I may be considered a heretic, after this article, but I still like an Old-World pizza, or maybe it is called a New York pizza, but I am not partial to a Detroit pizza, and I grew up in the old part of the city.  When I was a kid, back in the dark ages when televisions in Detroit had four stations, because we could pick up Windsor, Ontario, Canada.  The first pizzeria in the neighborhood was a sit-down Italian restaurant on the highway, and some consider it the best, to this day.  Then another pizzeria opened, first as a carryout and then it became a sit-down Italian restaurant as well, and tucked way in the far corner, kind of in the neighborhood, but technically in Dearborn (a suburb) was Roman Village, and then the neighborhood got a couple more carry-out places and one is still going strong.  Why do I go into this litany?  They were all that mysterious delicacy that we called a pizza.  You know that round thing, that you could take home in a square box, and eat in a folded triangle. 

To my dying day, that will be a pizza.  The more toppings the better; a couple of different Italian cheeses, pepperoni, ham, green peppers, mushrooms, olives (your choice), hot peppers and anchovies.  Oh, and a pizza had to be kind of a circular shaped item, it was never perfect, because the dough had to be tossed up in the air and stretched and pulled so that the dough was just thick enough to bake through, but still pliable that with all the gooey cheese that would stretch five or six inches after you tried to cut one piece from another, you could fold in in half to eat, and talk with your other hand.  The other thing is that the pepperoni had to be hand cut and greasy, so that when it is baked, it doesn’t lay flat on the cheese, but curls up and contains a bead of natural grease in the cupped pepperoni.  We wanted to have a pizza, the other day and I really prefer to have a pizza, in a pizzeria or a restaurant.  Roman Village is still going strong in my old neighborhood, but the original family opened up all their newer restaurants as Antonio’s (go figure).  Still the pizza that makes me happy and I have won over my Bride as well. 

If you think about it, if we ate the pizza at home, the price of the wine would be much better, but I always think that perhaps there will be an interesting new wine to try.  And pizza is an equal-opportunity cuisine, as you can have cocktails, beer, or wine; sparkling, rosé, red or white.  Why white? it is cheese on dough and the meat traditionally is usually the other white meat.  We shared a bottle of Marchesi Antinori Castello della Sala “Bramito della Sala” Chardonnay Umbria IGT 2021.  Now, because I am old school, especially today, Marchesi Antinori is one of the old school wineries that crossed the ocean years ago and they offer from “jug” wine to great wines.  Castello della Sala is one of several estates owned by Antinori.  The winery is named for a Fourteenth Century castle on the grounds, but it wasn’t used as a commercial winery until the last century, when it was bought in 1940 by Antinori.  It was planted with Grechetto and Chardonnay and later on some other whites as well.  In 1985 they created a new state-of-the-art facility for the five-hundred hectare estate of vineyards and eight hectares of olive orchards.  Umbria IGT is a huge region in the middle of Italy that doesn’t have any coastline or international borders, and for years the huge wine producing region was considered Vino de Tavola or table wine for local consumption.  The soils for this wine have sedimentary deposits of marine fossils and veins of clay.  The grapes were destemmed and gently crushed with maceration on the skins for only about four hours and Initial Fermentation in Stainless Steel.  Malolactic Fermentation was only done that went into oak for aging.  Then the wines were blended and bottled. The wine is a soft yellow in color and offers notes of pineapple, apple and vanilla.  On the palate a nice crisp, balanced with of golden apples with a tinge of vanilla and minerals, and a beautiful finish of terroir,  The next day we had the left over pizza with a different  white wine and we both agreed that the Bramito della Sala was the perfect pairing.