I was doing research on the wines of Corsica and this got me craving Vermentino. I just happened to have a bottle of Tablas Creek’s 2017 Vermentino handy to open.

So…dinner. What to pair?

A friend of mine had been fishing recently and made smoked trout. I was the lucky recipient of two of these trout!

So a little research for recipes and I found a theme to riff on.

I settled on a smoked trout pasta. This was super easy to whip up, cooking the pasta took the most time. Here’s my list to gather if you want to recreate this (which you should…it was delicious)

Smoked Trout and arugula pasta

Ingredients

• Pasta (we simply used spaghetti, which gave it great texture)
• Smoked trout (deboned and chunked)
• Olive oil
• Arugula
• Dill
• 1 lemon zested
• 1 small zuchinni thinly sliced
• shredded parmesan cheese
• creme fraiche
• salt & pepper

To Do

• Boil the pasta and drain
• cook zuchinni in a pan with a little olive oil, salt and pepper
• add the trout to the zuchinni to warm
• Toss with the pasta
• Add the Arugula, Dill, lemon zest, and shredded parmesan cheese
• Mix in creme fraiche to the desired creaminess level
• plate and top with some more of the fresh dill
• (you can add a splash of lemon juice if you like, to your particular taste)
• Et Voila!

Caprese…sort of

I thought a Caprese salad would go nicely with this also, so I did a riff on that. Michael doesn’t like tomatoes, so I picked up a peach and an avocado to add between the slices of fresh mozerella and instead of basil, I used the arugula.

In France, especially the Southern Rhône, Vermentino is often known as “Rolle”. This wine has always been a favorite of mine. It is bright and fresh with citrus, mineral, wet stone and lemon zest. It has what I think of as a “Fresca” note (that soda from my childhood). Put your nose in a glass of this wine and close your eyes. Can you hear the ocean? This wine sits at a moderate 13% abv.

Tablas Creek 2017 Vermentino

This is the fifteeth bottling of Vermentino from Tablas Creek Vineyard. It is the variety that made me first fall in love with Tablas Creek. The vineyard, located in the Adelaida District AVA of Paso Robles, is one of my favorites. It sits at 13.% alc and they made 1560 cases of this nectar.

The pairings

Okay…just heaven. The salty, slightly smoky pasta, with the lemon zest and spicy arugula, plus the brightness of the dill played perfectly with this wine. I was not sure if I was venturing too far afield with the peach in the caprese, but those stone fruit notes that are a little on the tart side came out in the wine with this pairing.

Options

You could make this pasta dish with smoked salmon also. Then the wine would be different…I would think a richer rosé would work well. Of course you can sub out the arugula for all sorts of greens…baby chard sounds good and again would go nice with a rose. Mix it up, have fun.

This dish as we made it would also go nicely with a Chenin Blanc or a white Rhône blend.

Let us know in the comments, how this works for you and what variations you went with!

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