Love to sip on Ferrari-Carano, but want to know more about how our wine is made or how to pair wine with your meals? Learn more with Ferrari-Carano below!
Spring has sprung. Whether you are looking to learn a new skill like how to pair food and wine or you want to finally understand how a wine like our Pinot Grigio is actually made, there’s a Ferrari-Carano wine to pair with whatever your goal may be.
Learn How to Pair Food and Wine
Ferrari-Carano 2018 Merlot, Sonoma County
Ferrari-Carano 2021 Fumé Blanc, Sonoma County
Finding that perfect partnership of food and wine that completes a meal can be so fun, but how do you do it? The most important aspect is to sip whatever tastes best to you, but it might not be the most universally agreed-upon wine pairing. To achieve a pairing that will make everyone’s taste buds sing, the key is to select a wine that balances out your meal. There are two primary ways to do this: congruent pairings or contrasting pairings.
Congruent pairings highlight some of the major elements of a wine – its body (or richness), acidity, sweetness level, etc. – by pairing it with food that has similar elements. A juicy and peppery porterhouse steak with our 94-point Merlot is one such pairing. An excellent complement to a medium-bodied Merlot, the black pepper notes in the wine match those in our grilled porterhouse steak with garlic confit, and the mid-weight ribeye cut matches the body of the wine for a flavor revelation.
Alternatively, contrasting pairings pick up on an element of wine such as fresh acidity and pair it with its opposite: a dense, buttery dish, for example. Juicy with flavors of ripe pineapple, mango, and fresh lemon cream, our Fumé Blanc is made with Sauvignon Blanc grapes from Dry Creek, Alexander, Russian River and Knights Valleys, and is fermented in stainless steel tanks which preserves the acidity of the grapes. When served alongside a goat cheese salad, the light minerality in our Fumé Blanc shines. Earthy flavors in the goat cheese are contrasted with ripe tropical fruit notes in the Fumé Blanc, and the light, bright acidity after taking a sip perfectly smooths out the creaminess from the goat cheese on your palate.
Want to learn more about how to pair wine with food? Read the Ferrari-Carano Food and Wine Pairing Guide we developed just for you or check out our recipe filter tool, which allows you to filter recipe pairings by selecting a Ferrari-Carano wine that you have on hand!
How Our Pinot Grigio is Made
Ferrari-Carano 2021 Pinot Grigio, Sonoma County
Sure, we could jump right into the process of winemaking that happens in our winery, but we would be skipping a crucial step of production that happens way before we begin making a wine such as our classic, 91-point Pinot Grigio: the work that is done in our Sonoma County vineyards.
Our process begins with the utmost care in our vineyard and grape cultivation. Grown in cool-climate regions of Sonoma County, the grapes for our Pinot Grigio are hand-harvested so we only select the best grapes to be pressed into our classic wine.
After harvesting the grapes they are kept intact with their skins and stems and gently pressed. The juice is then immediately transferred to fresh stainless steel tanks (“racked”), where the Pinot Grigio can begin fermentation. By choosing to keep our Pinot Grigio in stainless steel tanks, the grapes stay true to their original nature, maintaining crisp and clean aromas and flavors. As the juice ferments, small particles of yeast sediment sink to the bottom of the tank. These particles can contribute greatly to the body of the wine, and we maximize their effects by hand-stirring our wine weekly until the wine has finished fermentation.
Now part of our Classic Wines collection, our Pinot Grigio is filtered, bottled, and marked with the new Ferrari-Carano Pinot Grigio label once fermentation is complete.
Let’s not miss the last step – in your glass. The true definition of what a Pinot Grigio should be, the Ferrari-Carano Pinot Grigio opens with notes of honeysuckle, lychee, lemon, and lime, and is tailed by delicate flavors of white peach and orange blossom. Take a sip and see for yourself!
At Ferrari-Carano, we believe that learning is an integral part of feeling good – a crucial part of wellness. Want to dig deeper into Ferrari-Carano wine? Keep learning about our vineyards here or discover the terroir of Ferrari-Carano by reading about The Impact of Terroir on our PreVail Wines.
