Drinks advice · Wine and food

Polpette in tomato sauce with Poggio Le Volpi Tator Primitivo

Italian meatballs with bread, egg and Parmesan, slowly cooked in a sauce of tomato and basil. Primitivo is a ripe, warm red wine that feels at home with a dish like this.

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Bottle of Poggio Le Volpi Tator Primitivo, wine

From the shelf

The bottle

Poggio Le Volpi Tator Primitivo comes from Italy and is made from primitivo. The wine is at 14.5 percent ABV and the bottle holds 75 centilitres. In our range it is listed as robust and intense.

Poggio Le Volpi Tator Primitivo

The combination

Why this works together

Tomato sauce is acidic, and that acidity decides the choice. A wine with little acidity tastes limp next to it; a wine with a lot of tannin and little fruit turns hard and bitter. Primitivo sits in between: ripe, full of fruit, with tannin that has stayed soft. The minced meat brings fat and protein for that tannin to cling to, and the Parmesan cheese adds salt and savouriness. Salt softens bitterness, so the wine tastes rounder next to this dish than in the glass alone.

At the table

The dish

  • Before 4 people
  • Ready in 1 hour
  • Type main course

What you need

  • 600 grams of minced beef
  • 2 slices of stale white bread
  • 100 millilitres full-fat milk
  • 1 egg
  • 60 grams grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1 onion
  • 4 cloves of garlic
  • 800 grams peeled tomatoes from a can
  • 4 tablespoons of olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 20 grams fresh basil
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • salt and freshly ground black pepper

How to make it

  1. Crumble the bread, pour the milk over it and leave it for ten minutes until soft. Then squeeze it out lightly.
  2. Very finely chop the onion and press two cloves of garlic.
  3. Mix the minced meat with the bread, the egg, the Parmesan cheese, half of the onion, the pressed garlic, salt and pepper. Knead briefly: kneading too long makes the balls firm instead of tender.
  4. With wet hands shape about twenty walnut-sized balls from it and chill them for a quarter of an hour.
  5. Heat two tablespoons of olive oil in a wide pan and brown the balls all over in batches. They do not need to be cooked through yet. Put them on a plate.
  6. Put the rest of the oil in the pan and sauté the other half of the onion with the remaining garlic for five minutes until soft. Add the tomatoes, crush them with a spoon and stir in the oregano and the sugar.
  7. Let the sauce reduce for fifteen minutes, add the meatballs and simmer gently for another twenty minutes with the lid ajar on the pan.
  8. Season with salt and pepper and tear the basil over it just before serving. Serve with pasta or bread.

In the glass

Serving

Pour the wine at 16 to 17 degrees into a roomy red wine glass. Opening it half an hour beforehand is enough. Above 18 degrees the alcohol of this wine comes to the fore and the fruit recedes into the background.

Everything about Poggio Le Volpi Tator PrimitivoBack to Drinks advice from ’t Bockje

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