Sometimes, I get one-upped by my boyfriend (okay, kinda more than sometimes but let’s leave that alone so his ego doesn’t inflate too much). He’s not a wino to the extent than I am but he enjoys the wines that I open and has a great palate (better than mine any day of the week) so I enjoy drinking wine with him for the fact that I usually learn something. Case in point, this story I’m about to tell you.

I had opened a bottle of 2007 Piazzo Barbera from Piemonte (about $10-12 retail) on Friday night to have with the pizza I had for dinner and that pairing was fantastic. I finished the rather small pizza and wished I had more because my mouth was so happy with the flavor combination.

The following evening, we got home from dinner and he suggested pouring a glass of something. Since the Piazza was open, I poured some of that to sip while we watched a little TV. We both liked the wine but I said it tasted better with food because of the high acid in it. It was then that he suggested the pairing I was doubtful about. He said “This would probably go really well with that ice cream we have.” … What?! A red wine with ice cream? I was a skeptic. I’ve never really experimented with wine and desserts beyond what’s been given to me but I always thought that the wine had to be sweeter than the dessert.

Then, I tried the pairing. Cookies and cream and Barbera. It was magnificent. It was creamy but the wine stood up nicely to it without any weird flavors. He was right (and I may or may not have sworn under my breath).

Why did this work? It went against everything I had thought I knew about pairing wine with dessert.

Turns out, it worked as a pairing the same way that it worked with pizza the night before. Barbera is a light colored red with a lot of acidity and low tannins, built to stand up to fat and blend well with said fat. The pizza had cheese and meat on top and that’s where that fat came from in the pizza to balance the flavors. The ice cream obviously had plenty of fat, but apparently not enough to overpower the wine.

It proved to me that sometimes I may feel like I know something about wine, but I’ll never know everything. There will always be things that I’m discovering as I go. I’m just glad that these imaginary pairing rules weren’t in my boyfriend’s head because then I never would have discovered that these things actually work pretty well together.