Ca' del Baio "Autinbej" Barbaresco and Wild Boar Sausage—A Match Made in Heaven

This past week I had a hard day that required a hearty meal. I needed something that had a lot of flavors and would stick to my ribs on one of those chilly, drizzly California winter nights. It felt like a meat and potatoes evening. Scratch that—it felt like a meat and potatoes and red wine night.

I reached into my pantry to dig around for some staples but also reached for some of the new wines I procured for my wine fridge. What elevated the meal to something genuinely memorable was twofold: some wild boar sausage I bought from a butcher in San Luis Obispo and the 2016 Ca' del Baio "Autinbej" Barbaresco that Italian wine buyer Greg St Clair recently brought in. 

These were not pre-cooked sausages, so I started them in the oven (I usually would opt for the grill, but as I said, there was a good amount of precipitation on this night, so I stayed indoors). With the sausages doing their thing, I brought chopped potatoes to boil while I started my skillet on medium-high with sliced onions and butter. After about 5 minutes, I added chopped mushrooms and garlic. I dropped the heat down to medium to make sure the onions had a healthy amount of time to go from translucent to caramelly-brown without getting crispy. I watched my potatoes in anticipation.

Naturally, I popped the bottle of Barbaresco to assist me with cooking, and I was very impressed. The Autinbej has a superb mix of fresh fruit notes, herbaceousness, bold spice, and subtle earthy qualities as well. With its soft tannins, cherry, and pomegranate notes, I knew that the wine shouldn't just be for me. The food needed some too.

After the mushrooms, onions, and garlic had been going for about 20 minutes, I turned the heat back up to medium-high and added dried rosemary and sage. Then I splashed in about a quarter of a cup of the Barbaresco to stir and deglaze the skillet. Meanwhile, I drained the potatoes, added whole milk to the pot as I mashed, then put in a lot of butter, minced garlic, and dashes of the rosemary and sage. I pulled the boar sausage from the oven and added them to the skillet with the onions and mushrooms. After everything got a nice brown going, I added another quarter cup of the Autinbej to get more of the wine's bright flavors and do one last deglazing.

The results were delicious. The food took on so much of the fruitiness and herbal notes from the Autinbej. As a pairing, the earthiness of the wine cozied up to the gamey flavors of the wild boar, yet the fruit flavors and acidity cut through the unctuous qualities of the meat. The onions and mushrooms soaked up these flavors perfectly, and it all came together nicely on a foundation of creamy potatoes and a slice of buttered home-baked soda bread. It turned into a meal that chased the winter weather far away from my home.

—Neal Fischer