to rise slightly as it rests. Rest. Let the lamb rest for 5 minutes, loosely covered with foil. Then slice between the bones into individual chops. And that's really it. Serve with roasted potatoes, a simple green vegetable or a silky purée if you're leaning into the whole restaurant-at-home thing. Then pour the Hermitage. Happy sipping and savouring!

👩‍🍳— Jump to recipe, but fair warning: you’ll miss all my brilliantly unnecessary (and deeply entertaining) ranting. Appetizer: Körözött | Main: Chicken Paprikash I Dressert : Paprika Dark Chocolate Truffles Hungarian Rhapsody Explained I’ve arrived at Hungarian Rhapsody No. 3. If that reference means nothing to you, think Franz Liszt: the original rock star (long before the Beatles, before MJ, and yes, long before K-pop) whose performances made crowds swoon and Europe collectively lose its mind. His rhapsodies, nineteen piano pieces, based on Hungarian folk themes, were Liszt’s way of turning national identity into high drama. As a Hungarian, and someone who hears culture as much as I taste it, I’ve been using them as a loose score for my Hungarikum posts (Hungarikum = a uniquely Hungarian national treasure). Rhapsody No. 1 belonged to pálinka. No. 2 was claimed by Unicum. And now comes paprika: the Hungarikum of all Hungarikums, demanding its own encore. Some subjects simply require a full orchestration. Which brings me to the other day, when I came across a viral tweet on the platform formerly known as rational discourse (now reduced to a single letter). It read: “I was today years old when I found out paprika is just ground red pepper”. Since this is a wine blog, let’s put it this way: it’s a bit like announcing you’ve just discovered that wine is squashed grapes. Technically accurate, yes, but it skips over a great deal of history, geography, and human enthusiasm. Paprika, like wine, may begin with a single agricultural product, but what happens between the field and your plate (or glass) is where things get interesting. The tweet itself was responding to someone proudly “making paprika” at home by drying and grinding a bell pepper, marvelling at how simple and revelatory the process was. And honestly, that part is charming. That is how paprika starts. It’s just that somewhere between that kitchen experiment and the spice tin on your shelf lie centuries of selective breeding, regional styles, and cultural attachment - details that tend to get lost when a tradition becomes a shortcut. My apologies, not everyone grew up in a Hungarian household where paprika functions simultaneously as seasoning, shorthand for home, and light emotional support. There are only about fourteen million of us, after all, and paprika belongs to the world now. To be clear, Hungary didn’t invent paprika. Its origins are Mesoamerican, and today it’s one of the most widely used spices on the planet- fourth most consumed, for what that’s worth if you consult Google. But the paprika most people recognize, the nuanced range of sweet, mild, and fiery varieties with real character, is where Hungary (and Spain - see later) gently enters the story. Through careful cultivation and generations of refinement, peppers were transformed from a generic ingredient into a spice with structure, personality, and regional distinction. In that sense, calling paprika “just ground red pepper” isn’t wrong, it’s simply incomplete. Much like calling Rioja “fermented fruit juice”, it tells you how something starts, but not why anyone cares. One last housekeeping note, because it always comes up: Hungarians don’t call it “Hungarian paprika” or “Magyar paprika”. It’s just paprika. Full stop. Much like how the Italians don’t go around saying Italian pasta. The word itself traveled a long linguistic road from the Latin piper via Greek peperi via the Sanskrit word pippali, to its modern form, shaped over time by the same forces that shaped the spice itself, place, patience, and a great deal of human attention. Also, across much of Central and Southeastern Europe, paprika refers to both the pepper and the ground spice, which is why the “surprise” feels very foreign to us. Capsicum annuum Paprika is a vibrant red powder made from dried and ground fruit pods of various Capsicum annuum plants - the longum variety - which includes both mild bell peppers and spicier types. Origins and Global Journey The peppers used for paprika trace their deep roots to the Americas. Wild forms evolved in northern South America, while domestication began roughly 6,000–7,000 years ago in present-day Mexico, where Indigenous civilizations, including the Aztecs and Maya, cultivated and cooked with chile peppers as everyday staples. Peppers arrived in Europe in the 16th century via Spain, following Columbus’s voyages. From there, they travelled east through Spanish–Habsburg trade networks, a period when the Habsburgs were wearing far too many crowns at once, including Spain and, eventually, Hungary. At first, peppers were treated more as botanical curiosities or medicinal plants than as food, turning up in monastery gardens and apothecaries rather than kitchens. Paprika’s true culinary breakthrough came later, during the Ottoman occupation of central Hungary in the 16th–17th centuries. The Ottomans were already well acquainted with chile peppers as practical, affordable flavour enhancers and wasted no time putting them to work. Under their influence, peppers moved from novelty to necessity, becoming widely grown, accessible, and firmly embedded in everyday cooking. So yes, peppers reached Hungary by two overlapping routes: the Habsburgs brought them in, but the Ottomans taught the region how to use them. The final, and decisive, innovation came from the peasants of the Hungarian Great Plain, who cracked the code that defines Hungarian cuisine to this day. Add ground paprika to onions gently sizzling in pork fat, and suddenly colour, aroma, and flavour bloom at once. This alchemy, known as the pörkölt base, remains the opening move for countless Hungarian dishes and quietly transformed the national menu. From that moment on, paprika stopped being merely a spice and became something closer to a personality trait. It’s everywhere: fish soup, goulash, stews, sausages- if it’s Hungarian and delicious, paprika is almost certainly involved, pulling the strings and adding just the right amount of drama. One suspects the journey was less a blessed culinary pilgrimage and more a byproduct of not-so-nice empire-building - an awkward historical footnote best acknowledged quietly. As with all culinary history, trade routes, timelines, and regional preferences are far messier than this summary suggests, even if the broad strokes remain historically sound. Paprika as a Blend: The Bordeaux Logic of Red Powder While researching this now very long (and, I hope, still entertaining) article, I had a small culinary epiphany, one of those I was today years old when I found out… moments: paprika is a blend of different paprikas. Once the surprise wears off, it’s oddly reassuring, because Hungarian paprika (and maybe others) behaves very much like wine. Different peppers bring different strengths, and the final paprika is composed for balance: colour, flavour, heat, and oil content. In other words, it’s rarely a solo act. In a wonderful short English-language report by Eater, Péter Szabó of Szabio in Kalocsa, a multi-generational Hungarian producer of high-quality paprika powder, puts it perfectly: “We blend it, because one of them is good for the colour, one of them is good for the taste, and the third one for the oil level.” If that doesn’t sound like winemaking, I’m not sure what does. Think of canonical blends: Rioja, where Tempranillo sets the structural frame while Garnacha contributes alcohol, warmth, and aromatic lift; Bordeaux, layering Cabernet Sauvignon’s tannic spine with Merlot’s mid-palate generosity; the Southern Rhône’s GSM, where Grenache delivers volume, Syrah brings colour and savoury depth, and Mourvèdre anchors the finish; or Champagne, in which Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Meunier are assembled for balance, tension, and longevity. Different components, different functions, assembled with intent into something more coherent, expressive, and age-worthy than any single element could achieve alone. Swap vineyards for pepper fields and oak barrels for drying house façades, and the logic is the same. So, paprika isn’t just ground pepper any more than wine is just fermented grape juice. It’s composition, shaped by place, process, and the people who care deeply about both. Szeged vs. Kalocsa: The Bordeaux–Burgundy Debate, Paprika Edition So, traditionally, Hungarian paprika comes from two sacred, slightly competitive regions: Szeged (SEH-ged) and Kalocsa (KAW-loh-chah), the Bordeaux and Burgundy of red powder, where terroir is measured in stews. You could also note—before anyone starts sharpening tasting spoons, that this rivalry is nowhere near as serious as French wine debates. In fact, most Hungarians happily use whatever good paprika is on hand and get on with their cooking. The Szeged vs. Kalocsa distinction only really matters if you’re from these respective regions, or a certified paprikamelier (yes, that’s paprika + sommelier in one heroic word), or someone who enjoys explaining terroir to confused dinner guests while the stew is already bubbling away quite contentedly. Szeged is Bordeaux. Powerful, sun-soaked, confident to the point of swagger. Its paprika is bold, deeply red, and aromatic in a way that announces itself the moment it hits warm fat. This is paprika with structure and tannins, if paprika had tannins. It goes in early, anchors the dish, and expects respect. Shaped by river plains, long hours of sunshine, and generations of paprika absolutists, Szeged knows exactly what it brings to the table: an elegant, slightly sweet spice with a vivid red hue and a spicy aroma that feels both familiar and refined. Beyond the spice, Szeged itself is a vibrant university city at Hungary’s southern tip near the Serbian border, rich in culture, architecture, and confidence, very Bordeaux, in both spirit and flavour. And let’s not forget szegedi halászlé, the city’s famous fish soup, intensely red, bold, and absolutely saturated with paprika, of course. Credits: Rubin Paprika and Szegedi Nemzetközi Tiszai Halfesztivál Kalocsa, naturally, is Burgundy. Kalocsa isn’t just paprika country, it’s where Hungary’s happiest flowers went to graduate from linen to tourist souvenirs. The bright embroidery that once adorned plain cloth now shows up on everything from bags to kitchen towels. Chances are the tourist trinket in your hands is inspired by these traditional patterns, and, fingers crossed, still made in Hungary. All credits: Folkpedia | Nádihegedű | Kriptáné Zsuzsa Folk Artist Unlike Szeged’s urban swagger, Kalocsa is a smaller town shaped by its surrounding villages and countryside, its traditions deeply tied to local craft and agriculture, much like Burgundy, where prestige lives in the fields, workshops, and quiet villages that define the region’s soul. More restrained, more nuanced, and quietly devastating, Kalocsa's paprika is sweeter, smoother, and obsessively refined than that of Szeged. Kalocsa didn’t just grow paprika; it classified it, studied it, graded it, and politely perfected it. Less volume, more finesse. Less shouting, more murmured approval. Paprika Harvest - all credits: Szabio Parika, Hungary @ Eater Together, they form the twin pillars of Hungarian paprika culture: power versus elegance, confidence versus precision, Bordeaux versus Burgundy, but in powdered form and far more likely to end up in a goulash than a crystal glass. Each side is utterly convinced theirs is superior, and honestly? As with wine, the correct answer is both. Choosing between them comes down to personal taste. Look past the town name and focus instead on the grade (see below), and, above all, freshness. And just like with wine, authenticity matters: paprikas from both Szeged and Kalocsa carry protected designation status, a reassuring seal that what you’re tasting is the real thing, whether your palate leans Bordeaux or Burgundy. Eight Shades of Red: How Paprika Is Classified Hungarian paprika comes in eight official grades, classified by colour, heat, and aroma. Yes, there’s a ranking system. Yes, it’s regulated. And no, this isn’t vibes, it’s paprika with paperwork, as defined by the Codex Alimentarius Hungaricus (Latin name, very real document). The most common and widely used grade is Édesnemes (Noble Sweet), the international ambassador and everyday workhorse of Hungarian kitchens. Bright red, gently sweet, with just enough warmth to behave. This is the paprika most people know abroad as "sweet Hungarian paprika", and the one you’ll find in goulash, paprikash, and most home cooking. At the refined end sits Különleges (Special Quality): maximum aroma and colour, zero heat. For people who like drama, but not pain. At the other extreme is Erős (Hot), The Final Boss. Light brown to orange, hot, high in capsaicin, and absolutely not here to make friends. Use sparingly. Respect deeply. Copyrigh: sipandsavour.blog Paprika-based Hungarian food products Beyond the familiar red powder, Hungarian paprika shows up in several distinct product forms that play different roles in the kitchen. The most common are paprika pastes, especially Piros Arany ("Red Gold"), Erős Pista ("Strong Steve"), and Édes Anna ("Sweet Ann"), proof that Hungarians even name their condiments like characters in a novel. These are concentrated pepper purées, salted, sometimes hot, sometimes mild, used the way Italians use tomato paste: stirred into soups, stews, and sauces for depth, colour, and heat. They’re not substitutes for ground paprika so much as reinforcements, adding immediacy and intensity where dried spice alone would be too polite. Paprika also defines a whole category of paprika-forward foods, particularly cured meats. Hungarian sausages (kolbász) and salamis rely on paprika for both flavour and their unmistakable red hue. It turns up in cheese spreads, and occasionally in paprika-infused oils made from pepper seeds. Taken together, these products make it clear that in Hungary, paprika isn’t just a seasoning, it’s a structural ingredient, a colourant, a condiment, and, frankly, a worldview. That worldview travels remarkably well. Even here in Canada, Hungarian friend groups still gather every winter for the unofficial- but extremely serious- kolbász-making season. There is Canadian pork, lots of Hungarian paprika, and enough pálinka to blur both measurements and memories. Paprika does more than season the sausages. It’s credited with mysterious preservative powers (sorry, but applied strictly to the sausages themselves, not the eaters, so don’t expect skin rejuvenation as a side effect). The sausages are stuffed, later smoked, and frozen in heroic quantities, allegedly meant to last "a few months", though everyone knows they’ll be gone long before spring. Countries may change; paprika loyalty does not. Call it what it is: a Hungarian sausage party: equal parts culinary tradition, group therapy, and low-grade endurance sport. While Hungary whispers in shades of red, meticulous, precise, and secretly judging your spice rack, Spain, on the other hand, kicks the door open trailing oak smoke and drama, like a paprika matador crashing a polite dinner party. 🌶️ Spanish Paprika (Pimentón) Famous for its unmistakable smoky vibe, traditional Spanish paprika, especially the legendary Pimentón de la Vera, is basically the drama queen of the spice rack - also a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO). It is produced exclusively in the La Vera valley of the Cáceres province in Extremadura, Spain. While other spices politely dry in the sun and mind their business, these peppers are slow-dried over oak fires for up to 15 days, absorbing smoke, mood, and what can only be described as a strong sense of self. The result? One pinch and the kitchen goes full wood fire and tapas bar, with a hint of unnecessary drama. It comes in three distinct personalities, because of course it does: Dulce – Sweet, mild, and effortlessly charming. Agridulce – Bittersweet, layered, and emotionally complex. Picante – Hot, loud, and absolutely not apologizing. One spice. Three moods. All iconic. Use wisely, or let it steal the entire show. Pimentón storms into dishes like paella, chorizo, patatas bravas, and roasted veggies, demanding attention, swaggering through stews and sauces, and occasionally dropping a dramatic dusting on grilled meats just to remind you who’s boss. So what’s the rest of the paprika world up to? Of course, paprika didn’t stay in Europe’s two most dramatic corners. Today, it’s grown all over the map, from the fields of the United States and Mexico to the plains of China, the hills of Serbia, the pampas of Argentina, and even the orderly polder-lands of the Netherlands. Each place brings its own personality: some peppers aim for subtlety, some for heat, some for sheer efficiency. But let’s be honest, no matter how competent these other regions are, none quite match the twin spectacles of Hungary and Spain. Everywhere else is playing catch-up, politely raising their peppers in admiration, while the old-school heavyweights continue to set the tone. The technically not real paprikas, but still part of the spicy story 🌶️ Chilis Chili Powder vs. Paprika (Let’s Clear This Up): Despite what the name suggests, “chili powder” is usually a group project, a blend of spices like cumin, garlic, oregano, and friends. Paprika, meanwhile, is a minimalist. One ingredient. One job. Dried, ground peppers. That’s it. The same single-minded purity shows up in true chile powders used in Mexican cooking and plenty of other cuisines. These aren’t blends; they’re soloists, each named after the chile it comes from. Ancho is mild and fruity, guajillo leans tangy and almost berry-like, chipotle is just a smoked jalapeño doing its thing, cayenne brings straightforward heat, and Kashmiri chile delivers that dramatic red colour with a surprisingly gentle Aleppo pepper is a mild, fruity, and tangy chili flake from the Aleppo region of Syria (now mostly grown in Turkey), known for its rich, complex flavour with hints of cumin, sumac, and dried fruit, offering a slow, building warmth rather than sharp heat, making it a versatile, all-purpose seasoning for Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, and even fusion dishes like hummus, kebabs, eggs, and roasted vegetables, acting as a great replacement for red pepper flakes. 🌶️ Espelette pepper And then there’s my personal coup de cœur : Espelette pepper - the French Basque chili that’s mild, fragrant, a little smoky, and effortlessly elegant. Think paprika’s chic European cousin who wears a Basque beret. Grown exclusively in and around the tiny French village of Espelette, this mild, fragrant chili delivers fruity, slightly smoky warmth with just enough heat. Espelette pepper is very much a finishing spice - not only by temperament, but also by economics (see the cost breakdown below). It’s meant to be sprinkled over eggs, fish, cheese, and vegetables right before serving, like a tasteful little red beret placed at the very last moment. That said, it also quietly sneaks into rubs, sauces, and soups (yes, ratatouille absolutely counts), and, because the Basque Country enjoys a gentle but confident culinary provocation, even chocolate desserts. I’ve visited the area, and enchanting doesn’t quite cover it. The French Basque countryside with its rolling green hills, half-timbered white houses trimmed in deep Basque red, and strings of bright red peppers drying on façades like edible jewelry. I was instantly and violently transported back to Hungary, specifically to those postcard-perfect village houses with façades buried under drying paprika. You know the ones: half real tradition, half aggressively marketed nostalgia if you’re standing in central Budapest. So when I saw the same thing in Espelette, walls absolutely smothered in drying peppers, I nearly teared up. My eyes. I mean it. This, clearly, is the solution for drying these little bastards: hang them on your house and let the sun do the rest. And once you start noticing it, you realize it’s everywhere. Wherever chilies matter: Hungary, Spain, Italy, Turkey, the Balkans, Mexico, parts of Asia, North Africa. Houses eventually turn red. Climate, airflow, preservation… and a quiet flex that says: yes, we take our peppers seriously. 🌶️ The Korean, The Tunisian, and The Turk - My favourite pepper pastes I cook with paprika constantly, but I also keep a small, well-traveled trio within arm’s reach.They’re not substitutes for paprika; they’re its fermented, fire-roasted, sun-dried cousins. Each bringing complexity, attitude, and a strong sense of place rather than just spice. Paprika may be the diplomat. Gochujang is the strategist: measured, fermented, quietly brilliant. Harissa, meanwhile, kicks the door in and rearranges the furniture. And then there’s biber salçası, the Turkish negotiator: concentrated, fruity, intense, and entirely capable of carrying a dish on its own without raising its voice. Gochujang Guchu, this far-eastern cousin is a staple in my kitchen. And here’s my mild culinary heresy: I often cheat on paprika with gochujang. Not gochugaru powder (though I own alarming amounts), but the fermented chile paste itself: deeper, funkier, paprika’s slightly unhinged Korean alter ego. Made from gochu, rice, meju, salt, and time, traditionally fermented outdoors in onggi jars, it brings complexity paprika simply can’t fake. Do I use it in Hungarian cooking? Absolutely. Is it traditional? Not remotely. Does it work? Disturbingly well. This isn’t heresy; it’s geopolitics. Korean chile products are easy to find. Truly great Hungarian paprika, outside Hungary, requires effort bordering on devotion. I’m not betraying tradition. I’m adapting. Survival of the spiciest. Similar to Gochujang (fermented, deep, savoury) Doubanjiang (China): Fermented broad bean–chili paste; salty, funky, and essential to Sichuan cooking. Sambal terasi (Indonesia): Chili paste with fermented shrimp - less sweet, more punch. Harissa And then there’s harissa, paprika’s hot-headed North African cousin. A fiery Tunisian paste of roasted red peppers, garlic, olive oil, cumin, coriander, caraway, and sometimes rose petals (because... drama), it’s smoky, earthy, and loud. I use it the way others use good judgment: stirred into stews, rubbed on vegetables, occasionally slipped where it has no business being. Similar to Harissa (spiced, aromatic, paste-like) Sambal oelek (Indonesia): Pure chili paste; harissa’s stripped-down, no-spice cousin. Adjika (Georgia/Caucasus): Chili paste with garlic, herbs, and walnuts; complex, aromatic, intense. Biber salçası Think of this as Turkey's answer to paprika after a long, intense sabbatical in Anatolia. It’s pepper paste, sweet or hot, slowly cooked down until it becomes deeply concentrated, fruity, and savoury. Thicker, bolder, and far more serious than powdered paprika, biber salçası doesn’t sprinkle itself politely; it shows up, anchors the dish, and quietly judges everything else in the pot. Biber salçası is a foundation ingredient, not a garnish. A little goes a long way, and it likes to be warmed in fat first, just like paprika, so it can bloom and behave properly. It shines in soups & stews (stir a spoonful into lentil soup, bean stews, or anything vaguely tomato-based), egg dishes: fry gently in olive oil or butter, then add eggs for a Turkish-style breakfast moment . Also excellent swirled into shakshuka (eggs poached in a flavorful, spiced tomato and pepper sauce). Meat dishes as the backbone for lamb, beef, or chicken stews, köfte mixtures, or meatballs. One spoon can replace both tomato paste and paprika in a pinch (don’t tell Hungary). How much? Start with ½–1 teaspoon and work up. This is a paste with authority. Mildly Heretical Substitutions (Proceed With Intent) Now, speaking of substitutions. Yes, there is a debate on the social-media world, but let me tell you what I actually think. Beyond the occasional gochujang detour mentioned above, I find it can work surprisingly well as a substitute for Hungarian paprika in stew-type dishes: paprikás, gulyás (yes, it’s a soup, not a stew, but you start with a stew and then water it up, don’t fight me). Used thoughtfully, it adds a different, deeper umami dimension that can be genuinely delicious. Hungarian paprika and Spanish smoked paprika, however? Not interchangeable. At all. The smokiness of Spanish pimentón simply doesn’t behave in Hungarian recipes. Which is ironic, because smoking is absolutely part of Hungarian cuisine, just not applied to paprika. And while I won’t pretend to be an expert on Spanish cuisine, I’m fairly certain that smokiness is essential there, whereas Hungarian paprika is intentionally unsmoked. Also, because smoked Spanish paprika has already been heat-treated during smoking and carries fragile smoke aromatics, you need to cook with it more cautiously than unsmoked Hungarian paprika. In practice, that means: Hungarian (unsmoked) paprika can be gently bloomed in oil or butter at low heat for a few seconds to build sweetness and colour. Smoked Spanish paprika should be treated more like a finishing spice: either added off the heat, stirred in after liquids are added, or bloomed very briefly at the lowest possible temperature. If you cook them the same way, the smoked paprika and all the chilies, are far more likely to tip into bitterness, while Hungarian paprika is more forgiving and actually benefits from that initial fat contact. So the technique doesn’t radically change, but the margin for error absolutely does. Smoked paprika demands restraint; Hungarian paprika rewards confidence. So yes: as tempting as substitutions are, my general advice is to keep the original spice with its original cuisine-unless you know what you’re doing, or you’re feeling brave, curious, and ready to accept responsibility for your choices. Culinary and Science Facts Vitamins: Paprika has a remarkably high Vitamin C content, pound for pound, it contains significantly more than citrus fruits, which (because this is Hungary) did not go unnoticed. In the 1930s, Nobel Prize–winning Hungarian chemist Albert Szent-Györgyi looked at a pepper and thought, “There’s science in here”. He went on to isolate vitamin C from it, casually changing nutritional history with what was essentially a very well-aimed paprika moment. Hungary: not inventing the pepper, not inventing vitamin C, just discovering it hiding in plain sight and winning a Nobel Prize for good measure. More Cooking Tip: Paprika's flavours are fat-soluble, so briefly frying it in oil or butter at the start of cooking intensifies its taste. However, it burns easily due to its sugar content, so it should be cooked over low to medium heat. Paprika shelf life: Paprika doesn’t expire, it just gets sad. For best colour and flavour, use ground paprika within 6–12 months (smoked even sooner). Store it airtight, away from heat and light, not above the stove. If it’s brown, smells like nothing, and tastes like regret, it’s done. And no, the paprika you bought five years ago won’t save your Christmas devilled eggs, open a fresh jar. The Price of Heat: A Brief Financial Reality Check Hungarian paprika is the loyal pantry workhorse, versatile, colourful, and capable of sweet, mild, or fiery moods, all without breaking the bank, usually $2–$7 per 100 g. Spanish paprika follows with affordable drama, delivering smoke and depth for $2–$6, no second mortgage required. Espelette pepper, by contrast, lives in a very different tax bracket. Thanks to its AOP status, only a handful of Basque villages can produce it, and limited exports, it costs about $30–$70+ per 100 g, making it the haute couture of chile powders: beautiful, exclusive, and absolutely aware of its own importance. The rest of the spice drawer falls somewhere in between: Korean gochugaru is plentiful and practical at $3–$9; ancho and guajillo are comfortable crowd-pleasers at $4–$8; chipotle asks a little extra ($5–$10) for its smoky backstory; cayenne is the budget fire alarm at $3–$6; and Kashmiri paprika lands around $4–$9, selling glamour and colour more than heat. The takeaway is simple: buy less, buy better, and buy fresh. Seek out reputable spice merchants, ethnic grocers with high turnover, or producers who list origin and harvest dates. Paprika and its cousins are agricultural products, not immortal powders. Treated well, they reward you with aroma, colour, and nuance. Treated casually, they fade into red anonymity. Your cooking will notice. Where to buy them? Ideally, of course, you’d travel to these places and buy the spices locally: from a village market, from someone’s aunt, possibly wrapped in newspaper. Highly recommended. Completely impractical. Possibly illegal. I’m not freelancing this information. I have sources, a.k.a. friends from the Szeged region. And because this post clearly wasn’t long enough, I actually called them to verify the details. Their verdict? Back in the day, they almost never bought paprika in stores. Why would they? Either they grew the fruit themselves (yes, it’s technically a fruit), dried and ground the peppers at home, just like in that cheerful tweet that started this entire rant, or, occasionally, took the harvest to a proper local facility for drying and grinding. Otherwise, they bought it directly from a producer in their own village. Not the next village. Definitely not a supermarket. And absolutely not anything labeled "Hungarian-style". These days, things look a little different - even in Szeged. Fewer households make their own paprika now than they once did. Gardens have shrunk, time is tighter, and convenience has learned how to argue persuasively. But this hasn’t lowered the bar. Instead of home production, people now buy locally made paprika of excellent quality, still sourced from known producers, still village-specific, and still discussed with alarming seriousness. The method has changed; the standards have not. Think of it like growing your own grapes but taking them to a shared winery to be processed, except with less paperwork. Thankfully, paprika avoids alcohol regulations, because otherwise half of southern Hungary would be operating in a permanent legal grey zone. Back to reality, shall we? These ingredients are no longer rare unicorns. Supermarket versions are now widely available at most grocery stores, making it easier than ever to cook globally from your own kitchen. Just remember: availability is not the same as quality. Read labels, check colour and aroma, and when in doubt, buy smaller quantities more often. Spices should smell like food, not nostalgia. Hungarian paprika, Spanish pimentón, Espelette pepper, and gochugaru and all the other mentioned chilis are all available at the Calgary-based The Silk Road Spice Merchant, with several locations or online at https://silkroadspices.ca. For gochujang, my go-to is Roy’s Kitchen’s, a locally made product by my favourite Korean chef in town and his partner in crime (business, I mean), Chef Anna Jeong. Their gochujang is sold alongside other Korean specialties directly from the restaurant at 8500 Macleod Trail SE #170N, Calgary. That said, Korean-imported supermarket version of gochujang is also easy to find at most grocery stores. (Choose a product with at least 10% red pepper powder, ideally 20-40%). A Paprika-Fueled Hungarian Menu (Mostly Traditional, Mildly Rebellious) For this menu, I’ve settled on an appetizer, a proudly meat-forward main, and a dessert. The first two are traditional, everyday Hungarian fare, or at least the kind you’d expect on a proper Sunday table, complete with strong opinions, unsolicited advice, and someone insisting this is not how their mother made it. The dessert takes a small but deliberate culinary detour. Is it strictly traditional? Debatable. Is it outrageously delicious? Undeniably. It stays. Each course is paired with Hungarian wines (all mercifully available right here in Alberta), plus a few international stand-ins for those moments when your cellar, or your tolerance for specialty shopping, runs out before the paprika does. The Appetizer Körözött (KUH-roe-zut) is one of those dishes that insists on being called an appetizer while behaving very much like the main event. Officially, it’s a Hungarian paprika cheese spread. Unofficially, it’s the bowl I hover over with a spoon, making vague claims about “tasting for balance”. In its proper form, körözött is made with juhtúró (YOO-too-roh), a tangy Hungarian sheep’s milk curd that lives somewhere between cottage cheese and feta - but with more confidence and a sharper point of view. Think less polite dairy, more opinionated. Its closest relative is Slovak bryndza, which shares that same sheepy bite. Unfortunately, juhtúró does not exist in Canada. So I compromise (but tastefully) by reaching for a soft goat cheese. It understands the brief: creamy, tangy, and sturdy enough to carry paprika without collapsing under the weight of responsibility. And before anyone suggests plain cottage cheese: no. That’s not a substitution; that’s a surrender. Somewhat heartbreakingly, even in Hungary today, körözött is often made with cow’s milk cottage cheese (tehéntúró), presumably to accommodate gentler, baby-level palates, despite the continued existence of proper juhtúró, quietly wondering what it did to deserve this. You can serve körözött picnic-style or family-style, letting everyone generously slather it onto their own bread. I often stuff Hungarian sweet yellow peppers (also called paprika - see above) with körözött, slice them up, and watch them disappear; it’s dangerously delicious and never lasts long. If you’re feeling fancy, or entertaining fancy guests, it also works beautifully spooned onto elegant tasting spoons as a little amuse-bouche. Either way, it vanishes immediately. Körözött (Hungarian Paprika Cheese Spread) Appetizer / Snack / Picnic Food Servings: 6 | Prep Time: 15 minutes Ingredients 300 g / 1 ¼ cup soft goat cheese - the kind that comes in a log—works beautifully (or if you can find, sheep’s milk cheese) 60 g / ¼ cup sour cream or more for a lighter texture Fine sea salt 1 tsp ground caraway seeds 1 Tbsp sweet paprika ½ medium red onion, finely diced Instructions Combine the cheeses and sour cream in a bowl and mix until smooth. Season with salt, then stir in the paprika. Fold in the onions. Serve immediately or refrigerate. Bring to room temperature before serving. Garnish with chives and serve with bread, crackers, or raw vegetables (mostly, purple or green onions, tomatoes, and of course peppers!) Wine Pairings For the best experience, choose bright, aromatic, or fuller-bodied white wines to complement the paprika and caraway flavours. Aromatic Whites: a crisp Grüner Veltliner Austria’s flagship white grape, known in Hungary as Zöldveltelini is prized for its bright acidity, clean citrus and green-apple fruit, and its signature white-pepper spice, one of the most food-friendly profiles in the wine world. Typically fresh and mineral-driven, Grüner shows lime, apple, and white peach with a subtle herbal edge, often shaped by stainless-steel fermentation to keep things crisp and precise. That peppery lift and refreshing structure make it an ideal match for paprika-forward dishes: it cuts richness, echoes spice, and keeps the palate awake without stealing the spotlight. Peter Wetzer Weiss, 2022 Peter Wetzer 0.8 hectares of Zöldveltelini is planted on pure schist in Sopron. He took a hands-off approach in the cellar, crushing the grapes and pressing them directly into tank for fermentation, then racking and bottling the wine by gravity, without fining or filtration. Full-Bodied Whites: Furmint aged in used oak provides "greener" flavours that match the spread's richness Zsirai Betsek Furmint Betsek, one of the First Growth vineyards of the Mád Basin, is often seen as the softer, more refined side of Mád—an expression that leans toward elegance and subtlety rather than power or showmanship. This historic Tokaj site produces wines with beautifully balanced ripe fruit, lifted by cool mint, hints of white pepper, and delicate floral notes. They are not wines that demand attention right away; instead, they slowly reveal their character, gaining complexity and depth with every sip. On the palate, they start off soft and smooth, then slowly open up with layers of minerality, gentle fruit, and subtle complexity. I’ve already written about the winery itself, the family story of the Zsirai sisters and their mother, and their work in Tokaj- so this time the focus belongs to the vineyard. Betsek has a quiet authority of its own, and that character carries beautifully from the soil into the glass. And the new logo and label? Absolutely love them. Other Beverages Beer: A cold lager or a strong traditional beer pairs well with the smoky and salty notes of the cheese. Pálinka (Hungarian fruit brandy - read my delightful rant about it here), because it technically goes with everything, and since this is an appetizer… and pálinka is often an aperitif in its own right, it seems only proper to start boldly and make a few questionable-but-delightful life choices. The Main Chicken Paprikash (in Hungarian Csirkepaprikás or Paprikás csirke - Nomenclature varies. Both correct. Moving on. Let’s not open the whole pörkölt debate… that’s a separate post, brace yourself) is probably the most famous Hungarian dish after, of course, the mighty gulyás. At its heart, it’s a humble chicken stew, simmered into greatness in a rich, paprika-infused sauce: comfort food with a national identity. Growing up, this was my absolute favourite thing my mother made, always served with the non-negotiable side of nokedli: small, handmade egg-drop dumplings, somewhere between spaetzle and culinary therapy. No shortcuts, no substitutions. Somehow, this dish skipped a generation and landed squarely in my older daughter’s heart as well. Growing up in Canada, she still claimed it as her Hungarian dish. On her first solo trip to Hungary, she returned not with souvenirs but with a nokedli szaggató - the traditional dumpling dropper - smuggled home like a relic of her heritage. Not just to own it, but to use it. To make the pasta. To continue the ritual. Because some recipes aren’t just food. They’re inheritance. Yes, most people make it with chicken thighs. Fine. But please, begging you, do not make this with chicken breast only. No sauce born of breast alone will ever be proud of itself. Paprikash needs fat: from the fattier parts of the chicken and yes, from the bones. That’s where the flavour lives. That’s where the sauce learns self-respect. The real magic happens when you use the whole bird (wings, breast, even the back, plus the innards if you’re feeling traditional, or sensible). It’s richer, tastier, and exactly how grandmothers intended. You start a proper paprikás with a pörkölt alap - the Hungarian stew base: onions, garlic, a chopped pepper, and a tomato.Use animal fat if you can (pork lard is traditional), or oil if you must. I stick to olive or avocado oil for… reasons, but any neutral oil will do. The important part is when the paprika goes in: off the heat/very low heat into the fat, where it can properly bloom. Paprika is fat-soluble, as we’ve discussed at perhaps unnecessary length, and this is where the magic happens. One of the biggest mistakes I see from many international cooks — restaurants, bloggers, even professional chefs — is using far too much tomato and bell pepper. No, this is not a Basque chicken dish or some Mediterranean vegetable stew. Hungarian chicken paprikás, and really any proper pörkölt, is surprisingly restrained with vegetables. The base is conservative by design because the paprika is meant to be the star. Once the dish becomes overloaded with tomato, the spice gets buried and the entire flavour profile shifts away from what makes Hungarian cooking distinct in the first place. You can finish with a generous sour-cream thickening. I never do. Nor did my mother, or her mother, or hers before that. I prefer to leave it exactly as it is: glossy, paprika-rich, savoury goodness. Serve with galuska / nokedli (Hungarian dumplings) and consider the job done. How to Cut Up a Whole Chicken (Quick Guide) Remove legs: Cut skin between leg and body, pull back to pop the joint, and cut through. Separate thigh & drumstick: Cut along the natural fat line. Remove wings: Lift wing, find the joint, and cut through. Breast & back: You can cut out the backbone and save for stock or leave it on with each breast halves. Depending in the size of your bird, cut each half into 2–3 pieces. Result: 10–12 pieces: 2 drumsticks, 2 thighs, 2 wings, and 4–6 breast pieces. Hungarian Chicken Paprikash Serves 6 (or 3 teenagers) | Prep time: 25 minutes | Cook time: 1 hour Ingredients 1 whole chicken, cut into pieces 1 large yellow onion 1 small fresh Hungarian wax pepper, sweet or hot (your call), or ½ green bell pepper 1 large tomato 2 garlic cloves 2 Tbsp oil or lard 2 Tbsp Hungarian paprika (choose your grade; Hungary has opinions - see above) Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste Instructions Prep the ingredients Clean and rinse the chicken, then cut it into pieces (see above). Salt generously and set aside. Wash the vegetables. Chop the pepper and tomato into small pieces. Peel and finely dice the onions. Leave the garlic cloves whole, but give them a light crush, just enough to wake them up. Optional, but civilized: If you feel like it, peel the tomatoes before chopping (using the hot-water blanching method). This keeps the skins from floating around later like tiny life rafts. Not mandatory, plenty of people don’t bother, but it does make the sauce behave better. Build the base Heat the oil or lard in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onions and sauté for 3–4 minutes, until soft and translucent but not browned. This is foundation work; take it seriously. The paprika moment Pull the pot off the heat, sprinkle in the paprika and stir immediately. Let it cook for 5–10 seconds only, just long enough to bloom in the fat and turn fragrant. Do not let it burn. Add the garlic, pepper, and tomato. Cook for a few minutes, until lightly softened. Pour in ¼–⅓ cup (60–80 ml) water, stir well, and let the paprika fully dissolve into the sauce. Season with salt and pepper. Cook the chicken Add the chicken pieces and turn to coat them thoroughly in the paprika base. Let them take on a little colour on all sides. Pour in just enough water to barely cover the meat (about 2–2½ cups / 475–600 ml). Bring to a gentle boil, then reduce the heat, cover, and simmer for 45 minutes- 1 hour, until the chicken is tender and the sauce has thickened. Add a bit more water during cooking if needed, but don’t drown it. TIP: Avoid stirring the chicken too much at this stage, it’s tender and can easily break apart. If anything sticks, gently tilt or swirl the pot to release the pieces instead of attacking them with a spoon. Serve hot with freshly made galuska, also called nokedli, the same beloved Hungarian dumpling, just wearing two perfectly acceptable names. Galuska (aka, Nokedli, Hungarian Dumplings) Serves 6 (or 3 teenagers) | Prep time: 10 minutes Cook time: 20 minutes Make the galuska while the paprikás cooks. (Pasta can be substituted - think German or Italian egg pastas or Spätzle or elbow macaroni, but these dumplings are traditional.) You’ll need a simple tool for this, Amazon makes it easy. Search for a spaetzle maker (galuska/nokedli’s more organized cousin). Flat grater boards, sliding hoppers, and colander-style presses all work; they just produce slightly different noodle personalities. Ingredients 400 g / 3.5 cups all-purpose flour 2 eggs 350 ml / 1.5 cups water 1 tsp salt Instructions Make the dough: In a bowl, mix the flour, eggs, salt, and water. Add the water gradually until you get a soft, galuska-style batter that slowly falls from a spoon. Cook: Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Using a dumpling cutter or a spoon, drop small pieces of dough into the boiling water. When the dumplings float to the surface, cook for another 1–2 minutes. Drain the galuska, toss lightly with a little oil or lard so they don’t stick together, and serve hot alongside chicken paprikash. Sour Cream Habarás (Thickening) 150 ml / ⅔ cup Sour Cream 50 g / ⅓ cup All-purpose flour Salt, to taste Once the meat is cooked, remove it from the pot. In a bowl, mix the flour and sour cream until smooth and lump-free. Gradually whisk in a little of the hot sauce to temper the mixture. Pour the thickening back into the sauce and bring it to a gentle boil. To serve: Pour it over the meat and gently incorporate it into the sauce, you can mix it in completely for a smooth, homogeneous finish, or leave it lightly marbled if you prefer. Serve hot, with freshly made galuska. Wine Pairings For an authentic experience, look for Hungarian varietals that naturally complement the local spice profile: Traditional Hungarian Wine Options Kadarka : Since it practically rhymes with paprika, Kadarka feels less like a pairing choice and more like destiny, making it the number one wine for this dish. Kadarka is often considered the gold standard pairing for paprikás: a light, spicy red with bright acidity and fresh red-fruit notes (cherry, raspberry) that cuts through the creamy sauce without overwhelming the chicken. Heimann & Fiai of Szekszárd (South-West Hungary) are leading champions of the grape, working organically with a low-intervention, terroir-driven approach. Their Kadarka, often likened to Pinot Noir or Gamay, shows red fruit, pink pepper, soft tannins, and herbal lift, ranging from vibrant regional bottling to delicate single-vineyard expressions. Dry Tokaji Furmint: A crisp, mineral-driven white wine with slight floral notes. Its acidity lifts the richness of the dish, providing a refreshing counterpoint to the heavy sour cream - if you are adding that - see my recommendation for Furmint above. Kékfrankos (Blaufränkisch): Another excellent Hungarian red option, offering moderate tannins and spicy, dark berry notes that echo the smokiness of the paprika - see my recommendation for Kékfrankos here. International Wine Options If Hungarian wines are unavailable, several international varietals provide a similar balance: Pinot Noir/Spätburgunder: A cool-climate Pinot Noir (such as from Burgundy or Central Otago, New Zealand) or German Spätburgunder is an ideal substitute for Kadarka. Its light body and earthy, fruity notes won't clash with the cream. Dry Riesling: A dry Alsatian or German Riesling offers bright acidity and restraint, which is essential for managing the dish's richness. Chardonnay: A medium-bodied, lightly oaked Chardonnay (like a Pouilly-Fuissé or a Chablis from Burgundy) or Piedmont, Italy or Chile, Adelaide Hill Australia can match the "opulence" of the creamy sauce while providing enough acidity to keep the palate clean. Zweigelt: An Austrian red known for its peppery notes and soft tannins, making it a natural fit for paprika-based dishes. Pairing Tips Avoid High Tannins: Heavy reds like Cabernet Sauvignon can clash with the subtle spice of paprika and feel overly "metallic" against the sour cream. Acidity is Key: Because Csirkepaprikás is traditionally served with buttery dumplings (nokedli), a wine with high acidity is necessary to refresh the palate between bites. The Dessert While Hungarians, and, frankly, anyone raised with even a whisper of dessert-related common sense, do not traditionally use paprika in sweets, modern pastry has decided that rules are more like suggestions. Preferably ignorable ones. Enter the contemporary dessert world, where paprika has been quietly smuggled into ice creams, gelatos (yes, even in Hungary, where a few brave - or reckless - gelato makers have chosen chaos), mousses, and, inevitably, chocolate truffles. So for the sake of this blog post, culinary curiosity, and light cultural provocation, I made Paprika Dark Chocolate Truffles. Classic ganache: dark chocolate and heavy cream, rolled in cocoa powder and paprika at a very controlled 10:1 ratio, because I may be unhinged, but I’m not irresponsible. The effect isn’t spicy so much as existentially confusing in a good way. And honestly, if Nestlé can market chili chocolate to children without triggering an international incident, I can absolutely make paprika truffles. Especially considering Vevey, Nestlé’s spiritual chocolate headquarters, was effectively my home turf for about a decade. This is not rebellion. This is lived experience. Possibly destiny. Definitely audacity. These are proper, old-school dark chocolate truffles: just chocolate, cream, and a little patience. Think Parisian pâtisserie energy, but made in socks, possibly while listening to something moody... and the paprika, bien sûr! Paprika Dark Chocolate Truffles 🌶️🍫 Minimal ingredients. Maximum drama. Dessert | Prep Time: 30 minutes | Chill Time: 2 hours Serves: 8-10 sensible people, or fewer chocolate-obsessed ones Ingredients The Ganache 115 g / 4 oz good-quality 75% or higher dark chocolate, finely chopped (I use 85%) 80 ml / ⅓ cup heavy cream (33%-ish) 1 tbsp butter, room temperature - must be soft! (optional, but persuasive) ¼ tsp vanilla extract (optional, but charming) A pinch of salt (highly recommended—it knows what it’s doing) The Coating ¼ cup-ish Cocoa powder, or as needed 1 teaspoons Hot Hungarian paprika (substuties: neutral/ not smoked chilis, or espelette pepper) How This Becomes Truffles? Step 1: Le Ganache 1. Melt the chocolate Double Boiler Method (I don’t own a microwave—for reasons—so this is how we do things.) Finely chop the chocolate and place it in a heatproof bowl set over a double boiler (to make one: simmer 1–2 inches of water in a saucepan and place the bowl on top, making sure it doesn’t touch the water). Stir gently until the chocolate is mostly melted, then remove from heat and let the residual warmth finish the job. Microwave Method (if you must): Place the finely chopped chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl. Heat in 15–20 second intervals at 50% power, stirring well between each round. Stop when the chocolate is mostly melted and let the remaining heat smooth it out. Do not rush this. Chocolate burns quietly and holds grudges. 2. Heat the cream Warm the cream in a small saucepan just until tiny bubbles appear around the edges. Do not let it boil. Chocolate has a long memory and will punish you with graininess. 3. Make the ganache Remove the chocolate from the double boiler and place it on the counter. Slowly pour the warm cream into the melted chocolate in three additions, stirring gently after each. Add the butter, vanilla, and salt, if using. 4. Stir to emulsify Stir with a spoon or spatula—this is coaxing, not beating—until the mixture becomes smooth, glossy, and fully emulsified. This will take a couple of minutes.At this stage, the ganache will be fluid and pourable: perfect for drizzling or dipping (strawberries highly encouraged). 5. Chill to set To turn this into a rollable truffle ganache, cover the surface directly with plastic wrap (no air gaps—condensation is not invited) and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, until firm but still pliable. Step 2: L’Art du Roulage - This Is the Sticky Part Line a baking sheet with parchment. Place cocoa and paprika powder in a small bowl. Scoop the ganache into roughly 2-teaspoon portions (about 15 g each). Precision isn’t mandatory, but uniformity feels luxurious. Roll quickly between your palms, gloves help, cocoa-dusted hands help more, and form slightly imperfect balls. Freeze for 5 minutes, then re-roll for that smooth, truffle-shop finish. Roll gently in cocoa-paprika powder, place on a serving plate, and admire your work. Storage (If They Last): Keep refrigerated in an airtight container for up to two weeks. They also freeze beautifully, though I’ve never personally tested this due to unexpected disappearances. Notes from the Chocolate Whisperer Use good chocolate. Period. Aim for 75% cacao or higher (I don’t even acknowledge anything under 85%). If you prefer it sweeter, add a touch of honey, don’t downgrade the chocolate to compensate. If your ganache splits: Add a splash of warm cream and whisk gently until glossy again. Texture goal: Soft, melt-on-the-tongue, slightly messy. Perfection is suspicious. Wine Pairings Paprika dark chocolate truffles require a wine that can stand up to the intense bitterness of high-cacao dark chocolate while complementing the warm, smoky, or slightly spicy notes of the paprika. Hungarian Pairing Options Whites from Tokaj - read my (entirely justified) rant about this singular wine region here. Late-Harvest Furmint: Bright acidity, apple skin, quince, and a mineral backbone that cuts through ganache like a well-timed aside. This pairing feels clever rather than indulgent, which suits the “existentially confusing” brief. Château Pajzos Tokaji Hárslevelű Late Harvest 2021 Our first choice, and what we pour with the spicy paprika ganache. This sweet Tokaji, made from 100% Hárslevelű, is all honeyed fruit, silky texture, and bright acidity. Think golden colour, aromas of honey and gentle spice, and a palate layered with mango, quince, pear, and ripe orchard fruit, rich, but never heavy. It’s our go-to pairing for the paprika-spiked ganache because a touch of residual sugar tames the heat, while Tokaji’s natural acidity keeps the chocolate from feeling cloying. Sweet meets spice, balance is restored, and everyone wins. The producer also makes a Late Harvest Furmint, so if you’re tempted, pick up both and taste them side by side to spot the differences. Tokaji Aszú 5 puttonyos: Classic, yes, but choose restraint. The honeyed sweetness and acidity play beautifully with bitter chocolate, while the paprika reads as warmth rather than heat. Anything richer risks turning the truffle into a dare. Tokaji Szamorodni: Less overtly sweet than Aszú, with nutty, oxidative notes that echo dark chocolate’s bitterness while letting the paprika hum quietly in the background. Think walnuts, dried fruit, and gentle spice rather than dessert wine sugar-bomb. International Wine Options: Port- Ruby or LBV (sweet): Fortified wines like Late Bottled Vintage (LBV) Port are robust enough to match the chocolate's intensity. Their residual sugar balances the bitterness of the dark chocolate and helps tame any heat from the paprika. Besides Port, these work beautifully because the truffles have a gentle heat: Banyuls or Maury (sweet Grenache reds with cocoa notes that soften spice), Pedro Ximénez (lush raisin sweetness that tames heat), Recioto della Valpolicella (smooth richness that rounds the spice). Some would pair these truffles with dry reds - think Hungarian Bikavér (Bull’s Blood), or a Malbec from Mendoza, Argentina, or Grenache from the Southern Rhône or Priorat - wines with enough body and spice to stand up to dark chocolate. That said, I prefer sweet whites here. With paprika or chili in the mix, a touch of residual sugar is not indulgence but strategy: it softens the heat, lifts the cocoa bitterness, and lets the spice behave rather than dominate. A late-harvest Tokaji or other noble-rot wine doesn’t fight the truffle, it choreographs it. In Closing: A Toast to Paprika (and Its Entire Extended Family) Paprika is not just a spice. It’s a personality, a passport, a cultural accent, and (on most days) the backbone of my cooking. Sweet or hot, Hungarian or Spanish, fermented, smoked, sun-dried, or quietly judging you from a jar, it proves that peppers are never just ground red peppers! So here’s to paprika and to the entire pepper diaspora that makes our kitchens louder, deeper, and far more interesting. May your stews be red, your wine wisely chosen, and your spice drawer forever overqualified! Cheers 🌶️🍷 Happy sipping and savouring!

👩‍🍳 - Jump to recipe, but fair warning: you’ll miss all my brilliantly unnecessary (and deeply entertaining) ranting. This was the fault of the sunset. We were driving through Jurançon in early January, having just crossed the Pyrenees from Spain, when the light started doing that thing it does in winter, turning everything gold for about five minutes and making you believe you have plenty of time. We didn't. We pulled into Clos Thou in Jurançon about ten minutes before closing. Ten minutes. I have worked behind a wine counter. I know exactly what the person inside is thinking when someone walks in ten minutes before closing. You're mentally turning off the lights. Thankfully, Julie Lapouble-Laplace was much nicer than I would have been. We tasted. We talked. I remember Julie more than I remember the tasting room, which is probably the point. And somewhere in there, Jurançon got my attention. Not because I had never heard of it. I had. But there is a difference between knowing a wine exists and suddenly thinking, oh, I want to drink this. And that was the beginning of it. Photo credit: clos.thou So, what exactly is Jurançon? Jurançon comes from Béarn, in southwest France, right up against the foothills of the Pyrenees near Pau. There are two styles you'll come across: Jurançon Sec, the dry wine, and Jurançon or Jurançon Moelleux, the sweet version. The main grapes are Gros Manseng and Petit Manseng. Gros Manseng is generally the workhorse for the dry wines; Petit Manseng is the little grape that can hang around on the vine longer, shrivelling and concentrating its sugars for the sweet wines. But sugar isn't the whole story. What makes a good sweet Jurançon interesting is the acidity. You get all that honeyed, ripe fruit, but underneath it there is this juicy freshness keeping everything from turning into syrup. Thank God for that. Because I have a serious weakness for sweet wines. I know sweet wines. Tokaji, from my home country, is probably the one I've drunk the most. Sauternes is another weakness. German Spätlese? Ja! Give me a good sweet wine and I'm happy. But I don't want sweetness for the sake of sweetness. I want the wine to have something going on underneath it. Jurançon does. Metrovino in Calgary carries both dry and sweet Jurançon from Charles Hours, as well as bottles from other producers. Finding a bottle I couldn't find Clos Thou in Calgary when I went looking for it this time, although I've bought their wines here before. No worries. Jurançon isn't exactly a one-producer region. Just ask for the stuff. And, because the name is not exactly intuitive, here's how to say it: zhoo-rahn-SOHN. For the poached pears, I used a dry Jurançon. You could use the sweet wine, but honestly, why use the good stuff to cook a pear? The dry wine gives you the fruit, floral character and acidity, and you can add honey to control the sweetness yourself. That’s what I did. And it also gave me an excuse to open the sweet Jurançon later! The Dry Jurançon for poaching The bottle I used for poaching the pears was “Juste le Blanc” a dry Jurançon made primarily from Gros Manseng by winemaker Charles Hours. His estate, Clos Uroulat, is in Monein, where the vineyards sit on steep clay-limestone slopes looking toward the Pyrenees. Charles works with his daughter, Marie, and the estate makes both dry and sweet Jurançon. And yes, the name made me smile. Juste le Blanc. Just the white. If you’ve seen the French movie Le Dîner de cons, you’ll get the joke. The title roughly translates as The Dinner of Fools, although cons is definitely a little stronger than that. The whole premise is a dinner party where each guest brings along an idiot as their guest, basically to show off how clever they are. The American remake was called Dinner for Schmucks. Because apparently the French weren’t allowed to have all the dinner-party disasters to themselves. Sweet Jurançon for pairing The sweet Jurançon is a different animal. The late-harvested Petit Manseng grapes become intensely concentrated, giving the wine flavours of ripe pear, honey, stone fruit and sometimes citrus peel and spice. It can be rich. Very rich. But again, the acidity saves it. That's what I like about these wines. You get the richness without the heaviness. And suddenly I was thinking about dessert. Specifically pears. The bottles are only 375 ml, though, which is either very sensible portion control or a rather optimistic assessment of how much wine you intend to drink with dessert. Pears, obviously I had been making poached pears with red wine for years. Sometimes, when I'm feeling particularly unhinged, Port. It's one of those desserts that looks much more impressive than it actually is. Peel some pears, pour in wine, add sugar and spices, and let the whole thing quietly happen on the stove. The problem is that pears have a personality of their own. One minute they're hard enough to break a tooth, and the next you've forgotten about them and they're collapsing in the fruit bowl. So I had a few pears. And I had Jurançon. Naturally, I wondered what would happen. Why use the good stuff to cook a pear? Because why not? I don't want Christmas potpourri. I want the wine. So the recipe is deliberately restrained. Dry Jurançon, honey, a little vanilla, a little cinnamon and pears. That's about it. No giant pile of spices trying to take over the kitchen. The wine is the point. Jurançon Wine-Poached Pears Serves 6 | Prep time: 15 minutes | Cooking time: 35 minutes Pears are either rock hard or suddenly plotting their own decomposition. One minute they are hard enough to break a tooth, and the next you’ve forgotten about them and they are sitting in the fruit bowl looking like a small biological experiment. There seems to be about a twelve-minute window between not ready and too late. I don't always catch it. Fortunately, pears get a lot more cooperative after a little time in wine. Ingredients 750 ml white wine | one bottle* 6 ripe pears 150 g sugar | ¾ cup, or 100 g honey | ⅓ cup 1 cinnamon stick Peel of ½ lemon 6-8 cloves 1-2 star anise, optional ½ vanilla bean, split lengthwise, optional 1 small piece fresh ginger, about 1 cm / ½ inch, thinly sliced, optional *I used Jurançon Sec, a dry white wine from southwest France. It's fresh and floral, with plenty of citrus and enough acidity to keep the pears from becoming overly sweet. But you absolutely don't need Jurançon. Any dry white wine will work: Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Chenin Blanc, Pinot Gris, whatever you happen to have around. Even that bottle you bought with great optimism and then discovered was, frankly, undrinkable. Actually, this is a pretty good job for it. To serve Vanilla ice cream - a no-brainer Caramelized Walnuts - why not? Jurançon Moelleux - obviously! Instructions Peel the pears, keeping the stems intact. Trim a little off the bottom of each pear so they can stand upright. Place them snugly in a large saucepan. You don't want them swimming around too much. Pour in the wine and add the sugar, cinnamon, lemon peel and any of the optional spices you're using. Bring the poaching liquid to a gentle simmer. The pears should be mostly submerged. Cover the surface with a piece of parchment paper and put the lid on the pot. Simmer gently for about 30 minutes, turning the pears occasionally so they cook evenly. They're ready when a small, sharp knife slips easily into the bottom. Don't let the liquid boil too hard. You want tender pears, not pear mush. Carefully remove the pears from the liquid and let them cool slightly. For a more concentrated syrup, pour some of the reserved poaching liquid into a small saucepan and simmer over medium heat until slightly reduced and glossy. Let it cool slightly before serving. To serve Place each pear on a plate and spoon over a little of the syrup. Finish with the walnuts, if using. Add a scoop of good vanilla ice cream. Serve chilled or just slightly cool. And yes, there should be a glass of the same white wine beside it. Preferably Jurançon Moelleux. And that's how the pears happened I suppose I could say the pears were inspired by Jurançon. But really, it was that memory from the Pyrenean sunset, the bottle of wine we brought home, and then a bowl of pears that needed using. One thing led to another. The pears went into the wine. The wine went into the saucepan. And eventually another glass of Jurançon found its way onto the table et voilà!

👩‍🍳 - Jump to recipe, but fair warning: you’ll miss all my brilliantly unnecessary (and deeply entertaining) ranting. Few things feel as effortlessly indulgent as a tray of warm gougères beside a cold glass of Crémant. The gougères are rich, airy, and loaded with buttery cheese, while the Crémant cuts through with a crisp, lively sparkle that somehow makes reaching for “just one more” feel completely reasonable. Together, they’re the sort of French aperitif pairing that can quietly turn a quick pre-dinner drink into a lingering two-hour affair - assuming you made enough to keep the tray full. Let’s start with the gougère (goo-zhair). It’s a humble little French cheese puff: small, golden, and just a touch smug. But the second you bite into one, all crisp edges and airy, cheesy centre, you start wondering why you ever settled for a bowl of crackers. At its heart, a gougère is beautifully simple: choux pastry folded with good cheese - usually Comté or Gruyère - then baked at a high heat until it rises into something light, and savoury. Then there’s Crémant - France’s sparkling wine that isn’t Champagne. It’s crisp, elegant, and full of lively bubbles, with the same quietly confident French energy as a waiter silently judging your pronunciation of, well, “Crémant” (roughly cray-mahn, though according to that same waiter, you’ll still never quite nail it). Of course, you could open a bottle of Champagne instead… but your wallet might have a few objections. And honestly, almost any sparkling wine will work here - Prosecco, Cava, or whatever chilled bottle happens to be within reach. Still, since this is a very French recipe, I like keeping it in the family and pour French. And if sparkling wine isn’t your thing, a good Chablis does the job beautifully too. A Bit of Gougère History Like many classic French dishes, the true origin of gougère is still debated. Some claim they were introduced to France during the time of Catherine de' Medici and her Italian cooks in the 16th century. Others insist the dish belongs to the Burgundy village of Flogny-la-Chapelle, which proudly calls itself the “world capital of the gougère”. According to local tradition, the modern version was created in the 19th century by a pastry chef named Monsieur Liénard. Every third weekend in May, the village basically turns into a carb-fuelled celebration during the Fête de la Gougère. Local bakers and home cooks bring out every possible variation of the pastry, while the very official-sounding Guilde des Goûteurs de Gougères does what it was clearly born to do: taste everything in sight. The “guild” is part of a French tradition of gastronomic brotherhoods (confréries), where members are playfully “knighted” in ceremonial style - not with swords, but with a lot of pride, robes, and serious commitment to eating. Think medieval honour system, but make it cheese pastry. Add a market, music, fireworks, and baking contests, and you’ve got a weekend where the only real rule is: taste first, talk about calories... never. Fête de la gougère 2022 - Flogny la Chapelle | Credit: N. Rodriguez Warning: Serving Gougères with Crémant may result in: Guests lingering too long People suddenly “not needing dinner” Someone asking if you “made these yourself?” in the same tone normally reserved for handcrafted furniture Guests pretending to take “just one more” while quietly eating seven A full conversation about moving to the French countryside Serve responsibly. Or don’t. The gougères won’t judge you. They’re already gone. Exploring France’s Crémants Crémant is a French sparkling wine made using the same traditional method as Champagne, but produced outside the Champagne region. Just as elegant, far less expensive, and usually a lot easier to open on an ordinary Tuesday. Like with champagne, the wine undergoes a second fermentation in the bottle, which creates its bubbles and gives it a crisp, elegant sparkle with a fine mousse. Depending on where it’s made, Crémant can range from fresh and citrusy, to creamy and brioche-like, to lightly floral. So while “Crémant” is specifically a French appellation category, a particularly interesting example is Crémant de Luxembourg AOC, produced in the Moselle Valley in Luxembourg, the only officially recognized Crémant produced outside France. Crémant Map of France | Copyright: sipandsavour.blog Some of the best-known styles include: Crémant d'Alsace — France’s largest Crémant producer, accounting for roughly 50% of all Crémant production in the country. Typically fresh, floral, and fruit-forward. Crémant de Bourgogne — One of the oldest and most Champagne-like styles, representing around 20% of total Crémant production. Often richer and more structured. Crémant de Loire — Known for its crisp acidity and lively character, making up approximately 18% of France’s Crémant production. Crémant du Jura — Smaller in volume but highly regarded, with mineral, nutty notes that pair beautifully with cheese-based dishes. Smaller-production Crémant regions: Crémant de Bordeaux — Fresh and fruit-forward, often with a rounder, slightly richer style thanks to Bordeaux’s climate and grape varieties. Crémant de Limoux — One of the oldest sparkling wine traditions in France, typically crisp and lively with citrus and floral notes. Crémant de Die — Light, aromatic, and gently sweet, often made with Muscat grapes for a more perfumed style. Crémant de Savoie — Alpine and refreshing, usually very crisp with bright acidity and subtle mineral notes. De Chanceny - Crémant de Loire Crémant comes in white and rosé sparkling styles. There’s no official “red Crémant”. If Burgundy wants to throw red bubbles at you, it has to call them something else, like Bourgogne Mousseux. France loves rules almost as much as it loves wine. White Crémant can be produced in two forms: Blanc de Blancs, made entirely from white grape varieties, and Blanc de Noirs, made from red grapes that are gently pressed to produce a white wine. Blanc de Blancs tends to be light and citrus-driven with notes of green apple and brioche, while Blanc de Noirs is typically more structured and richer. Rosé Crémant is typically made from red grape varieties such as Pinot Noir, Cabernet Franc, Gamay, or Pinot Meunier, depending on the region. Its pink colour comes either from brief skin contact or from blending a small amount of red wine into the base wine. Usually dry in style, Rosé Crémant is fresh and fruity, with notes of strawberry, raspberry, and redcurrant. Outside of France (and Luxembourg) Outside France and Luxembourg, wines made using the same traditional method are generally called “traditional method sparkling wines” or “méthode traditionnelle sparkling wines”. Depending on the country, traditional-method sparkling wines are often given regional names or local classifications - just to name a few: Spain — Cava is Spain’s most famous traditional-method sparkling wine, primarily produced in Catalonia. Typically fresh, citrus-driven, and value-oriented compared to Champagne. Italy — Franciacorta is Italy’s most prestigious traditional-method sparkling wine, known for richness, fine bubbles, and extended lees aging. Also, Trento DOC — A high-altitude sparkling wine style from northern Italy, often elegant, crisp, and very Champagne-like in structure. South Africa — Cap Classique (MCC), typically fresh and expressive, often blending bright acidity with ripe fruit character. Beyond these well-defined regional names, many countries also produce traditional-method sparkling wines under broader or less formal labels, including the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Hungary, and even England. Classic Cheese Gougères About 20-25 gougères, depending on size | Prep time: 20 minutes | Cook time: 25 minutes Gougères are classic French savoury cheese puffs made from choux pastry mixed with grated cheese like Gruyère, Comté, or Emmental. Light, airy, cheesy, and impossible to stop eating warm from the oven. The process is straightforward, but it does reward a bit of attention. You cook the dough, mix in the eggs, pipe it out, and bake at high heat until they’re crisp on the outside and soft in the middle. Timing matters, but not in a stressful way, more like the kind of detail you learn once and never forget. People like to dress them up these days, and it works. Fresh herbs, maybe a bit of spice or bacon if you’re leaning savoury. They’re best served warm, ideally. In the end, gougères are less of a recipe and more of a habit. Once you’ve made them, they tend to stick around. Ingredients 250 ml/ 1 cup water 1 tsp salt 75 g / 5 tbsp butter 150 g / 1¼ cups flour 4 eggs 140 g / 1½ cups grated cheese (Comté, Gruyère) ½ tbsp dried rosemary or other herbs, optional Instructions Preheat the oven to 180°C / 350°F. Line a baking tray with parchment paper. In a saucepan, combine the water, butter, and salt. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Remove the pan from the heat and add all the flour at once. Stir vigorously with a wooden spoon until a smooth dough forms. Return the pan to low heat and continue stirring for 1–2 minutes, until the dough pulls away cleanly from the sides of the pan and forms a ball. Let the dough cool slightly for about 5 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing thoroughly after each addition until smooth and glossy. Fold in the grated cheese and herbs, if using. Drop small spoonfuls of dough onto the prepared baking tray, leaving space between each gougère. You should have about 20–25 pieces depending on size. Bake for about 25 minutes, until puffed and golden brown. Once baked, turn off the oven, open the oven door slightly, and leave the gougères inside for 10 minutes to help prevent collapsing. Important: Do not open the oven door while the gougères are baking, or they may collapse. Can you make them ahead? Absolutely. Freeze them after baking, then reheat at 150°C / 300°F for 10–15 minutes to crisp them back up - but in practice, that’s more of a theory than a lived experience. Happy sipping and savouring!

👩‍🍳 - Jump to recipe, but fair warning: you’ll miss all my brilliantly unnecessary (and deeply entertaining) ranting. Echoes of the Alps Alto Adige, located in the picturesque northeastern region of Italy, has a rich and complex history shaped by its strategic position at the crossroads of the Alps. The region has witnessed early human settlements, Roman rule, and centuries of governance under the Tyrolean County, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Habsburgs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Known as Südtirol (South Tyrol) in German, the name "Alto Adige" was coined in 1810 by Napoleon for administrative purposes, reflecting the area’s layered past. Following World War I, Italy took control of the area from the Austrians, leading to some awkward Italian classes for the locals. Ultimately, the region has attained autonomous province status, highlighting the resilience and strength of its German-speaking majority within the vibrant and unique area of Trentino-Alto Adige. Alto Adige is regarded as one of Italy's most stunning regions, thanks to the majestic Dolomite Alps which feature dramatic peaks, alpine meadows, and beautiful lakes. You can hike, ski, and mountain bike your way through this stunning region, but good luck trying to figure out if you're craving risotto or schnitzel! It's like a cultural tug-of-war, with castles photobombing your vineyard selfies. Yes, Alto Adige is renowned for its exceptional wines, crafted from grapes that thrive in the region's unique climate, making each sip a true taste of the local terroir. Grape Varieties Our selected wine for this article is Lagrein, a native grape variety that produces some of my favorite Italian red wines. This indigenous grape, alongside Schiava, originates from the charming town of Bolzano, the capital of Trentino-Alto Adige, where vineyards thrive in a stunning landscape characterized by diverse soil types and microclimates. The vines are cultivated at varying elevations, ranging from 200 to 1,000 meters above sea level, benefiting from the region's 300 sunny days each year. In addition to Lagrein and Schiava, the region also produces several international grape varieties, including white grapes such as Pinot Grigio, Gewürztraminer, Chardonnay, and Pinot Blanc, as well as red grapes like Pinot Noir (locally known by its Italian name Pinot Nero or German name Blauburgunder), Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Cantina Terlano Producer Website Cantina Terlano, or Kellerei Terlan in German, is a remarkable winegrowers' cooperative owned by around 143 local growers who passionately cultivate approximately 190 hectares of vineyard, also qualified for a DOC designation of origin. Since its founding in 1893, it has earned a stellar reputation as one of Italy's premier producers of exquisite, long-lasting white wines. Located in the charming village of Terlano, just north of Bolzano, its vineyards thrive on steep slopes between 250 and 900 meters above sea level. The unique red porphyry soils, rich in minerals and quartz, coupled with a climate of warm days and cool nights, create a distinctive terroir. This combination delivers wines with remarkable minerality and freshness, along with exceptional aging potential. Their fascinating historical archive, or vinotheque, proudly showcases bottles from as far back as 1955. Approximately 70% of their production features exquisite white wines, with a special emphasis on Pinot Bianco, Chardonnay, and Sauvignon Blanc, the remaining 30% are red varieties, showcasing Lagrein and Pinot Noir. Cantina Terlano Lagrein | Alto Adige DOC | 2021 This wine is part of the winery's "Tradition" line, celebrating the rich heritage of Alto Adige's traditional grape varieties. The abundant sunshine in the valley allows the 100% Lagrein grapes to reach full maturity, resulting in a wine that is both powerful and elegantly refined. With a vibrant and expressive character that reflects its unique terroir, this Lagrein offers a delightful journey for the senses. On the palate, it reveals a juicy and harmonious blend of flavors, featuring intense aromas of dried cranberries and morello cherries. These fruit notes are elevated by floral nuances of lilac, adding complexity to each sip. The subtle undertones of chocolate weave through the profile, enriching the tasting experience and leaving a lasting impression. This wine is truly a celebration of its origin, crafted for those who appreciate the finer nuances of a remarkable vintage. Food Pairing Lagrein is a wonderfully versatile wine that pairs beautifully with a range of foods! For a delightful and uncomplicated option, consider assembling a charcuterie and cheese board featuring products from Alto Adige. One standout selection is Speck, which is readily available in many Italian grocery stores throughout North America. Speck Speck Alto Adige PGI (Protected Geographical Indication) European Union seal of quality ensures the product is made in the South Tyrol region using traditional, specific methods. It is made from carefully chosen pork leg, which is deboned and trimmed with precision. It's seasoned with a harmonious blend of spices that often includes salt, pepper, juniper berries, and bay leaves. After being cured and gently cold-smoked, Speck ages for months in the refreshing mountain air, allowing its exceptional flavour to develop. My Hungarian palate leans more toward enjoying Speck than Prosciutto di Parma or Jamón Ibérico. Although all three are made from the hind legs of pigs, they are like siblings who have taken different paths in life. Speck is the rebellious one, gaining a smoky flavour from its unique background that blends Northern European smoking techniques with Mediterranean air-curing, highlighting the rich culinary heritage of Alto Adige. In contrast, Prosciutto and Jamón Ibérico are the refined scholars, relying on air-curing and thriving in the warm, dry climates of their Mediterranean homelands. Growing up, my father was known as the family ham artist, and during winter, he always had one hanging in our pantry, resembling a sort of meat chandelier. I remember as a kid looking longingly at the shiny, machine-made hams in the grocery store, dreaming of their mass-produced perfection while eyeing the rustic 'handmade' ham we had at home. Little did I know that the handmade ham was the true culinary hero all along, much like the Alpine Speck. Speck form Recla | Alto Adige PGI, a family-owned company producing Speck since 1620. The producer's website also suggests these simple pairings: "A good combination with beef olives with creamed potatoes, or braised haunch of venison with red cabbage; also with hard cheeses like mature Parmesan." Speck Wrapped Pork Tenderloin with Red Wine Reduction Serves: 4 | Prep: 10 minutes | Cook: 30 minutes Pork Tenderloin Ingredients: 8- 10 slices of Speck ham, long enough to wrap around the pork 1 1/2 times 1 lb / 500g pork tenderloin Salt and pepper 1 tbsp olive oil Instructions: Preheat the oven to 200°C (390°F) or 180°C (fan). Lay the slices of ham vertically on a cutting board, slightly overlapping them. Ensure you have enough slices to wrap the pork tenderloin completely. Season the room temperature pork tenderloin generously with salt and pepper. Tuck the thin end of the fillet under to create a uniform thickness from end to end. In an oven-proof skillet, heat the olive oil over high heat. Sear the pork tenderloin on all sides until it is nicely browned. (Don't worry about cooking it through, as it will finish cooking in the oven.) Once browned, remove the pork from the skillet and let it cool enough to handle. To wrap the pork, place it at the end of the arranged ham strips closest to you. Use a long knife to lift the ham under the pork and roll it tightly, ensuring the ham wraps around the fillet. Finish with the seam side down. Transfer the skillet to the preheated oven and bake for 25 minutes, or until the internal temperature of the pork reaches 65°C (149°F). At the 20-minute mark, baste the pork with the pan juices to keep it moist. Remove the skillet from the oven and let the pork rest for 5 minutes. Baste once more just before serving. To serve, slice the pork into thick pieces and enjoy with the Red Wine Reduction. Serve with mash potatoes or grilled vegetables. Red Wine Reduction Serves: 4 | Prep: 5 minutes | Cook: 20 minutes Ingredients: 1/2 cup dry red wine 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar 1 tablespoon butter 1 tablespoon brown sugar, packed or honey pinch of salt and pepper Instructions: To make the red wine reduction, whisk together wine, balsamic vinegar, brown sugar, and salt in a small saucepan. Bring the mixture to a boil. Once boiling, reduce the heat to a simmer. Stir frequently to prevent the vinegar and wine from burning. Simmer until the sauce is reduced by half or reaches your desired thickness, usually about 15 to 20 minutes. Keep in mind that the glaze will continue to thicken as it cools. Happy sipping and savouring!

👩‍🍳 - Jump to recipe, but fair warning: you’ll miss all my brilliantly unnecessary (and deeply entertaining) ranting. I first made it down to the far south of Europe in 2014, on a trip through Sicily. We drove all the way down to Pachino, a small town in the province of Syracuse, right at the southeastern tip of the island. And when I say far south, I mean it. This is pretty much as far south as you can drive in Europe. Yes, I know. There is the Strait of Messina. But that involves a ferry, and I’m not counting a journey that requires a boat and a heroic supply of arancini. Spiaggia dei Due Mari - Beach of the Two Seas - where the Ionian and Mediterranean seas meet, south of Pachino Pachino really does feel like the far south. Hot. Dry. Windy. Vineyards and olive groves, citrus trees, and the sea somewhere nearby. And tomatoes. Lots of tomatoes. These days, mention Pachino and most people will probably think of Pomodoro di Pachino PGI. Fair enough. Those little sweet tomatoes seem to turn up everywhere in Sicily. But Pachino has another trick. Come at the right time of year and the streets themselves become works of art. Not paintings. Not sculptures. Vegetables. Every May, the town's famous tomatoes become part of the Inverdurata, a giant vegetable mosaic made right there in the street. Tomatoes, zucchini, peppers and whatever else happens to be available are arranged into elaborate pictures. In nearby Noto, flowers take over the streets in enormous floral canvases. In Pachino, the vegetables get their turn. They are spectacular and temporary, which somehow makes them better. You see them, take far too many photographs, and then they disappear. Church of the Holy Crucifix | Inverdurata di Pachino - Sicily turns vegetables into art. Land abundant in wine Tomatoes may have made Pachino famous, but grapes have been grown here for centuries. There is a theory that the name Pachino comes from the Greek Paxus Oinos, roughly “land abundant in wine.” There is also a theory involving Bacchus. Apparently even the name needs an argument. Either way, wine has been happening here for a very long time. Today, Pachino falls within the Eloro DOC, a warm, windy corner of southeastern Sicily where sand, calcareous rock and clay come together. This is particularly Nero d’Avola country, along with Frappato and Perricone. So naturally, the wine that caught my attention was a white. Turi Wines Salvatore Marino, known as Turi, is one of those winemakers whose wines make a little more sense once you know the person behind them. He and his family grow grapes, wheat and olives. The grapes become wine. The wheat becomes pasta. The olives become oil. I like that. Grow it. Make it. Use what you have. Credit: turi-marino Salvatore is a fifth-generation winemaker and spent years working as an oenologist for larger wineries before deciding to make wine under his own name. Around 2018, he began bottling wine from his wife Stefania’s family land in Contrada Buonivini, just outside Pachino. And the name is almost too perfect. Buonivini roughly means “the place where you make good wine”. Buonivini - “the place where you make good wine” (Credit: www.agricolamarino.it) It is tiny. Just 1.5 hectares of vines. The grapes are picked by hand and brought to the winery in small crates. No chemical fertilisers. The vineyards sit only 20–45 metres above sea level, close to the Vendicari Nature Reserve. And then there are the stones. Very white stones. They are everywhere in parts of the vineyard, reflecting the Sicilian sun. In summer, Salvatore says, they can become so bright that it is difficult to look at them for long. Which sounds beautiful until you remember what it must feel like to work there. This is seriously hot country. Salvatore has recorded summer temperatures of 46–47°C, with very little rain. The old vines manage without irrigation. Somehow, they find water. I always find that slightly amazing. You pour yourself a glass of golden Catarratto and it looks quite harmless. Then you remember where it came from. And, incidentally, Turi himself seems to have more than one side. Judging purely by his Instagram shots, one minute he’s out in the vineyard looking as though he’s been wrestling with the land since sunrise. Then suddenly he’s beautifully groomed and looks more like an Italian actor who has wandered straight out of a Fellini film. I’m not complaining. Credit: turi-marino Two wines from Pachino If you are in Calgary and want to try his wines, both the red and white are available at Metrovino. Turi Rosso - Nero d'Avola Turi Rosso is an Eloro Pachino DOC red made mostly from Nero d’Avola, with a small amount of Pignatello. This is Nero d’Avola territory, and the wine feels very much at home here. Medium-light and lively, with sour cherry, red plum, sweet herbs and a little white pepper, followed by earthy, mineral notes. The tannins are gentle and the acidity keeps everything bright. I like it slightly chilled. Turi Bianco - Catarratto, Skin Contact White Wine Now for the interesting one. Catarratto is one of Sicily’s great white grapes and its most widely planted. It has been around forever and has traditionally been something of a workhorse — used for everything from Marsala to straightforward everyday whites. It can make quite full-bodied wines, usually with plenty of lemon and citrus. But Catarratto in Pachino is different. Locally it is known as Mantiddatu, meaning “mantle”. Hot, dry country. Sea air. Pale calcareous soils. Those white stones baking in the sun. The wine somehow makes sense. There is lemon and citrus, green apple, white peach and a little orange blossom. Mediterranean herbs too. But what caught me was the savoury, slightly briny quality. Not salty in a way that makes you wonder if someone accidentally tipped seawater into the tank. Just a subtle sea-air character, followed by a dry, stony finish. It is still Catarratto, obviously. But it doesn't taste like an anonymous workhorse grape. Turi Bianco is made from 100% Catarratto, with five days of skin contact before it goes into cement tanks. Call it orange wine if you like. The fashionable crowd certainly does. The technique itself is hardly new, though. White grapes have been left on their skins for centuries. What matters is what it does here. The wine is golden yellow, almost amber, with more texture and grip than you might expect from a white. Not red-wine tannin, obviously, but enough structure to give it some presence. It has weight without feeling heavy. And that is when I started thinking about food. Because this is not a wine I want to drink while doing something else. It wants dinner. Briny Olive & White Wine Chicken Chicken with olives is one of those combinations that seems to appear all over the Mediterranean. It doesn't need to be precious. The chicken brings the richness. The olives bring the savoury punch. Lemon keeps things from becoming too heavy, and herbs make the whole kitchen smell as though you have put considerably more effort into dinner than you actually have. The basic idea is almost embarrassingly simple: Chicken. Olives. Lemon. Herbs. Sometimes that is enough. Sometimes you open the fridge, realize you don't have much, and make dinner from whatever is there. That is more or less how I like to cook anyway. And this is why Turi Bianco works so well with it. The wine has enough acidity to handle the lemon and enough texture to stay present beside roast chicken and olive oil. The savoury character of the olives doesn't make it taste harder or more austere. Instead, the two seem to pull in the same direction. Then you get the herbs. Rosemary. Thyme. Oregano. And lemon. You eat the chicken. Take another sip. Then you do it again. Pretty simple, really. Serves: 4 | Prep: 20 minutes | Cook: 50 minutes Ingredients 8–10 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs and drumsticks; or 1 whole chicken, cut into pieces 1¼ tsp kosher salt ½ tsp freshly ground black pepper ½ tsp Mediterranean herbs or Italian seasoning ¾ tsp garlic powder 45 mL / 3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil 60 g / ⅓ cup finely diced shallot 150 g / 1 cup pitted olives 180 mL / ¾ cup chicken broth 180 mL / ¾ cup dry white wine 1½ tbsp finely grated lemon zest 90 mL / 6 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice 20 g / 1½ tbsp unsalted butter 1½ tbsp finely chopped fresh Italian parsley The preparation 1. Season and sear the chicken Mix the salt, pepper and garlic powder. Pat the chicken dry and season both sides. Heat the olive oil in a large heavy skillet over high heat. Place the chicken skin-side down and sear for about 5 minutes, until deeply golden. Reduce the heat to medium, turn the chicken and cook for another 2 minutes. Transfer to a plate. 2. Make the olive sauce Add the shallots to the same skillet and cook for about 2 minutes, until soft and golden. Add the olives and cook for another minute. Pour in the chicken broth and white wine, scraping up all those browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Add the lemon zest and juice and simmer for about 5 minutes, until the sauce has reduced slightly. 3. Finish cooking the chicken Return the chicken to the skillet and cover. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer for 15–20 minutes, or until the thickest part of the chicken reaches 74°C (165°F). 4. Finish the sauce Remove the skillet from the heat. Stir in the butter and parsley until the butter melts into the sauce. Spoon plenty of the lemony olive sauce over the chicken before serving. Sanniti Castelvetrano Green Olives *A Note on Olives When it comes to olives, use whatever you like best — or whatever happens to be in the cupboard. Green, black, or a mix of both work beautifully. The obvious choice would be Nocellara del Belice (sold as Castelvetrano), the large green olives from southwest Sicily known for their mild, buttery, slightly sweet flavour. I love them for snacking or with a mild cheese, but for this dish, I find them a little too gentle. I wanted more of a briny, savoury punch, so I mixed them with some Chalkidiki and Kalamata olives from Greece. If you prefer a milder, less savoury chicken dish, though, Castelvetrano are an excellent choice. Serve with rice, roasted potatoes, couscous salad or a simple green salad. And, naturally, a glass of Turi Bianco, chilled at 8°C to 12°C (46°F to 54°F). It is the sort of wine that makes you want another bite of chicken. Which, as far as I'm concerned, is a pretty good test. Happy sipping and savouring!

"Oh God, please work a miracle, Turn the Tisza River into wine; If the Tisza were made of wine, My heart would suffer no harm at all." (Hungarian folk song) Family grape harvest, Márianosztra, Hungary, 1960's What My Grandfather Drank I often wondered what grapes my grandfather grew on his little plot of land in Márianosztra, tucked into the foothills of the Börzsöny Mountains in northern Hungary. It isn't a place particularly known for wine. Raspberry fields, yes. Vineyards, not so much. And yet those family plots were still called szőlő, the Hungarian word that can mean grapes, grapevine, or even vineyard. That alone made me think wine must once have played a much larger role in local life, even if only on a small family scale among the volcanic hillsides. When I finally asked my aunt, she immediately remembered the names of the grapes. Nova, or Noah, for the white wine. Izabella and Otelló for the reds. That surprised me. These weren't traditional Hungarian grapes, or even European ones. They were American hybrids, varieties that spread through Central Europe after phylloxera devastated European vineyards in the late nineteenth century. Most vineyards eventually went back to European varieties, grafted onto American rootstock. But families like ours kept some of the hybrids. They were hardy. They produced. They survived. And perhaps that was enough. Today, Noah, Izabella, and Otelló have largely disappeared from commercial winemaking and are no longer approved for quality wine production in Hungary or much of the European Union. Yet for generations of rural families, they were simply the grapes growing behind the house, the ones that quietly filled barrels, accompanied everyday meals, and became part of family memory. By any professional standard, the wine Papa made wasn't very good. My father, his son-in-law, jokingly referred to it as Márianosztrai Rettenetes: The Dreadful Cuvée of Márianosztra. He said it with the kind of theatrical respect normally reserved for something so bad it has become legendary. And yet, Papa drank it every day. Sometimes straight. Sometimes with soda water, as many Hungarians of his generation did. Wine wasn't a luxury, and certainly not a hobby. It was simply part of daily life, as ordinary and essential as bread on the table. He had five gönci barrels. The name comes from Gönc, a town in the Tokaj-Hegyalja wine region. By the nineteenth century, the gönci had become a standard measure: 160 icce, or roughly 136 litres. Five of them. Still sitting beneath layers of dust in the old house. Empty now, but together they could have held nearly 700 litres of wine. Whether he ever filled all five depended on the harvest. Some years gave him plenty. Some years didn't. He made whatever the vineyard gave him. And when it wasn't quite enough, he adjusted. Chaptalization, when necessary. No laboratory, no consultant, no one standing over his shoulder asking whether the vintage was technically correct. Nobody inspected. Nobody asked questions. It was simply how things were done. Then, every harvest, he divided what he had made by 365 and worked out his daily ration. And drank it. He lived to be 88, with remarkably few health problems, which, depending on whom you ask, either says something meaningful about homemade wine, or absolutely nothing at all. Recently, I tried a natural German wine from Weingut Schätzel and suddenly I was thinking about all of this again. It was a Portugieser called Pink 3000. Unfiltered. Only 9.5% alcohol. Wild fermented and aged under flor. Schätzel Pink 3000 - BIO The wine was raw and alive: juicy, cloudy, mineral, savoury. A little strange. It seemed almost to hum in the glass rather than sit there behaving itself. And somehow, I knew it. Not the flor. Not the natural-wine language. Not the German vineyard. The feeling. Strip all of that away and there was something familiar underneath: the cloudiness, the rusticity, the slight sharpness around the edges, the sense that the wine had not been polished into submission. It wasn't even completely my kind of wine. I usually like more structure, more precision, more polish. But for a moment, I wasn't really tasting it. I was back in Márianosztra. Cool cellar air. Old wooden barrels. The smell of homemade wine. And somewhere in the background, the faint sense that this was never supposed to be anything special. It was simply the wine people had. The grapes my grandfather grew weren't Hungarian grapes, or even European ones. So the connection isn't really about the varieties themselves. It is about something much more ordinary, and, to me, much more important. I don't think of those grapes first as varieties with a place in wine history. I think of them as szőlő. A little vineyard behind a house. Five old barrels. A man dividing his wine into 365 portions and drinking his way through the year. The wine may have been dreadful. But it was his wine. And somehow, all these years later, I can still taste the idea of it. Images from Magyar szőlőfajták (Hungarian Grape Varieties) by Edit Hajdu, 2003 Grapes That Belonged Hungary has been growing grapes for more than a thousand years. Some varieties that survived here are found nowhere else. They have been through a lot: phylloxera, wars, changing borders, communist collectivization, and decades of changing tastes. And somehow, some of them are still here. A few are even finding their way back into vineyards and bottles. That feels important now, when wine has become increasingly interested in things like biodiversity, sustainability, and a sense of place. But these grapes were never planted because they were good examples of biodiversity. People planted them because they grew there. They belonged there. Kadarka. Furmint. Juhfark. Kéknyelű. Each carries something of the place where it evolved. Over centuries, they adapted to the soils and climate of the Carpathian Basin, developing characteristics that can be difficult to reproduce elsewhere. And that old genetic diversity has value beyond nostalgia. Some of these varieties still offer useful traits for modern grape breeding. Click to Enlarge - Image credit: Wines of Hungary / winesofhungary.hu Today, more than 60,000 hectares of vineyards are cultivated across Hungary with over 220 registered grape varieties. Around 70% of Hungarian vineyards are planted with white grapes, while red varieties account for the remaining 30%. Hungarian Red Grapes Márok, Villany Wine Region, Hungary | Credit: sipandsavour.blog Hungarian red grape varieties are grown across several wine regions in Hungary, but some areas are especially known for reds. The main regions include: Villány: often considered Hungary’s premier red wine area, famous for Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Portugieser. Warm climate, rich full-bodied reds. Szekszárd : known for elegant, spicy reds, especially Kadarka and Kékfrankos, as well as Bikavér (Bull’s Blood). Eger: home of the famous Egri Bikavér. Kékfrankos is dominant here, alongside Kadarka and Bordeaux varieties. Sopron - particularly associated with Kékfrankos, thanks to its cooler climate close to Austria. Mátra and Bükk: increasingly important for lighter, fresher reds. Pannonhalma: A historic abbey wine region producing elegant Pinot Noir. Heimann Kadarka Szekszárd 2024 | Vylyan Csóka Variáció 2023 | Somló Kincse Piros Bakator 2020 Kadarka One of Hungary’s oldest and historically most important red grapes Light-bodied, elegant, and spicy Often compared to Pinot Noir for its finesse and delicacy Produces juicy wines with lively acidity, soft tannins, and complex spice Traditionally consumed young, though modern producers increasingly make age-worthy styles Widely planted in Szekszárd and Eger Wine Regions A key component of Bikavér (“Bull’s Blood”) blends Its precise origin remains uncertain, though it likely comes from the Balkan–Pannonian region Csókaszőlő Indigenous red grape native to the Carpathian Basin Nearly extinct by the late 20th century before being revived by dedicated winemakers Produces dark cherry- and plum-driven wines with lively acidity and soft tannins Piros Bakator Possibly of Hungarian origin and native to the historic Érmellék region (present-day Romania) Exists in several colour variations, including white and blue forms Produces intensely aromatic, structured, spicy wines of remarkable quality Central European Red Varieties Widely Grown in Hungary Taschner Kékfrankos 2024 | Günzer Opi Kékoportó 2024 | Luka Zweigelt 2024 Kékfrankos / Blaufränkisch Today widely regarded as Hungary’s defining red grape The country’s most planted red variety Backbone of Bikavér blends in Eger Wine Region and Szekszárd Wine Region Known for bright acidity, sour cherry fruit, peppery spice, and ageing potential Performs equally well in blends and single-variety wines Kékoportó / Portugieser Light, fruit-forward, easy-drinking red variety Especially associated with Villány Wine Region Popular across Central Europe and also widely planted in Germany Typically made for early consumption with soft tannins and fresh berry flavours Zweigelt Austrian crossing of St. Laurent and Blaufränkisch created in 1922 Commonly planted in Hungary for both blends and varietal wines Produces approachable wines with bright fruit and moderate structure Other International Red Varieties Widely Planted in Hungary: Cabernet Sauvignon Cabernet Franc Merlot Pinot Noir Syrah These varieties became increasingly important after the political and economic transitions of the late 20th century, particularly in regions such as Villány and Szekszárd. Hungarian White Grapes White grapes have long defined the character of Hungarian viticulture, shaping some of the country’s most historic and internationally celebrated wines. Today, roughly 70% of Hungary’s vineyards are planted with white grape varieties, reflecting both the country’s climate and its deep-rooted white wine traditions. Across Hungary’s diverse wine regions, indigenous white varieties thrive on volcanic hillsides, limestone slopes, and sunlit plains, producing wines noted for their vivid acidity, mineral depth, aromatic complexity, and remarkable capacity for ageing. From the powerful, saline whites born from the ancient basalt soils of Somló Wine Region and Badacsony Wine Region to the legendary botrytised sweet wines of Tokaj Wine Region, often regarded among the world’s greatest dessert wines, white grapes form the backbone of Hungary’s winemaking identity. Varieties such as Furmint, Hárslevelű, Olaszrizling, and Juhfark are not only deeply tied to regional traditions, but also express the country’s distinctive terroirs with unusual clarity and precision. Hercegkút, Tokaj Wine Region, Hungary | Credit: sipandsavour.blog These regions are Hungary's most distinctive and internationally significant white wine terroirs: Tokaj: Legendary volcanic vineyards producing the world-famous Tokaji Aszú and elegant dry Furmint wines. Somló: Hungary's smallest wine region, renowned for intensely mineral white wines from volcanic soils. Badacsony: Lake Balaton's iconic volcanic slopes, home to distinctive Olaszrizling and the rare Kéknyelű grape. Csopak: The benchmark region for elegant, mineral-driven Olaszrizling on the northern shore of Lake Balaton. Mór: Historic home of the indigenous Ezerjó grape, producing crisp, fresh white wines. Etyek-Buda: Hungary's premier cool-climate region for Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, and traditional-method sparkling wines. Pannonhalma: A historic abbey wine region producing refined white wines. Mátra: Hungary's largest wine region, known for vibrant, aromatic white wines grown on volcanic foothills. Neszmély: A cool-climate Danube region producing fresh, aromatic white wines and crisp sparkling bases. Balaton-felvidék: Scenic volcanic vineyards on the northern shores of Lake Balaton, producing mineral-rich white wines. OREMUS Mandolás Furmint 2023 | SAUSKA Birsalmás Furmint 2021 | BALASSA Szent Tamás Furmint 2024 | SZEPSY 6 Puttonyos Betsek Aszú 2017 | SZEPSY Szent Tamás Furmint 46 2024 | GILVESY Furmint 2024 | TOKAJ NOBILIS Furmint 2024 Furmint 👑 Indigenous white grape variety most closely associated with Tokaj in northeastern Hungary Considered one of Hungary’s most important and historic wine grapes Main grape used in the production of the legendary sweet wines of Tokaji Aszú Also widely used for dry wines, sparkling wines, and late-harvest styles Naturally high in acidity, giving wines freshness, structure, and strong ageing potential Thin-skinned and highly susceptible to noble rot (Botrytis cinerea), which concentrates sugars and flavours Typical flavour notes include: green apple pear quince citrus apricot honey ginger smoky or volcanic minerality Dry Furmint wines are often mineral-driven, textured, and complex Sweet Furmint wines can age for decades and develop notes of caramel, dried fruit, tea, and spice Thrives especially well on volcanic soils in Tokaj, Somló, and parts of Eger, while also adapting successfully to the limestone, marl, loess, and clay soils of Balatonfüred–Csopak and Pannonhalma Usually ripens late, allowing long hang-time and flavour concentration Often blended with Hárslevelű in Tokaji wines Increasingly gaining international attention for premium dry white wines Frequently compared stylistically to high-acid white varieties such as Riesling or Chenin Blanc, though with a distinctly Hungarian character Pronunciation: FOOR-mint TOKAJ NOBILIS Barakonyi Hárslevelű 2023 | HOMONNA Furmint - Hárslevelű 2022 | GRÓF DEGENFELD Hárslevelű 2025 | DEMETER ZOLTÁN TOKAJ Hárslevelű 2023 | KREINBACHER Somlói Hárslevelű Selection 2021 Hárslevelű ("Linden Leaf”) Frequently blended with Furmint, though also capable of producing excellent single-varietal wines Softer, rounder, and more aromatic than Furmint Known for notes of honey, elderflower, linden blossom, herbs, pear, and white flowers According to recent DNA research, Furmint is likely one of its parent varieties Widely cultivated in Tokaj, where it plays an important role in both dry wines and Tokaji Aszú Naturally lower in acidity than Furmint, contributing richness and perfume to blends Performs especially well on volcanic and loess-based soils Often produces wines with a creamy texture and gentle spice character Name derives from the Hungarian word hárs (“linden tree”), referencing its floral aroma profile Can age gracefully, developing notes of acacia honey, tea, and dried fruit over time Somlói Vándor Nagy-Somlói Juhfark 2017 | KREINBACHER Somlói Juhfark 2024 | BARÁTH BORMŰHELY Juhfark 2022 | Juhfark Reserve - Fehérvári Borbirtok | Tornai Premium Juhfark 2021 Juhfark (“Sheep’s Tail”) Rare volcanic white grape strongly associated with Somló Famous for its piercing acidity, salty texture, and smoky mineral character Produces highly structured, age-worthy wines with remarkable longevity Historically known as a “wedding wine,” traditionally believed to bless newlyweds with a son Name means “sheep’s tail,” referring to the grape’s long, cylindrical clusters Thrives especially well on basalt-rich volcanic soils Typically displays notes of citrus, quince, green apple, smoke, wet stone, and spice Often made in a dry style with powerful texture and pronounced terroir expression One of Hungary’s oldest indigenous grape varieties Traditionally associated with aristocratic and royal Hungarian wine culture Though rare today, it is increasingly valued by natural and terroir-focused winemakers for its distinctive character Volcanic cones near Badacsonytomaj on the left, and the Örsi-hegy above Badacsonyörs on the right | Photo: Telbisz Tamás Kéknyelű (“Blue Stalk”) Rare grape variety native to Badacsony Wine Region Produces elegant, structured, full-bodied wines Often marked by smoky volcanic character and restrained fruit >> Földi Bálint Szent György-hegyi Kéknyelű 2024 Budai zöld (“Green of Buda”) Once common in the hills surrounding Buda Today primarily grown in Badacsony as the traditional pollinator grape for Kéknyelű Crisp and mineral-driven with citrus and green apple notes >> Folly Abrorétum Budai Zöld 2025 Cserszegi Fűszeres (“Spicy [grape] from Cserszeg”) Highly aromatic Hungarian crossing between Irsai Olivér and Roter Traminer Intensely floral and spicy with muscat-like aromas Fresh, expressive, and increasingly popular in modern Hungarian winemaking >> Szászi Cserszegi Fűszeres Narancsbor 2025 Irsai Olivér (Named after a Hungarian wine merchant) Early-ripening aromatic variety created in Hungary in the 1930s Known for pronounced Muscat character and youthful freshness Typically consumed young to preserve its vibrant floral aromas >> Etyeki Kúria Irsai Olivér 2025 Leányka (“Little Girl”) Widely grown in Eger Wine Region and Mátra Wine Region Produces wines with moderate acidity and floral-fruit character, sometimes compared stylistically to Viognier Occasionally capable of producing naturally sweet wines >> Böjt Egri Csillag Superior 2025 Királyleányka (“Little Princess”) Likely a natural crossing of Kövérszőlő and Leányka Produces elegant wines with delicate acidity and aromatic intensity Frost- and drought-tolerant, though sensitive to mildew and rot >> Kárásztelek Friza Gyöngyözőbor (Sparkling wine) 2025 Ezerjó (“A Thousand Blessings”) Historically important grape of the Mór Wine Region Known for very high acidity and excellent ageing potential Traditionally used for sparkling wines and crisp dry whites >> Csetvei Amphora Ezerjó 2020 Öreg Sárfehér (“Old Whitemud”) Ancient Hungarian grape variety also known as Zsige Historically important in Somló Wine Region and Neszmély Wine Region Produces aromatic wines with good acidity and rich fragrance Traditionally blended with Furmint and Juhfark in classic Somló wines >> Reserve Sárfehér - Fehérvári Borbirtok Fehér Gohér (“White Gohér”) Historic Hungarian grape cultivated since at least the 16th century Traditionally grown in Tokaj and the Balaton Highlands Suitable for both dry wines and sweet aszú-style wines >> Aranysörte Fehér Gohér 2024 Kövidinka (or Dinka) Ancient pink-skinned variety native to the Carpathian Basin Survived phylloxera thanks to Hungary’s sandy vineyards Produces light, fresh wines with subtle apple and herbal character Recently rediscovered by natural winemakers for skin-contact and orange wines >> Balog Árpád Kövidinka Kabar Modern Tokaj-approved crossing of Hárslevelű and Bouvier Exclusively grown in Tokaj Ripens early and develops botrytis easily Adds richness, body, and floral notes to Tokaji blends >> Füleky Tokaji Kabar Vinnai 2019 Hungary’s “Z” Grapes The five white grape hybrids known as the “Z-grapes” were created during an ambitious mid-20th-century breeding programme led by Hungarian viticulturist Dr. Ferenc Király in Pécs. These varieties range from fresh everyday whites to serious sweet wine grapes. Figula Zenit & More 2025 | Zengő Hajdu Roland 2024 | Laposa Zeus 2024 | Himesudvar Tokaji Zéta 2020 | Pfneiszl Zefir 2022 Zenit (Ezerjó × Bouvier) The most widely planted of the group Fresh, approachable, and aromatic Typically shows apple and pear flavours with lively acidity Zengő (Ezerjó × Bouvier) Name means “resonant” in Hungarian High acidity and strong structure Capable of producing age-worthy wines Zeus (Ezerjó × Bouvier) Powerful variety especially suited to late-harvest wines Particularly successful in Badacsony Wine Region Rich, intense, and expressive Zéta (Furmint × Bouvier) Tokaj specialist known for early ripening and excellent botrytis potential Widely used in sweet Tokaji wines Formerly known as Oremus Zefír (Hárslevelű × Leányka) Floral and aromatic with notes of peach, honey, and elderflower Frequently used in sparkling wines and orange-style wines More delicate and less widely planted than the other Z varieties Central European White Varieties Widely Grown in Hungary Pannon Ottonel Muskotály 2025 | JÁSDI Lőczedombi Olaszrizling 2024 | Bíró és Fia Pincészet Rizlingszilváni 2024 Ottonel Muskotály (Muscat Ottonel) One of Hungary’s most popular aromatic white grapes Known for floral, grapey aromas and light, fragrant wines Widely grown in Mátra Wine Region and around Lake Balaton Produced in both dry and sweet styles Olaszrizling (Welschriesling) Hungary’s most widely planted white grape variety Closely associated with the Balaton Wine Region Produces crisp wines with almond, citrus, herbal, and mineral notes Considered one of the clearest expressions of Hungarian terroir Rizlingszilváni (Müller-Thurgau) Central European crossing of Riesling and Madeleine Royale Traditionally valued for reliability and accessibility Light-bodied with soft fruit and floral aromas Commonly used for approachable everyday wines Western European Varieties Adapted to Hungary Szürkebarát (Pinot Gris) Hungarian name means “grey monk”, reflecting monastic wine traditions Most closely associated with Badacsony Wine Region Produces rich wines with pear, spice, and smoky mineral notes Styles range from dry to late-harvest sweet wines >> LAPOSA Vitorlás Szürkebarát 2025 Tramini (Traminer) Closely related to Gewürztraminer Intensely aromatic with notes of rose petal, lychee, and spice Thrives in cooler Hungarian wine regions Used for both dry aromatic wines and dessert wines >> KRISTINUS Tramini 2021 A Living Wine Heritage Hungary’s old grape varieties carry more than wine in them. They carry bits of landscape, history, and family memory. For me, that connection is personal. These aren't simply obscure Hungarian grapes I discovered while studying wine. They lead me back to my grandfather, his little vineyard in Márianosztra, and the homemade wine that was part of everyday family life. I saw the same small-scale vineyard life elsewhere too—visiting uncles and neighbours, and wandering through little plots on both sides of Lake Balaton, in the Etyek-Buda region where I practically grew up, and in other parts of Hungary. But you don't need a Hungarian grandfather to find them fascinating. Some survived phylloxera, wars, changing borders, communist collectivisation, and changing wine fashions. A few hung on in forgotten vineyards simply because someone refused to let them disappear. Now they are coming back. Kadarka. Juhfark. Kéknyelű. Csókaszőlő. Winemakers are rediscovering them not just because they are old, but because they still belong to the places where they have grown for centuries. They taste of somewhere. And that is becoming harder to find. While Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay and Merlot can be planted almost anywhere, these grapes are tied much more closely to home. Volcanic hills, local soils, old cellar traditions, generations of knowledge. Sometimes even a little of Hungary's complicated history. For me, they are family. For someone else, they may simply be an unfamiliar grape and a fascinating wine to discover. Either way, they are still here. Egészségedre! - To your health. 🍷

Art is often called food for the soul. Wine is praised in much the same way. The metaphor may be worn thin, yet in Italy it feels effortlessly true. Art isn't confined to museum walls; it spills into churches, cafés, and quiet piazzas, while wine flows through long conversations, family tables, and centuries-old traditions. You don’t go hunting for either one, not exactly. You just… arrive. Then you find them the way you find a street you didn’t know existed, the way you stumble onto shade you didn’t notice you needed. In Italy, beauty doesn’t behave like a luxury. It behaves like something you live inside. It threads through everything - between a glass of wine and a sunlit corner of stone. Carpe diem, carpe vinum I've just come back from a week in Rome, and I'm still carrying the rhythm of the city with me. Art wasn't something we squeezed in between meals or aperitivo, it was the reason we went. Also, it was our first trip without the kids. The last time we followed this kind of itinerary, they were still small enough to be bribed through museums with gelato. They survived churches, ruins, and long explanations about frescoes with a kind of exhausted dignity that I still admire, even now, even after the fact. Rome was crowded, and the heat was relentless—the kind that makes the air look shimmery above the cobblestones, like the city is being stirred. It should’ve made everything miserable. And yet the longer we stayed in it, the more the discomfort stopped being the main story. The moment you got absorbed, the city softened around the edges. Not the heat. Not the crowds. Just… you. It let you forget yourself. What’s left for me now is a thread that doesn’t break. The past doesn’t feel like history there. It feels like something still standing in place while everything else moves around it. A scrap of carved detail on a building corner. Mary, silhouetted against a cloud so perfect it looks placed. An ancient monument that’s been there for nearly two thousand years, watching the world reinvent itself over and over, while it stays steady, like it doesn’t need to prove anything. Casa Manlia, Palazzo di Manilio | The Column of the ​Immaculate Conception | Caffè Martini Colosseum / Trastevere Credit: sipandsavour.blog The odd thing is how unremarkable it all feels to the city itself. People pray beneath world-famous paintings. Sip espresso next to triumphal arches. Sell trinkets just steps from where Caesar met his end. That may be one of the most Italian things about Italy. The extraordinary is simply folded into the everyday. Nothing feels staged. It just unfolds, alongside everything else. Wine works much the same way. It isn’t an event. It’s lunch. It’s dinner. It might appear at 11 in the morning, and nobody seems especially interested in explaining why. It’s part of the rhythm, not an interruption to it. Italian Art and Wine: Matching Famous Artists with Italian Wines And somewhere between museum mornings and those long, gloriously unfussy dinners, I started playing a little game. What if Italian art and Italian wine were, in some strange way, speaking the same language? Not historically. Not literally. And certainly not according to any art-historical rulebook. I mean temperament. Colour. Texture. Mood. Drama. Restraint. Excess. A particular way of looking at the world. The more I thought about it, the more obvious it seemed: what if Italy’s great artists could each be introduced through a glass of wine from the landscapes they once knew? So I started matching them. Michelangelo with one wine. Caravaggio with another. Titian with another. Some pairings are obvious. Others took a little more convincing. And before the art historians and wine purists sharpen their pencils, there is one thing we should get out of the way. Many of these artists never tasted the wines I’ve paired with them. Amarone, Prosecco and the Super Tuscans, for example, are relatively modern creations. But the places themselves are not. Veneto, Tuscany, Campania, Sicily and the other regions behind these wines have been growing grapes and making wine for centuries, in some cases since Roman times, and often long before. There is another small wrinkle. Italy, as a unified country, didn’t exist until 1861. Giotto, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Caravaggio lived in a peninsula divided among republics, duchies, kingdoms and papal territories. They were not, strictly speaking, Italian in the modern national sense. But the land was there. The hills were there. The vineyards were there. The soils and landscapes that still shape these wines were already part of the world they inhabited. Titian never poured himself a glass of Amarone. Leonardo almost certainly never sat down to dinner and debated the merits of a Super Tuscan. Still, they knew wine. And perhaps more importantly, they knew the landscapes from which those wines came. So this isn’t an exercise in historical accuracy. It’s something more playful — a way of looking at familiar masterpieces from a slightly different angle. Art through wine. Wine through art. Pour yourself a glass, preferably Italian, and let’s wander through the vineyards and masterpieces of Italy. Giotto - Fiano di Avellino Every great story has a moment when everything changes. In Italian art, that moment begins with Giotto, whose paintings replaced distant symbolism with something startlingly new: people who looked and felt unmistakably human. The First Breath of the Renaissance Before Giotto, much of medieval European painting existed in a world of symbols and divine perfection. Figures floated against golden backgrounds, their expressions solemn and distant, more spiritual than human. Then came Giotto di Bondone (c. 1267–1337). Born in the hills of Tuscany, Giotto marks one of those rare moments in art history when painting suddenly starts to feel recognizably human. In the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, figures no longer float against gold backgrounds like decorative symbols. They stand in rooms, they lean into each other, they react. And the expressions feel almost too relatable: in The Kiss of Judas, Judas leans in with the awkward determination of someone fully committed to a bad decision, while Christ looks less like a distant divine figure and more like someone quietly thinking, “Well… this is happening”. Elsewhere, the angels aren’t doing much better. In the Crucifixion and Lamentation, they’re openly distressed, no serene distance, just full emotional overload, like they’ve all agreed things have officially gone too far. It’s surprisingly modern: grief looks like grief, shock looks like shock. No symbolism required. Giotto's frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel, Padua What Giotto changes most is presence. His figures occupy space in a way earlier painting doesn’t really succeed at. Bodies have weight, feet touch ground, gestures land with consequence. Even architecture starts to feel believable rather than decorative. Giotto was a transitional figure who bridged the Gothic period and the early Renaissance. Often called the "father of the Renaissance", not because he invented it, but because he changed the terms of painting. With him, art began to represent human experience more directly rather than merely hint at it through symbolic or stylized forms. If Giotto were a wine, he would be Fiano di Avellino. The connection isn’t immediate in a flashy way. Fiano doesn’t reveal itself immediately. It doesn’t rely on sweetness or obvious fruit. Instead, it builds shape slowly in the glass: texture, tension, quiet depth. Like Giotto’s figures, it has presence. Not decoration, but structure, a kind of grounded clarity that holds everything together. There’s also something about endurance in both. Giotto’s frescoes, still legible centuries later, carry the same sense of permanence you find in Fiano as it evolves with age, becoming more layered, more golden, more complex without losing its core identity. And perhaps most importantly, both feel rooted. Giotto in the early formation of Italian visual language; Fiano in the volcanic soils of Campania, stubbornly local, true to itself. Botticelli - Prosecco From Giotto to Botticelli, only about 150 years pass. Yet rather than a simple progression, it feels as though art itself has changed temperament, becoming lighter, more lyrical, and more concerned with beauty than solemnity. Beauty, Lightness, and the Joy of Spring Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445–1510), the great master of the Florentine Renaissance, gave form to a world where reality and dream seem to exist in perfect harmony. His figures move with effortless grace, carried by flowing hair, delicate drapery, and a rhythm that feels almost weightless. In The Birth of Venus and Primavera, everything seems in motion, but nothing feels heavy. Beauty appears without effort, carried on myths, romance, and the quiet promise of spring. Primavera (Spring), late 1470s or early 1480s, Uffizi, Florence Like Botticelli’s paintings, Prosecco is defined by brightness, ease, and a kind of irresistible charm. Produced in the hills of northeastern Italy across Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, it’s known for lively bubbles, floral aromas, and notes of green apple, pear, honeydew melon, and honeysuckle. Fresh and approachable, its appeal lies in pleasure rather than weight or intensity. The connection to Botticelli is in its sense of effortless movement. His figures seem carried by wind and rhythm rather than structure or force, and Prosecco moves in much the same way - light, lifted, and immediate from the first sip. Neither is concerned with drama or complexity for its own sake. Instead, both value freshness over intensity and elegance over excess. Like Venus emerging from the sea, Botticelli's paintings leave an impression of lightness and effortless grace. Prosecco does the same by capturing the same distinctly Italian gift for making beauty feel natural, generous, and uncomplicated. Leonardo da Vinci - The Artist Who Refused to Be One Wine After Botticelli’s world of brightness and ease, Italian art begins to shift. With Leonardo da Vinci, it becomes more questioning, more layered, and far harder to define in a single line. Chianti Classico, Super Tuscan, or Vin Santo - The Tuscan Trifecta Most artists are relatively easy to match with a single wine. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), however, refuses to fit so neatly. Rather than pairing him with one bottle, it feels more natural to pair him with a landscape: Tuscany. Tuscany was where Leonardo's mind first took shape. Born in the village of Vinci and later apprenticed in Florence, he grew up in a world where art, science, engineering, music, and philosophy were not separate pursuits but different expressions of the same curiosity. Although his career took him to Milan, briefly to Rome, and eventually to France, the habits of mind that defined him were formed in Tuscany. If any place speaks Leonardo's language, it is the cradle of the Renaissance itself. Its wines, then, become different expressions of the same landscape: Chianti Classico for balance, the Super Tuscans for innovation, and Vin Santo for patience and reflection. Chianti Classico - The Foundation The strongest starting point is Chianti Classico, the historic core of Tuscany. Built on Sangiovese, it is structured, balanced, and quietly precise. Nothing dominates: acidity, tannin, fruit, and earth sit in careful proportion, each one supporting the whole. That sense of order feels very close to Leonardo’s thinking. Beneath the beauty of his work lies a mind constantly measuring, observing, and refining. He understood that harmony is rarely accidental, it comes from discipline. Chianti Classico works in much the same way: its elegance is controlled, not decorative, and its strength lies in balance rather than excess. Super Tuscans - The Innovator Yet Leonardo never stayed within boundaries for long. He questioned established ideas and pushed into new territory, often far ahead of his time. That instinct finds a clear parallel in the Super Tuscans. When winemakers stepped outside traditional rules to experiment with new blends and methods, they weren’t rejecting Tuscany’s identity. They were expanding it. The result was a category defined by curiosity and invention, producing wines that broke convention while still belonging to their place. Like Leonardo, Super Tuscans are driven by exploration. They show what happens when deep knowledge meets the freedom to experiment. Vin Santo - The Thinker Then there is Vin Santo. If Chianti represents structure and the Super Tuscans invention, Vin Santo reflects Leonardo’s patience. It is a wine that develops slowly, often aged for years before release, asking for time rather than attention. Leonardo was equally attentive to process. He studied water, movement, anatomy, light, always focused on how things change rather than how they appear at a single moment. His notebooks are full of observation rather than conclusion. Vin Santo mirrors that mindset. It doesn’t reveal itself quickly. Instead, it unfolds gradually, rewarding patience with depth and quiet complexity. As it happens, Leonardo's connection to Tuscan wine isn't merely symbolic. At Villa Da Vinci, near his birthplace, wines are still made from the vineyards surrounding the estate. Their labels feature details from his paintings and sketches. Villa Da Vinci Better still, Chianti Classico and Vin Santo both date back to the Renaissance, so Leonardo would almost certainly have known wines from the same Tuscan traditions, even if he was far too busy dissecting cadavers, designing flying machines, and painting masterpieces to leave us any tasting notes. So Which Wine Is Leonardo? All three. Chianti Classico reflects his balance. Super Tuscans reflect his curiosity. Vin Santo reflects his patience. Taken together, they form a more complete picture than any single bottle could offer. If there is a preference, Super Tuscan might come closest, because Leonardo was, above all, unwilling to stay within limits. But even that answer feels incomplete, which is probably the most accurate way to describe him. Some minds fit neatly into categories. Leonardo’s never did. Michelangelo - Barolo If Leonardo is the mind that refuses to settle, constantly moving between ideas and possibilities, Michelangelo feels like the opposite impulse: everything compressed into form, force, and resistance. Controlled Force,Compressed Intensity Michelangelo Buonarroti's (1475–1564) work doesn’t feel like it was made. It feels like it was extracted. In David , the tension is internal, everything held just before release (the sculpture depicts David before his battle with Goliath). In the Sistine Chapel ceiling, bodies twist through space as if thought itself had physical weight. Even in Moses, there’s a sense that restraint is doing most of the structural work. The unfinished Slaves make this even clearer. Figures emerge from marble that still refuses to fully surrender them. You don’t see a finished form so much as a negotiation still in progress. Michelangelo’s idea, that the figure already exists inside the stone, isn’t poetic when you look closely. It feels almost literal. The resistance is part of the work. Slaves (unfinished), 1519–1534, Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence The same tension that gives Michelangelo's work its extraordinary energy defines Barolo. Neither reveals itself immediately; both unfold through time, moving from restraint toward expression. Young Barolo is tight, almost withholding. The tannins dominate early tasting like structure before pleasure. Fruit is present but controlled, as if it’s being kept in check deliberately. With time, it starts to open, but not evenly. Aromas appear in layers rather than waves: dried rose, sour cherry, something earthy that feels more like memory than flavour. Nothing arrives all at once. With age, Barolo reaches its fullest expression. The tannins integrate rather than disappear, and what once felt austere becomes layered and expansive. Earth, leather, truffle, and dried fruit unfold with depth, carrying both power and refinement in the same frame. Like Michelangelo’s figures, it never feels fully relaxed. It moves through stages of restraint, emergence, and depth, revealing itself not at once, but over time, in tension, release, and resolution. Raphael - Brunello di Montalcino If Michelangelo was the master of power and drama, Raphael was the master of harmony. Where Michelangelo's figures are full of movement and intensity, Raphael's are graceful, balanced, and serene. Harmony as Ideal Brunello di Montalcino is one of Italy's most celebrated wines, admired not for immediate exuberance but for its patience, balance, and quiet confidence. Made exclusively from Sangiovese and aged for years before release, it reveals itself gradually. At first it can seem reserved, but with time it opens into layers of ripe cherry, dried rose, earth, leather, and spice. Its greatness lies not in power alone, but in the way every element is woven into a seamless whole. That same sense of harmony defines the work of Raffaello Sanzio (1483–1520). Among the great masters of the High Renaissance, Raphael became renowned for compositions of extraordinary balance, where beauty arises from perfect proportion rather than dramatic effect. In paintings such as The School of Athens, complexity feels effortless. Figures, architecture, and perspective are arranged with such clarity that the eye moves naturally through the scene. Every gesture has purpose, every space feels considered, and every figure belongs. Raphael does not reduce complexity; he organizes it into something calm, coherent, and complete. Brunello achieves much the same effect. Its structure is firm but never austere, its richness balanced by freshness and elegance. Rather than drawing attention to individual flavours, it allows them to unfold as part of a seamless whole. Like Raphael's paintings, it rewards patience, revealing depth through balance rather than intensity. In both, harmony is not the absence of complexity but its resolution. Each reminds us that the highest form of refinement is often the least conspicuous, where every part contributes to a whole that feels both natural and inevitable. Titian - Amarone della Valpolicella / Soave Classico If Raphael represents harmony brought into perfect balance, Titian begins to loosen that structure, letting colour, atmosphere, and emotion take over. Titian & Two Wines of Veneto Few artists embody the richness and versatility of Venetian Renaissance painting like Titian (Tiziano Vecellio) (c. 1488–1576). Born in the Alpine village of Pieve di Cadore, he moved to Venice as a boy and spent almost his entire career there, working from his renowned studio until his death. Over more than six decades, he transformed Venetian painting, evolving from luminous, colour-driven compositions to deeply expressive late works that helped redefine Western art. One wine hardly feels sufficient to capture that journey. For Titian's early period, Soave Classico feels like the natural match. Grown in the volcanic hills east of Verona, it is elegant and restrained, with notes of citrus, white blossom, and a gentle mineral edge. There is a clarity to it: light on its feet, carefully shaped, and quietly refined. It reflects a younger Titian, whose compositions remain precise and whose mastery of light is disciplined and controlled. Works from this period include Sacred and Profane Love (c. 1514), Flora (c. 1515), and The Assumption of the Virgin (1516–1518). Later Titian belongs to Amarone della Valpolicella. Made from partially dried grapes and matured through long ageing, it is deeper, richer, and more textured. Notes of dried cherry, spice, cocoa, and tobacco unfold slowly, with weight and warmth replacing early restraint. The brushwork in his later paintings follows a similar logic. Less defined, more atmospheric, and driven by emotion rather than structure. Taken together, the two wines trace the arc of his artistic evolution. Yet it is Amarone that leaves the strongest impression. It does not reveal itself quickly; instead, it builds in layers, shifting between intensity and softness. Like Titian in his maturity, it is less concerned with form than feeling, less about clarity than presence. While masterpieces such as Bacchus and Ariadne (1522–1523) and Venus of Urbino (1538) mark the height of his mature style, his late works - including The Penitent Magdalene (c. 1565) - show an increasingly expressive, atmospheric approach that finds its closest counterpart in Amarone's depth and complexity. What remains constant is his extraordinary command of colour and mood. Even as structure loosens, the work never loses coherence. Instead, it gains depth, as if time itself has become part of the composition. In that sense, Titian bridges two worlds: the disciplined clarity of the Renaissance and the emotional richness that follows it. Caravaggio - Taurasi If Titian's world is defined by colour and atmosphere, Caravaggio's is shaped by light and shadow. A master of dramatic realism, he used light not merely to illuminate his subjects, but to reveal their humanity in all its vulnerability and intensity. Chiaroscuro and Concentration:The Physics of Drama in Paint and Wine Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio (1571–1610), stands at the edge of the Baroque, where the balance of the Renaissance gives way to something sharper, more immediate, and far more human. His paintings are built on chiaroscuro and tenebrism, not just methods of modelling light, but ways of deciding what matters in a scene. Light doesn’t gently illuminate; it cuts in. It isolates a face, a gesture, a moment of recognition, while everything else recedes into shadow. In his world, darkness is never empty. It holds tension, creates suspense, and gives even the smallest gesture a kind of psychological weight. Caravaggio rarely begins at the beginning. His scenes drop you straight into the middle of things, at the exact point where something has already shifted, or is about to. Ordinary people become participants in moments that feel at once sacred, violent, and intensely real. There is nothing decorative about his sense of holiness. Saints, soldiers, tax collectors, executioners, they are all rendered with the same uncompromising physical truth. No one is idealised. Grace, when it appears, arrives in the same space as rough hands and tired faces. The sacred doesn’t float above the world; it appears inside it, unadorned and unannounced. Rome still holds his work in situ. Three churches preserve his paintings exactly where they were meant to be seen, alongside others now housed in the city’s museums. Moving through Rome, you begin to follow him almost unintentionally, from one chapel to the next, each encounter more immediate than the last. The clearest example is the Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi, where the St Matthew cycle still hangs in its original setting. Standing there, the experience becomes disarmingly direct. The light in the paintings is not simply part of the composition, it is what gives the scene its meaning. Without it, there is no story at all. The Calling of Saint Matthew | The Inspiration of Saint Matthew | The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew at the Contarelli Chapel San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome, painted between 1599 and 1602 Taurasi, Campania’s great Aglianico wine, feels as though it belongs in the same world of forces as Caravaggio. It comes from inland Campania, shaped by volcanic soils left behind by Vesuvius and the region’s deeper geological past. These are lands formed by destruction and renewal at once. Volcanoes erase without hesitation, yet over time they leave behind soil of extraordinary vitality. What once destroyed the landscape becomes the condition for its richness. Caravaggio’s art rests on a similar contradiction. His paintings are built from conflict: light and darkness, violence and grace, collapse and revelation. Nothing is softened or idealised. Beauty exists not in spite of tension, but because of it. Taurasi carries that same elemental character. Deep in colour, firm in structure, and layered with black cherry, leather, tobacco, smoke, iron, and volcanic earth, it is a wine of weight and presence. There is no easy generosity here. Instead, there is concentration, intensity, and a sense of power held carefully in balance. The connection is not simply darkness or depth. It is that both are born from opposing forces. Vesuvius reminds us that destruction and creation are often inseparable. Caravaggio's paintings find light within darkness; Taurasi finds elegance within power. Neither softens the truth. Instead, both show that beauty is often forged under pressure, emerging stronger because of it. Artemisia Gentileschi - Etna Rosso From Caravaggio to Artemisia Gentileschi, the shift moves from a more masculine register of dramatic force, like Vesuvius, powerful and destructive, to a more feminine one, like Mount Etna, equally intense but more continuous, alive, and ever-present. Courage, Fury, and the Female Gaze Volcanic wines have a way of carrying their landscape inside them: heat, pressure, and time translated into structure rather than spectacle. Etna Rosso is a clear example. Grown on the slopes of Mount Etna in Sicily, it opens with lift and brightness, almost restrained at first. Then it deepens. Red cherry, wild herbs, smoke, and a stony mineral edge emerge gradually, as if the wine is holding something back rather than announcing itself. There is tension here, but it is controlled, continuous, and alive. That same quality of controlled intensity runs through the work of Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–c.1656), the great female voice of the Italian Baroque. Where Caravaggio fractures the scene with sudden illumination, Artemisia builds it with a different kind of force. Her paintings do not erupt outward; they hold inward pressure. Figures are fully present, anchored, physical, unidealised, but what defines them is not spectacle. It is agency. You feel women not as symbols or ornaments, but as participants inside action that belongs to them. She often paints at moments of decision rather than collapse or shock. The instant just before resolution, where will and consequence are still locked together. The tension is not theatrical; it is internal, concentrated, sustained. Light in her work behaves less like interruption and more like focus. It clarifies rather than disrupts. It pulls attention toward structure, toward bodies that occupy space with certainty rather than fragility. Etna Rosso carries a similar temperament. It does not demand attention through force. Instead, it unfolds in stages, revealing depth without breaking its own balance. Nothing is exaggerated, yet nothing is easy. Even the volcano that shapes it deepens the metaphor. Mount Etna has long been personified in feminine terms in Sicilian tradition - “Mamma Etna”, or the ancient goddess Aetna - an image of power that is not explosive in isolation, but continuous, generative, and self-renewing. Seen this way, Artemisia’s Baroque is not a counterpart to Caravaggio’s by opposition, but by modulation. If his world is rupture and impact, hers is continuity and held intensity. Both are uncompromising. They simply define force differently. And there’s a quieter thread running through both her story and the wine as well: resilience. Artemisia built her career against real constraints, while Etna Rosso comes from one of Europe’s most demanding landscapes. In both cases, what lasts isn’t ease, it’s strength shaped over time. Bernini - Barbaresco Caravaggio and Artemisia shape drama through light and stillness; Bernini transforms it into movement carved in stone. Barbaresco and Bernini: Structure in Motion Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598 – 1680) had an extraordinary ability to catch change at the exact moment it becomes irreversible. In Apollo and Daphne, that idea is almost literal: fingers turning into leaves, skin hardening into bark, a body still fleeing even as it begins to root into the earth. It is not simply a sculpture of two figures, but the instant between one state and another, stretched just long enough for transformation to be visible. That sense of suspended motion runs through his work. In The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, marble no longer feels like stone. Fabric twists as if still falling, breath seems held mid-release, and opposing states - ecstasy, surrender, resistance - coexist in a single unfolding moment. Nothing settles. Everything is in the act of becoming. Rome itself feels shaped by this logic under Bernini. Fountains erupt as if frozen mid-motion, chapels stage revelation, and architecture becomes less a frame than a performance space. That same idea of transformation finds its counterpart in Barbaresco. Often called the “Queen” of Piedmont wines, Barbaresco sits in contrast to Barolo - and offers a different expression of the same grape, Nebbiolo. Where Barolo can feel dense and restrained in its youth, Barbaresco is more immediate: more perfumed, more open, more expressive from the start. Part of this comes from its landscape. The soils of the Barbaresco zone, with their higher sand content, tend to produce softer, more supple tannins. The result is a texture that feels less like structure alone and more like form coming alive, closer to flesh over bone. Like Bernini’s marble, it gives the impression of softness emerging from something inherently rigid. There is also a visual quality to Barbaresco that feels almost deceptive. Its colour is often lighter and more translucent than Barolo, yet the aroma rises quickly and expansively: rose, white pepper, liquorice, dried herbs. It creates a sense of lift that belies its underlying depth, much like Bernini’s ability to make stone feel airborne. At its core, the parallel is simple: Bernini turns marble into motion caught mid-becoming; Barbaresco turns structure into something immediately alive. Both belong to a Baroque world where nothing is ever fully still, only continuously unfolding. Canova- Franciacorta From Bernini’s charged motion, the Baroque gradually cools into something more restrained in Canova’s Neoclassicism. Lightness, Grace, and Effortless Form Franciacorta is Italy's most refined sparkling wine. Produced in the rolling hills of Lombardy using the traditional method, it combines fine mousse, vibrant freshness, and remarkable precision. It feels almost weightless in the glass, yet that elegance is the result of years of patient ageing and meticulous craftsmanship. Antonio Canova (1757–1822) achieved something remarkably similar in marble. His mythological figures, dancers, and noblewomen seem to defy the weight of stone, carrying a quiet grace that appears completely natural. Nothing feels forced, yet every gesture, fold, and contour is the product of extraordinary control. The connection lies in this shared illusion of effortlessness. Franciacorta's refinement is earned through time, discipline, and precision, just as Canova laboured over marble until it appeared soft, fluid, and almost alive. In both, true mastery conceals the work behind it. Like a Canova sculpture, a great Franciacorta feels light but never slight: elegant, balanced, and quietly enduring. Modigliani - Lagrein From Canova’s polished stillness, art gradually loosens its classical restraint and moves toward the elongated modernism of Modigliani. Elegance, Melancholy, and the Art of Restraint Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) reduces form until only essence remains. Few artists developed a visual language as immediately recognizable as Modigliani’s: elongated necks, almond-shaped eyes, tilted faces, and figures that seem suspended between elegance and melancholy. Working in Paris in the early twentieth century, he stripped portraiture down to its emotional essentials, creating subjects that feel at once intimate and distant, fragile and self-assured. Lagrein comes from the north of Italy and carries a distinctive sense of place. Native to the alpine landscape of Alto Adige, it is a wine of depth rather than exuberance, known for its dark colour, velvety texture, and quiet intensity. There is an understated refinement to Lagrein that resists easy categorization, much as Modigliani’s portraits stand apart from the major artistic movements of his time. The parallel lies in their shared combination of elegance and mood. Modigliani elongated forms not to make them more realistic, but to make them more expressive, creating portraits that feel stretched toward poetry. Lagrein achieves something similar through flavour and texture. Beneath its dark fruit and soft tannins is a subtle tension, a note of introspection that lingers long after the first impression. Like one of Modigliani’s portraits, a great Lagrein is graceful, haunting, and quietly unforgettable. A Final Toast to Italy I chose these eleven artists and sculptors because they are, to me, the crema della crema. Not as a definitive list, and certainly not as a ranking, but simply as a way of exploring the conversation between Italian art and wine without trying to tell the whole story. The truth is, the deeper you go into Italy, the more you realise that any list is only a starting point. From Giotto's first steps toward perspective to Modigliani's modern lines, Italian art doesn't move neatly from one chapter to the next. It branches, circles back, reinvents itself, and somehow remains Italian throughout. Every generation adds another layer without erasing what came before. Italian wine feels much the same. A crisp Soave, a patient Barolo, the richness of Amarone, the effortless elegance of Prosecco. Each expresses its landscape in a different voice. They're not simply wines to drink, but places, histories, and traditions poured into a glass. In the end, I don't think this is really about comparing artists with wines at all. It's about paying attention. The longer you spend with a great painting - or a great bottle - the more it reveals itself. Neither rewards rushing. Both ask for curiosity, patience, and a willingness to look, or taste, one more time. Perhaps that's why Italy captivates us so completely. It teaches you that beauty isn't something to consume quickly or tick off an itinerary. It's something to linger over. Saluti! 🍷 Prologue: An Evening in the Taverna The first jug of wine had barely been poured before Giotto raised his cup. Giotto: "To painting people who finally look like they're standing on the same earth as the rest of us." Botticelli smiled. "Perhaps. But they still hadn't discovered spring." A ripple of laughter circled the table. Leonardo da Vinci, turning a wine jug in his hands, asked, "Have you noticed? The shape of this vessel distributes the weight perfectly. I wonder if..." Michelangelo interrupted. "Leonardo, for one evening, can something simply be a jug?" "It can," Leonardo replied, "but it could also be improved." Raphael raised his glass. "Must every supper become a competition? We haven't even reached the cheese." At the far end, Titian studied the deep ruby wine. "A beautiful colour," he said. "Venice would approve." Caravaggio leaned over. "Only if the light chooses the guilty one." "It always does in your paintings," Titian replied. "And dramatically." Artemisia Gentileschi smiled. "No. Someone has to decide where the light belongs." Bernini, never one to resist, gestured animatedly. "Stone moves, if you ask it correctly." Canova sipped his wine. "Or after the struggle has disappeared." Michelangelo grinned. "Marble settles every argument." From the corner, Modigliani quietly sketched everyone on a scrap of paper. Leonardo glanced over. "You've made my neck impossibly long." "I've merely improved everyone's proportions." Modigliani answered. Botticelli looked at the drawing. "I rather like it." Caravaggio frowned. "Where are the shadows?" "I left them to you," Modigliani answered. The table erupted with laughter. Another loaf of bread was broken, another fiasco bottle emptied, and the conversation drifted from patrons to pigments, from marble to muses, from Florence to Venice and back again. Finally, Raphael lifted his glass once more. "To the work." Titian smiled. "And to what outlives us." Caravaggio raised his cup. "Provided the wine lasts until morning." Artemisia laughed. "It won't." Then, another bottle was opened. No one objected.

👩‍🍳 - Jump to recipe, but fair warning: you’ll miss all my brilliantly unnecessary (and deeply entertaining) ranting. If you didn’t know better, Verduno Pelaverga sounds like an Italian aristocrat. A rather obscure one, admittedly. Maybe a forgotten opera composer. Or some old Piedmontese bloke who wears a linen scarf all year and will happily spend twenty minutes explaining how truffles should be shaved over risotto. It really doesn’t sound like a wine. But it is. Verduno Pelaverga DOC comes from the village of Verduno in Piedmont, and the grape is Pelaverga Piccolo, a rare local variety. Even the name has that very Piedmontese ring to it. Elegant, slightly grand, and not terribly helpful if you’ve never seen it on a wine list before. Verduno, Piedmont, Italy And then there’s Barolo. The two are, in a way, relatives. They come from the same part of Piedmont and have a connection to the Nebbiolo family, but that’s about where the similarities start to get interesting. Because Barolo is the rich cousin. Barolo got the big reputation, the expensive real estate and the rather impressive wardrobe. He’s the one everyone knows. Pelaverga stayed in Verduno and carried on doing its own thing. Which is quite something when you consider where Verduno actually is. This is Barolo country, after all. Verduno is one of the 11 communes where Barolo can be made, so there has never been any shortage of temptation to plant Nebbiolo instead. But the old Pelaverga vines survived. Someone decided they were worth keeping, even when there were probably easier ways to make money from the land. I rather like that. And the wine itself is nothing like the big, brooding Piedmontese red you might be expecting. For starters, look at it. It’s pale. Really pale. Almost translucent. It has the sort of colour that makes you check the bottle twice to make sure you haven’t picked up something much lighter by mistake. It also looks rather refined. Almost delicate. Then you sniff it, and things get more interesting. White pepper is the signature, but there’s also wild strawberry, raspberry and violet. That peppery note comes from an aromatic compound called rotundone, the same compound responsible for the distinctive peppery aroma you find in some other wines (cool-climate Syrah, Grüner Veltliner, Mourvèdre and Vespolina). It’s fragrant and fresh, with that lovely little peppery kick. Nothing heavy or brooding. It’s much more playful than that. On the palate it stays pretty light, somewhere around light to medium-bodied, with silky tannins and bright acidity. There’s enough structure to remind you that this is still a Piedmontese red, but it doesn’t make a big performance of it. Barolo would probably arrive at dinner in a dinner jacket. Pelaverga would turn up in a linen shirt, a silk scarf, sit down, and start talking to everyone. And honestly, it’s a very easy wine to eat with. I like it slightly chilled, particularly with antipasti, charcuterie, pizza, poultry, tomatoey pasta and mushrooms. That peppery side also makes it surprisingly good with spicier food, as the wine has that little bit of swagger. So no, Pelaverga was never going to become another Barolo. And perhaps that’s for the best. They’re from the same corner of Piedmont, with an old family connection through Nebbiolo, but somewhere along the way one cousin got the fortune and the other got the personality. I know which one I’d invite to dinner. There is one catch: you have to find the stuff. Pelaverga is made in tiny quantities, so it isn’t exactly sitting on every wine-shop shelf. Comm. G.B. Burlotto Comm. G.B. Burlotto is one of the names to look for, and the winery has long been associated with keeping this old local grape alive when it could very easily have disappeared. Comm. G.B. Burlotto been making wine since the 19th century, but Pelaverga was never the star. It was often planted alongside Nebbiolo and rarely bottled on its own, so it slowly began to disappear. Then, in 1972, Gabriella Burlotto planted a dedicated parcel of Pelaverga in the Massara vineyard. That small decision helped save the grape. Today, winemaker Fabio Alessandria works with Pelaverga from sandy, chalky sites around Verduno, keeping the winemaking gentle and letting that lovely peppery fragrance do the talking. So perhaps Pelaverga found exactly the right family. It’s an old Piedmontese grape, slightly eccentric, easily overlooked — but quietly stubborn enough to survive. Serve it slightly chilled, around 12–14°C, with prosciutto, salami, anchovies, pizza or tomato-based pasta. Its bright acidity and peppery freshness make it particularly good for warm-weather drinking, a red for when your brain says rosé but your heart stubbornly says wine with tannins. Picked the bottle up at Metrovino in Calgary. A uniquely brilliant food pairing for Verduno Pelaverga is smoky grilled bonito or seared tuna sashimi. Because this rare Piedmontese red wine naturally contains high levels of the aromatic compound rotundone - giving it a distinct, punchy white-pepper and floral signature alongside bright red cherry fruit - its light body and silky texture bridge the gap to rich, meaty fish without clashing or metallic bitterness. Thin slices of sushi-grade tuna, quickly seared until the outside is beautifully browned while the centre stays cool and completely raw. Pepper Sesame Crusted Tuna Sashimi Serves: 2–4 Prep: 10 minutes Cook: 1–2 minutes Ingredients 450 g (1 lb) sushi-grade Ahi or Bluefin tuna, cut into a thick rectangular block 1 tsp (5 ml) sesame oil ½ tsp fine sea salt ¼ tsp freshly ground black pepper 2 tbsp (15 g) white and/or black sesame seeds 1 tbsp (15 ml) avocado seed oil To serve Soy sauce, Ponzu or Yuzu Mayonaise / gochujang mayonnaise Wasabi Pickled ginger Thinly sliced spring onions Micro greens Method 1. Dry the tuna Pat the tuna very thoroughly dry with paper towels. This is important. A dry surface gives you a much better sear. 2. Season Rub the tuna lightly with sesame oil, if using, then season with salt and pepper. For a sesame crust, press the tuna firmly into the sesame seeds until all sides are coated. 3. Get the pan seriously hot Heat a cast-iron or heavy skillet over high heat until very hot. Add the oil and heat until shimmering and just beginning to smoke. 4. Sear the tuna Place the tuna in the pan and sear for 10–20 seconds per side. Use tongs to quickly sear the edges as well. You want a thin, cooked crust around the outside while the centre remains completely raw. 5. Slice Transfer the tuna to a board and let it sit for about 1 minute. Using a very sharp knife, slice it thinly across the grain. 6. Serve Arrange the slices on a plate and serve immediately with soy sauce, wasabi and pickled ginger, if you like. A little tip The secret is heat and speed. Get the pan smoking hot, make sure the tuna is completely dry, and don’t hang around once the fish hits the pan. Ten seconds can make a surprisingly big difference when you’re trying to keep that beautiful ruby-red centre. Happy sipping and savouring!