Mullet with lemon and mint and Rebola Colli di Rimini DOC

Tonight I tasted a wine so good that it upset my editorial calendar. So here I am, telling you about my Romagna and surprising myself because just a few kilometres from where I was born and where I have lived for a good 30 years there is a crazy wine that I totally ignored! And since I have created a magical wine-food pairing - by the way, follow me on Spotify and listen to my podcast "Does Red (not) look good with everything?" - I also want to share with you a super easy, super cheap and super tasty recipe that is perfect even if you don't know how to cook the mullet!

'ViVi' Colli di Rimini DOC Rebola 2018, Valentine's Day

I'll begin with: it's good enough to be dried! It is a beautiful deep straw yellow with green-gold reflections, consistent. The nose immediately reminds me of riesling, whereas it is 100% grechetto gentile. The bouquet is intense, mineral and fine, absolutely delicious. A tangle of citrus, saltiness and hydrocarbon that fades into mint and inspired me to make the mullet in the recipe I will write to you later. In the mouth it is consistent, elegant, fat, soft, fresh, structured and with a well managed pseudo-caloricity despite the 14%vol. Long finish of orange peel with white chocolate and vanilla.

I looked at how much the bottle costs, roughly it is around 20€. My thought? To offer a white wine from Romagna at 20€ is not easy, but in a blind tasting, in another region it would easily cost 30€, or even more. So for me it really is excellent value for money and I am proud that my land is capable of churning out such gems (remember that even though I live in Lombardy a Faentine heart will always beat in me❤️).

Mullet with mint and lemon: super easy recipe

Mullet: ingredients for two people

• 2 fresh mullet of about 400g each (cleaned)
• 5 generous tablespoons of coarse breadcrumbs
• 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
• 14 fresh mint leaves
• 1 lemon with edible peel

Mullet: preparation on the plate

1. Wash the mullet in cold running water and pat it dry with a paper towel.
2. Set the hotplate to heat, I set it to 7 in induction from 1 to 9, so I'd say high heat! As a griddle I use the Tescoma corrugated grill pan which my cousin Marco gave me for Christmas and which I couldn't live without: I love it! Perfect both in the oven and for induction, you can buy it on Amazon at this link.
3. Put the oil, grated lemon peel and lemon juice in a bowl and emulsify (beat) with a whisk (fork). Add the mint broken with your hands and the breadcrumbs and mix thoroughly.
4. Fill each mullet - in the area where the entrails have been removed - with half the mixture and place it on the hot plate.
5. After 10/12 minutes turn the mullet over to the other side and cook for a further 10/12 minutes. Serve piping hot, possibly accompanied by potatoes for a perfect fish & chips.

Mullet with mint and lemon and Vi Vi Colli di Rimini DOC Rebola 2018: perfection is served!

A truly delicious and unexpected dinner that you can prepare for someone you love with a few euros and extreme ease for a very special evening at home. Did you know that I only paid €2.80 for the two mullets? If you have already drunk this wine or know this winery, scroll down the page and write me a comment... I'll just tell you in advance that I drank another one of their Cru, the Conte di Cavigliano Sangiovese Riserva Colli di Rimini DOC and I loved it despite the fact that the 2017 vintage was particularly difficult (do you remember the frost I told you about in this article?).

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'Vi Vi' 2018 Valentine's Day: but is it made from Grechetto or pignoletto grapes?

One last curiosity for the 'non-Romans': rebola is the name given to white pignoletto in Rimini and is also called grechetto there. In reality, pignoletto and grechetto, while similar, are two different grape varieties and therefore it would be more correct to correct the technical data sheet with the name pignoletto. I would also like to point out that those hints of riesling that I smelled on the nose are more than correct, since pignoletto bianco has been confused several times with riesling italico to the point that it has become an 'erroneous synonym' for it. I understand that the San Valentino winery feels closer to Grechetto: pignoletto in the collective imagination is a sparkling or spumante wine that is almost always of little or very little value, vinified in Emilia... better to resort to the Umbrian synonym for marketing...

Cheers 🍷

Chiara

All my notes on wine and food in one book.