Pizza Restaurants Washington DC

Pizza Wine for Dummies

Americans love pizza so much that we've made it our national food, along with hamburgers and hot dogs. I also happen to love pizza and enjoy it frequently. But I must drink wine with my pizza -- red wine, of course.  I cannot  understand the concept of beer, or even worse, soda, with pizza.  Red wine complements tomato-based pizzas so well!  It easily handles the acidity of the tomatoes and/or the sauce, and goes well with most other pizza toppings. I even enjoy red wine with pizza Bianca (sans tomatoes) although I guess an appropriate white wine might work here as well.

Pizza as we know it today, with tomatoes, had its origins in Naples in the 1700s; local residents started adding the new-fangled tomato, a gift from the Americas, to their flatbreads. The first open-air pizza stands also began in Naples during the 18th century.

The first restaurant  specializing in pizza in the U.S., Lombardi's, in downtown New York, opened in 1905 and it's still there. But it took World War II for pizza to really catch on in the U.S.  American GIs serving in Italy discovered this delicacy and brought the idea of pizza, plus a taste for wine, back with them when they returned. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, pizza started becoming generally available, first in the New York area, and then around the country.

A few times a year, some of my wine writing colleagues and I gather in a pizzeria in New York, one in which we're allowed to bring our own wine, and feast on various pizzas. One of the main topics of conversation, of course, is which wines go best with the pizza.  Over the years, I have formed some strong ideas on the best pizza wines, and I thought it would be a good idea (at least to me!) to publicly express my views on this important topic.

Not all red wines pair well with pizza (I'm talking only about typical tomato-based, Neapolitan-style pizzas in this column).  A few years ago, a California-based wine writer wrote about wines that go with pizza; the problem was that all the wines mentioned were California  wines!  I believe that most California wines do not pair well with pizza; they don't have the structure that pizza needs.  Most California reds are too fruity and too low in acidity to team up with pizza; also, many have strong oaky aromas and flavors.  In my experience, certain Italian red wines go best with pizza.

The one possible exception to my no-California  policy with pizza might be a few Cal-Ital reds.  In doing research for my California Wine For Dummies book, which publisher John Wiley has just released for sale, I discovered some real 'Italian-style' California red wines: lean, dry, not too fruity, and with enough bracing acidity to accompany pizza.  Five Cal-Ital 'Pizza reds' that come to mind are Boeger Barbera, Brutacao Dolcetto, Martin & Weyrich 'Il Vecchio' Nebbiolo, and Caparone's...