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Pierre Acquaviva, willing iconoclast
Corsican winegrowers have a sense of sharing
Before setting the table for a delicious festive meal, Settimana asked them to talk about the wine produced by their fellow winemakers and neighbours. In a collective profession such as this, it’s only natural.
Such a request may seem incongruous: to invite winemakers to talk about each other's wine while setting the festive table. But the culture of wine is tinged with passion and emotion, which lends itself to a sharing experience.
And they are happy to go along with this match. Harmonising the wine with food, perfectly pairing – always with admiration and pride for the work accomplished by their fellow winemakers.
Making wine takes time and involves many processes. The hazards of the weather, the maturation of the grapes, the vinification of the harvest, the aging, and finally the storing of the wine. The hard work undertaken by Corsican winemakers in recent years to bring Corsican wine on, is a giant leap forward for all wine lovers.
The selection of the wine in this way proves another certainty. When it comes to choosing wines to compliment your holiday meals, there is no need to look elsewhere. Whatever type of wine, whatever pairing required, Corsican winemakers, whether they work in private cellars or in cooperative groups, are able to deliver the perfect taste. And above all, they bring their own identity, and their own originality: sciaccarellu, niellucciu, vermentinu, biancu gentile, minustellu, carcaghjolu neru, the range of native grape varieties is so diverse that it offers compositions and vintages that are truly original.
Éric Poli, Christian Estève, Gilles Seroin, Pierre Acquaviva, Christian Orsucci, Jean-Baptiste de Peretti Della Rocca, Marie-Brigitte Poli, and Françoise Giudicelli have proved themselves as knowledgeable guides. They love their job and of course, wine. As an added bonus, they are interested in gastronomy.
Pierre Acquaviva, willing iconoclast
Pierre Acquaviva is not only an inspired winemaker of Domaine d'Alzipratu in Balagne. He is also the guardian of the appellations of origin of the Corsican vineyard.
Passionate about wine making, he qualifies his choices as emblematic.
To start, Pierre Acquaviva proposes to pair snails doused in a parsley butter sauce with a beer brewed in Corsica, the Malvasia from the Palazzu brewery , "where we find the aromas of vermentinu, from which it takes its name, and which brings the bubbles that go well with the meal".
He follows this with a smoked tuna sashimi paired with a white Burghese from Sant Armettu, aged in barrels, "which responds well to the fat of the fish and its smoking".
For the cheese, a Calenzana, Pierre Acquaviva suggests an aged muscat from Domaine Leccia , "the aromas of the cheese matching the potency of the cheese, the sweetness balancing the saltiness".
Pierre Acquaviva finally dares a foray to the continent, the only one to do so, "but to give a hand to young winemakers who are setting up shop", it is his generous nature, and he chooses the Cuvée Poulettes, Ludovic Archer's second vintage in Savoie, made from a local grape variety, the roussette from the Alpine terroir, "a precise taut white with strong granularity and good structural acidity".
©Magali Cancel CIVCORSE
