Wine and Cheese Pairing

Wine: NV Denny Bini "Festa" Lambrusco dell'Emilia, Emilia-Romagna, Italy

Regularly $18.99, Special Price $16.14

Cheese: Harbourne Blue, Devon, England

Regularly $39.99/lb, Special Price $31.99

After too many years of industrially produced mediocrity, Emilia is now home to a small but growing cell of artisanal producers who are farming carefully and returning to the metodo ancestrale (also known as Pet-Nat) of their great-grandfathers. Denny Bini is one of the humble heroes of this renaissance-revolution. Over the years, he has slowly been changing his career from historic cellar master of well-known Lambrusco estate to someone with his own vineyards and cellar of mostly metodo ancestrale wines.

Lambrusco and conviviality go hand in hand. So much so, in fact, that Denny Bini has taken to referring this wine as “Festa” even though it’s not the official moniker. This is a classic Emilian Lambrusco, with more depth to the fruit, since Denny works so carefully in the vineyard: sweet-sour berries, with that classic Emilian bitter note on the finish. A frizzante-level of effervescence gives this wine an incredible drinkability. The perfect chillable red since the days of Pliny the Elder, this wine wants to be your friend.

It's grill season, and what's better than a beefy burger with a hefty serving of blue cheese on top? The answer is, very little. Harbourne is a Roquefort-style cheese created with goat’s milk. It's a clean, bright cheese with light blue veining, a crumbly texture and flavors that are lip-smacking lactic and sweet. Though Harbourne Blue is made to a Roquefort recipe, the use of goat's milk instead of ewe's milk, as per the French tradition, makes for a markedly different flavor and texture profile.

Pairing Lambrusco with burgers has always been one of my favorite pairings because Lambrusco cuts the salt of the meal and still tastes so good with all your traditional burger condiments. The addition of Harbourne Blue to said burger, will take this pairing to new heights. If you aren't a burger person, don't fret, we've selected this blue cheese because of its synchronicity with the Festa Lambrusco!