A Jug Of Wine

In Rome, Monti Is a Quiet Treasure

PEOPLE sometimes wander along Via Panisperna in Rome realizing they are lost, but not fretting about it. The view is divine from there, a slice of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore sandwiched between 19th-century apartment buildings, dilapidated palazzos, the elevated Church of San Lorenzo in Panisperna and stores like Macelleria Stecchiotti, a butcher shop selling some of the best meat in Rome. The owner, Pietro Stecchiotti, a neighborhood notable nicknamed “Pol Pot” for his occupation and ardent Communist politics, claims to have planted the vines that drape across Via Panisperna in front of his shop, framing a quintessentially Roman streetscape.

This is Monti, Rome’s first ward — or Rione I, as marble street markers installed in the 18th century say — tucked between busy Via Cavour and Via Nazionale , east of the Forum. If not as well known to tourists as districts like Campo de’ Fiori and Piazza Navona , it is arguably more Roman: a working-class neighborhood in the heart of the historic center, gentrifying around the edges. It is a place where a knife sharpener still makes monthly rounds even as young entrepreneurs are opening artsy bookstore-cafes, vintage clothing shops, organic markets and galleries.

To spend time here is enough to make a tourist dream about chucking it all and moving to Rome. It happened to me. I once stopped along Via Panisperna and never forgot it. When I decided to move to Rome in 2007, I found an apartment down the hill on Via Baccina, which runs for a few brief, beguiling blocks between the Roman Forum and the endearing little Piazza della Madonna dei Monti, the neighborhood’s gently sloping, cobblestone-paved living room, where children play soccer after school, 20-somethings smoke while talking on cellphones and grandmas sit together, comparing notes about the remarkable occupants of their baby carriages.

The fountain in the middle of the piazza is a simple, two-tiered Renaissance affair with a few leering grotesques and a constantly flowing spigot from which the dogs of the district drink pure Roman water. April brings a festival to the diminutive piazza, I found, with free Italian oompah music , fava beans and jug wine. When a well-known local vagrant died last year, a homemade shrine with candles and handwritten eulogies appeared on the square.

Imagine what a pleasure it was to move into the neighborhood, to buy dish towels and window boxes in a cramped casalinghi — selling everything from toothpaste to rat traps — especially when I discovered that the stalwart Roman matron who owned the store lived in an apartment across Via Baccina from me. In the morning we discussed the excellent health of my geraniums from window to window, she in her housecoat, me with my watering can.

Wine Column: Bacon chocolate, a jug of wine and thou | Riverhead ...

Pairing food and wine is part of a wine journalist’s job description, but I rarely write about specific pairings because, frankly, I’d rather generalize: Good wine goes with good food; bad wine goes with bad food. Take your pick. That said, I have had some recent wine/food experiences that are worth recounting.

On Valentine’s Day, I visited Sparkling Pointe (motto: “If it’s not sparkling, what’s the point?”) in Southold for a wine and chocolate tasting with the winery’s hospitable staff. They set me up with a proper format of champagne flutes, presenting four wines paired with four flavored Vosges chocolate bars. Being skeptical of wine and chocolate pairings, other than as a ploy to lure visitors into wineries, I tasted the four bubblies before trying them with chocolate, and was glad I did; they were far better alone.

First, the 2004, all-chardonnay Blanc de Blanc was clean, bright and pure, with a lovely creamy mouth feel. Tasting it with white chocolate seasoned with pink pepper and lemon (the “Amalfi Bar”) accentuated its citrus flavors but obliterated its balance.

The 2006 Sparkling Pointe Brut was woodier, with a finish that was nicely complex until I put some salty, plantain-studded “Habana” chocolate in my mouth. It wasn’t a good pairing, but it was provocative and instructive — a wake-up call to pay attention to the sensory experience way beyond the alcohol and bubbles. The way the wine’s acidity cut through the cocoa butter highlighted how it would similarly cut through other fats in the diet (a health tip?).

The winemaker, Gilles Martin (a Frenchman with long experience making Champagne and sparkling wines), joined the tasting, and we chatted about harvest and dosage strategies as we moved on to the 2007 Topaz Imperial, a pinot noir-driven rose bubbly with delicate fruit and food-worthy phenolics. Explaining that he had never before tried this wine paired with the bacon-flavored (“Mo’s”) chocolate on offer, Gilles declared, “This freaks my brain out. My brain doesn’t know what to say. I’m not a virgin any more about bacon. I wish I was.”

This is not to say that the bacony chocolate wasn’t good. But it was weird, and even weirder with wine.

The final pairing, of the 2001 Brut Seduction with Vosges “Woolloomoloo” (milk chocolate flavored with macadamia nuts, coconut and hemp), made for an interesting dynamic of sweet-salt-savory. The wine is absolutely first-rate, and so was the chocolate, but together? If you wear a ball gown and tiara to dance to Herman’s Hermits, then, yeah. Our honest winemaker had the definitive words again: “I love hazelnuts.

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