The world of Italian food and wine matching is vast and has many pleasures, if you have the time and the curiosity to explore. Today we look at Italian cheese “caciocavallo” and the possible Italian wine options to match.

Caciocavallo is a cheese from southern Italy, now a DOP protected production, made from cow’s milk. While it looks like a mini provolone, the cheese comes from the “podolica” cow breed, which is semi-wild breed that grazes on all sorts of natural and wild vegetation.

The areas in which caciocavallo is mostly produced are the high altitude regions of Molise, Sila, Campano and Puglia. This particular Italian cheese must age a minimum of three months, and anywhere up to two years. See after the jump for the wine-cheese match.

Continue reading: Food and wine matching: Italian cheese and the best southern Italian wine

I recently read how much the Italian wine aglianico was making a name for itself in the US, and here’s another example of the Italian product being increasingly appreciated.

Paola Jadeluca from Repubblica Affari & Finanza has cited a New York Times article in which the famous wine journalist Eric Asimov looks at the Aglianico del Vulture wine from Basilicata. The red wine, in particular the Carato Venusio from the Cantina sociale di Venosa (a co-operative cellar) is said to be able to compete with the best of Chianti, Brunello and Barolo.

The fame that Carato Venusio has given to the Aglianico del Vulture name in northern Europe, England and Denmark, now takes to America. At Venosa more than 900 ha of vineyards belong to 500 different collaborators, with the largest having only 15 ha. Working together, with an investment of two and a half million euros and an effort called “the bottle project”, they’ve taken the base value wine at only 10 USD to the pages of the New York Times.

Continue reading: Italian wine Aglianico di Venosa mentioned by Eric Asimov in New York Times