Chiara’s journey includes a semester at the Sorbonne in Paris, where she studied Economics, followed by an extended period in Burgundy. There, she deepened her knowledge of viticulture and oenology, bringing back valuable insights and skills to apply at home. Today, she manages the export sector of Emidio Pepe, while also being actively involved in the cellar and the vineyards.
Chiara’s innovative strategies include ancient yet highly contemporary techniques, such as cover cropping with dozens of different plants, treatments with milk, and planting trees around each vineyard. These methods, implemented with her young team, reflect a blend of tradition and modernity that drives their sustainable approach to winemaking. She talks exclusively to Luxeat about flavour profiles, influences and land…
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Wine Characteristics and Flavor Profiles
Influences and Inspirations
Challenges and Rewards of Winemaking
Impact of Terrain and Climate Change
Winemaking Methods and Philosophy
– Crushing the grapes by feet
– Wine: Living Matter
– Fermentation
– Wine tide
Personal Reflections
How would you describe your wine in a few words…
I would say it’s a wine with a sense of place, made with authenticity, and very season-dependent. It changes a lot season by season. Flavour profiles are hard to describe. The conceptual ideas of authenticity, sense of place, and seasonality are the most important things.
Could you try to describe the flavour profile…
We work with Trebbiano d’Abruzzo and Pecorino for whites and Montepulciano d’Abruzzo for reds. Trebbiano is texturally dominant. The textural dimension dominates the wine, and it is what I like people to focus their energy on. On the nose, you typically find flavours related to minerality, straw, and freshly cut grass. But then, in the mouth…
Trebbiano d’Abruzzo is mainly, in my opinion, a wine that you experience texturally. I always invite people to pay attention to the performance of the wine in their mouth, like the way it moves, the energy, and the dynamics. I like to think of it as a wine that has a sense of electricity in your mouth.
Flavour profiles are hard to describe. The conceptual idea of authenticity, sense of place, and seasonality are the most important things.
It has a vibration and an energy. Normally, it’s a wine that tends to be very, very shy and austere in its youth. So, it’s never too aromatic at first. Then, all the aromas of yellow flowers, honey, and orange peel arrive with time and as it ages.
I love the idea of increasing the percentages of white wine that we put into long-term aging, so that we’re able to release it later on. When it’s young, it’s more on the side of yellow flowers, pear, freshly cut grass, and all the scents related to minerality, stone flints, and similar ideas.
Pecorino is definitely a wine with a different flavor profile in the nose, being an aromatic grape. The bunch tends to be much smaller, the skin thicker, and there’s less juice versus solids as we crush, by foot, during vinification. So, the impact of the skins on the final wine is amplified.
That being said, normally on the nose, you have all those flavors of patisserie, and you have a lot more like fruit from warm places. In the mouth, it is definitely a wine that has more volume, a sense of viscosity that tends to be almost oily. So it’s always incredibly fun to pair it with food, and in its relationship with food, it is very acidic.
It has a very good backbone of acidity together with a lot of flesh around it. So it’s a very atypical white wine, and we’re curious to see how it ages. It’s also the last grape varietal that we included because the first vintage was in 2010 from vineyards planted in 2006.
Right now, we make only 6,000 bottles of this wine. We are trying to age more, but it’s still complicated when you produce such a small quantity.
Montepulciano is definitely the great varietal at the heart of Pepe. So Grandfather always paid incredible attention to the quality of the skins that he was cultivating.
He always loved shade because he wanted the velvety sensation to be built during the growing season, bringing the ripening right to the end while keeping the skins very thin. This way, only the most noble elements of the skins were preserved, without the skins being thickened by the sun and developing a sense of roughness.
I am very inspired by the wine I drink as a winemaker. That, for me, is also a guide within the wine that I dream of and try to achieve.
Therefore, shade is required, you want coolness, and you want very thin skin so that in the cellar, you would always vinify lightly and delicately. It would preserve this noble quality of tannins that he was dreaming of.
Montepulciano starts very energetically in the first part of its life, with a lot of everything in a pretty chaotic order.
A lot of tannins, a lot of acidity, lots of body and power, and everything is intertwined very tightly. There is a sense of vibrancy and energy, but also a good mouthfeel; the younger ones definitely fulfill this need. Most often, everything navigates towards a cherry element, sour cherry, and in the flower aromas, you definitely go towards violet. Then, as they age, the color changes and the flavor profile becomes more noble and stratified, with a more important depth to each vintage profile. The cooler vintages, like 2002, 1984, and 2009, navigate on a leaner profile, in terms of mouthfeel, so the acidity is the predominant element there.
In the warmer vintages, you definitely have more texture, a bit more flesh, and definitely aromas that go towards tartness and a different flavor profile. The warmer vintages are more likely to pair with an umami situation rather than the cooler ones, which tend to have a different dynamic and a different evolution.
What I like to invite people to do when tasting the wines is to understand the flavor profiles, but also to notice how the wine changes in the glass. It is very beautiful; the dynamism with which the wine changes and develops is never the same every time you go back and sniff it.
To me, that really shows the inner energy of the wine to change and develop. This also reveals a lot about how the wine has grown in the vineyards and how it has been fermented. The more strains of yeast contribute to the fermentation, the more flavor profiles you have.
Clearly, when in the glass, those flavor profiles will present themselves to you one after the other in a continuum of evolution. In the very first sniff, you perceive the flavor profile related to the initial strains of yeast that started the fermentation. After 10 minutes, you can detect the second, third, and fourth families of yeast that contributed to the fermentation.
If you keep tasting the wine over two days, you’ll continue to experience different flavor profiles. To me, this dynamism is what allows you to deeply understand the personality of the wine.
Who and what influenced you most as a winemaker?
Two big elements are where I grew up and the sense of belonging, the sense of place, my grandfather and my old family, clearly.
I remember when I was very young, just a little girl, my mom would drop me off here with my grandparents. The estate was so small, and the two of them were running everything. They would take me around as they worked, and I could see everything they were doing.
We farm biodynamically, so it means that never, any chemical has ever entered into our estate, neither in the vineyard or in the cellar since 1964.
I could understand the practicality, and my grandfather understood the sense of gesture, attention, and care in the way he would touch the vines. The memory of that was very special in shaping my approach to delicacy and working in the vineyards and the cellar with a sense of observation and deep respect.
The family was definitely a big learning school for me because you absorb everything in an osmotic way. It never feels like a learning curve, but in fact, you’re absorbing so much that it shapes your personality as a winemaker later on. I’ve also traveled a lot.
I had incredible mentors who were crucial for my development and acquisition of knowledge. At the very beginning, I met Serge Hochar from Chateau Musar at the age of 14. He told me, “You taste the wine three times. If it’s not three wines, it’s not a good wine.” For that idea of dynamism, the wine has to change. If it’s blocked and monolithic, it is not a noble wine.
Within my education, I moved to Burgundy to acquire the technical knowledge needed for oenology and viticulture. It was an incredible place where I could ask questions of people I respected and admired as winemakers. I received so much love and information that I will be forever grateful to that region.
It was very special to be in the company of Jeremy Seysses and discuss wine and life, as well as Frédéric Mugnier and Frédéric Lafarge. This experience was particularly meaningful to me. I believe that as a winemaker, you are also greatly inspired by the wine you drink. For me, this serves as a guide within the wine I dream of and strive to create.
Northern Rhône has always been an inspiration, especially in the domain of long-term aging, making wine with structure, and embracing power. Sometimes power is hard to understand, penetrate, and interpret, but clearly, if you aim to create something with a different dimension and an eye to the future, you need that sense of generosity from the start.
I’m learning not to be afraid of it. One of the most profound and recent conversations I had was with Thierry Allemand in Northern Rhône. I am inspired by many people in the wine industry. Being a very curious person, I find that when you ask the right questions to the right people, you gain a lot of insights that you can then elaborate on with your personality, experience, and past life. I am always very open.
What is it like to be a woman winemaker, and what are the biggest challenges, if there are any?
I tend to be very straightforward on this topic. I speak for myself at this current time, in 2024, and at my current age. I like to think that knowledge is what puts us all on the same level. If you’re competent and knowledgeable, it doesn’t matter who you are.
In the wine field specifically, that’s what really counts. If you’re talented, your wines will speak for you. Clearly, we have different attitudes, and the way we work and behave, the way we work with plants, is definitely different. I am very inspired by many incredibly good female winemakers who worked in the early part of this century. That was the hardcore challenge. Nowadays, I’m three generations on from that kind of situation, so I think that was the struggle. Now it’s an open field.
Anytime you prove yourself, you might be asked to prove your knowledge a little bit more, but that doesn’t bother me. Once you share your knowledge with people, it’s no problem. People realize it. It’s an open field. Here at the estate, it’s female-run.
My bosses are my mother and my aunt. They are in their fifties and are very strong women. They had to prove their knowledge, strength, and capacity for entrepreneurship, but once it’s there, people acknowledge it. We are also very versatile. We are strong. We know how to do everything. My mom and my aunt both drive the tractors. My grandfather taught them everything, so there’s no issue there.
What is the hardest and most challenging thing about your job?
Adjusting and moving alongside the changing climate and being a good observer. That’s the challenge. Being a good observer isn’t given, right? You can watch, but not necessarily observe or metabolize that information.
And what is the most rewarding thing about your job?
I think it’s the communication with people. When people approach what you do and deeply understand the effort and thought process involved in making wine, and then share that understanding with you, it is incredibly rewarding. That, I believe, is the most fulfilling achievement for a winemaker. It’s similar to when people follow your work, see your growth, and appreciate the journey. This has happened with my grandfather and my aunt before me. Watching someone’s path through their winemaking, seeing how their personality and results evolve, is quite special. When people study and appreciate your work, it’s truly spectacular.
How the terrain and microclimate impact your work?
Abruzzo, and this specific area of Abruzzo, has a very distinct microclimate. In this region, within a very short stretch of land, about a hundred kilometers, you can go from the top of the Gran Sasso mountains, which are almost 3000 meters high, to sea level. This makes the area quite unique. We must understand that the wind currents make this land particularly suitable for certain activities.
Depending on the temperatures, there will be different pressures that invite wind currents from the mountains toward the sea or vice versa. Consequently, we observe very different conditions throughout the year, but it tends to be consistently windy.
Two big elements are where I grew up and the sense of belonging, the sense of place, my grandfather and my old family. I had incredible mentors who were very crucial for my development and my acquisition of knowledge.
Historically, we’ve always had snow here due to the proximity to the mountains, which has been incredibly crucial for facing very hot summers. For Grandfather, this was clearly, from a physiological point of view for the plant, incredibly important: it allowed the plant to go dormant, accumulate reserves, and then start again clean and fresh the next season.
Now, this is changing. We no longer have that snow. So we’re trying to reinvent or redesign according to what the weather is telling us. We are changing how we work the soil and how we dream and think about water supplies. There’s this beautiful French saying, “Il faut tout changer pour ne rien changer.”
I want to keep the style of the wine the same. I want the ethic and idea of Pepe wines to always be Pepe. No matter who makes the wine, it’s a bigger idea than us humans or the generations passing through. And clearly, we’re human, so we’re going to influence and put our touch on it, but the core has to remain. If I didn’t change anything with this changing climate, the wine would be drastically different. So I have to adapt and think creatively to move alongside the changing climate, ensuring the wines don’t change. These changes are mainly applied in the vineyards.
So that’s where I’m working the most, experimenting the most, and doing trials because I think that’s where everything starts, with the fruit. A lot of things in terms of agronomy, biodynamics, and regenerative agriculture are being experimented with. Little by little, I’m moving in the direction of no tilling, no ploughing, and not touching the soil.
I’m using those big cover crop mulches to protect the soil from erosion and evaporation of humidity. I’m starting to experiment with the use of milk for treatments, spraying it on the leaves to protect the vines from mildew and oidium. I have a very young, smart, and supportive team, and we’re trying a lot of other things.
There are seven of us. It’s a small team, but there’s a lot of shared thinking and collaboration. We’re trying to find new ways, experiment, do something fun, and also have fun along the way.
You partly answered my next question, but how has climate change affected your vineyard?
It’s exactly that. I think climate change is affecting different regions in different ways, so it’s not uniform across the globe. In Burgundy, it’s showing one way, in the Rhine another, and in the south of France yet another way. Here in Abruzzo, in our little area, we’ve been seeing the extremes becoming even more pronounced.
So extremes are becoming more extreme. There’s no regularity or predictability as there used to be. Grandfather would say in July, there’s always going to be some rain coming. We haven’t seen it this year. In mid-February, there would always be some snow. We haven’t seen that since 2017.
But what happens is that maybe, yes, summers are hot, but they’ve always been hot. What is happening is that we are not seeing winter being winter. No snow means no water reserves being replenished.
How long has it been since you’ve had snow?
2017, yeah. And before, it was recurrent. It was snowing every year.
And then all of a sudden, it stopped. I think the water table is going far away from the roots. The plant also never has time to stop its biological cycle. That is also why very cold, negative temperatures are very useful for the cycle of the plant. The sap flow goes down, the plant blocks.
Another very important aspect of snow or negative temperatures is that they have a sanitizing power, like a disinfectant for the soil and the sporulation of the last years. And we haven’t seen that. So when we bring those grapes back, they are microbiologically very active.
There’s a lot of everything. There’s a lot of yeast, but there’s also a lot of bacteria because we haven’t been sanitizing during the winters. And also, another strange thing is that whenever there’s water, there’s a lot of water coming all at once. So in three days, you would have the rainfall millimeters that you would have had normally in three months.
I like to think that knowledge is what puts us all in one field. If you’re competent and knowledgeable, it doesn’t matter you are man or woman winemaker.
If you’re talented, your wines are going to speak for you.
So, that makes me realize that I have to prepare my entire estate for both extremes: to handle a lot of water without creating damage, such as erosion, and to prepare my soil to withstand long periods of uninterrupted heat. One solution I’m envisioning is the vertical pergola.
The special thing about the pergola is that it not only shades grapes but also the soil. It’s crucial for the soil to stay moist to function properly. Once the soil gets dry, it stops functioning, much like us. We need hydration for molecules to run and ions to move, enabling roots to absorb salts.
It’s important to have water because life thrives in the colloidal state. In farming and agriculture, we say that life moves in the colloidal state, referring to complexes called “argile unique,” which are conglomerates of clay, water, and minerals. These complexes have an electric charge, allowing them to attach certain things and pass them on to the roots. Mushrooms and mycorrhizae play an incredibly important role as communicators and links in this process. However, they are very sensitive to humidity.
If there’s no humidity, they die. Therefore, it’s crucial for me to keep the soil humid for as long as possible. Of course, when it’s mid-August, at some point, the soil will start to block. The idea is to extend the time during which the soil remains functional. The pergola shades the soil, and my bent cover crop also shades the soil.
The idea of planting trees next to the pergola is to provide additional shading for the pergola itself. By doing this, I create three layers of shade for the soil: the trees, the pergola, and the cover crop that I mulch and bend. This is one method. The other method involves avoiding ploughing because every time you plough, you increase evaporation.
Gradually, this causes the soil to lose its water reserves.
You mentioned that, due to the wind, there can’t be a steam effect.
Yes, that’s correct. The wind prevents any steam effect, especially in this microclimate. Typically, there’s enough humidity retained in the soil, reducing the need for additional humidity.
Could you describe your agriculture and your winery methods? So you are biodynamic?
Yes, we’re biodynamic certified. Biodynamics, in the sense of what we do, can vary. To be very good at it is one of the crucial keys to facing global warming while still making fine wines, which is clearly our aim. We farm biodynamically, meaning that no chemicals have ever entered our estate, either in the vineyard or the cellar, since 1964.
Your grandfather was a pioneer...
Yes. So he was always very strict about that. He always did spontaneous fermentation. He always wanted to preserve and maintain the energy and liveliness of everything he was doing. We farm the fruit and the wines in Pergola. That is the growing season system that we love. Everything is hand-picked.
To vinify, we use no machines. White grapes are crushed by foot, and red grapes are hand-stemmed. Everything in our cellar is spontaneously fermented.
What does “spontaneously fermented” mean?
It means that you don’t go to a pharmacy to buy yeast for inoculation. We spoke about yeast being part of the terroir.
When you use your own yeast, you’re respecting your landscape and utilizing the yeast endemic to your place. Anytime you inoculate with commercially sold yeast, you introduce flavors that many other wineries around the world are also using. This means the flavor influencing your wine is the same as that of possibly 10,000 other estates globally.
I’m very opinionated, but wines made with selected yeast cannot have a sense of place.
We cannot talk about terroir when wines are inoculated. This was a strict point that my grandfather was always ethically dominant on. It was very important to him.
Throughout his career, and still today, everything is spontaneously fermented. Nothing is ever filtered. The idea is to preserve the textural element and the entirety of the wine’s richness. Filtration makes the wine more brilliant and shiny but also takes away a lot of the three-dimensional aspect of the wine’s mouthfeel.
For us, it is very important to preserve this because we want our wine to be suitable for long-term aging. The wine stays in concrete tanks for two years after fermentation, then it is bottled and aged in our aging cellar. We keep at least half of our production for long-term aging because we believe it is crucial for the wine to fulfill different needs and adapt over time.
So Trebbiano and Pecorino grapes are crushed by feet. We put 250 kilos of grapes at a time, with four or five people in rubber boots. They crush the grapes, and the juice runs through. Then, we put the juice into concrete tanks. A lot of people ask why we still crush grapes by foot. The answer, for me, is that this is a gesture. This movement allows a constant stimulation of skin and juice, releasing density and matter, but also a bit of tannins. This allows the must to enter the tank very rich, and by then, the wine has everything it needs for spontaneous fermentation and long-term aging.
Our whites are never very aromatic, perfumed white wines. To me, they are wines you taste texturally. As I said at lunch, I’m not going to describe the wines; I just invite you to see how they perform in your mouth because that’s where you’ll truly experience them.
It’s not in the nose or how pretty they look when you first open the bottle, but how they texturally behave on your palate. This textural feeling is built during the 45 minutes of crushing by feet. And that’s it.
When talking about food or wine, you are always tasting living matter. It’s a relationship of subject to subject, so there’s no judgment because whatever you’re tasting is changing with you. The same happens when you taste the same dish twice—it can be a different experience each time.
Do you think this changes, or do you change?
It’s hard to know, but this entire process elevates our thinking about whatever we put into our bodies. The moment we decide to put something from the outside inside, it signifies an acceptance of a relationship.
When you have a memory of food, it’s not just a memory of that food. It’s a memory of that moment, of the combination within you, the food, the people, and the wine. When I was very young, I had excellent mentors and tasting teachers. I was not yet making wine, but I was tasting wines and writing beautiful tasting notes. I described wines by how they moved and performed, never using adjectives like “peach.”
I want to keep the style of the wine the same. I want the ethic and the idea of Pepe wines to always be Pepe.
I was very proud of myself and thought that once I had finished my notes, I knew the wine, and it was mine—I had metabolized it. Then, I started making wine. One day, I tasted a wine from a tank. The next day, it was a different wine, and the day after that, it was different again.
This experience shattered my understanding. I thought that when I tasted a wine, I knew it, but this was completely false. The wine was changing, just as you do. Recognizing wine as living matter changed my perspective, and I stopped writing tasting notes.
Yeast is part of the terroir. There is never any filtration. It’s everything that’s around: microclimate, genetic material, soil.
Where do you get the yeast?
They’re ambient yeasts, found on the skin of the grapes, and they change every year.
So the combination of what you bring in is very diverse. We’ve seen many times, through a microscope, that at the very beginning, there are very small and delicate yeasts that start the fermentation. These delicate yeasts are very sensitive to alcohol; they start the fermentation and then die.
Then, a second type of yeast takes over, which is different. It can’t always be the same; it changes. I think there’s a part, especially towards the end, where one main yeast takes over because it’s the only one that can consume a lot of sugar.
Before that, for the first half of the fermentation, you probably have about 15 different families of yeast contributing. They are responsible not only for consuming the sugar and producing alcohol but also for the aromatic fermentation. Each family produces specific volatile molecules with distinct aromas.
This is important because they impact how your wine will taste. The more families of yeast you have, the more complexity you’ll have in your wine. So, I like to have many families of yeast.
But how do you get the yeast from the skin?
It’s just there, naturally. The moment the skin touches the juice, the yeast goes into it because the berry won’t stay intact; it will have juice around it. That’s why it’s very important that throughout the fermentation, all the skins stay wet. Dry skins are problematic. The task of a winemaker, in order to run a healthy and dynamic fermentation to the end, is to keep the cap and skins wet.
How do you keep the skins wet?
Through a pump, or as we crush. For example, here, for the white wine, only the juice ferments, but when the grapes are crushed, the skin releases yeast into the juice.
This is a very fertile cellar because we’ve been fermenting in this cellar since 1980. Every time you bring grapes in, you introduce new yeast or the yeast of that specific season. They settle down and remain in the cellar.
Whenever they find the right conditions, they awaken. Before harvest starts, I perform a procedure to wake up my cellar for fermentation. When the yeast has no sugar, it is dormant. Yeast is everywhere: on the walls, on the tools, in the air. So, about ten days before harvest, I pick 200 kilos of grapes and put them in one of the tanks. I smash them and let them start fermenting in an open-top tank to wake up the yeast.
The yeast notices the sugar and begins fermenting. When the true harvest starts, my cellar is already fermenting with awakened yeast, which helps run my fermentations much better.
During fermentation, you check your ferments night and day. You must be there the whole time to follow the ferment. You never modify or adjust, but to make spontaneously fermented fine wine, you need to be present and attentive.
Do you stop fermentation at some point?
No, it runs till the end. When there’s no sugar left, fermentation is over, and the yeasts naturally die.
Over the years, we’ve been doing a lot of work around pruning times, trying to understand what is best to accommodate the vigor, or lack thereof, in each vineyard. (Vigor refers to the energy of the shoots that the plant has, usually observed in the diameter of the shoots in a physiological sense.)
When talking about food or wine, you are always tasting living matter. It’s a relationship of subject to subject. Recognizing wine as living matter changed my perspective, and I stopped writing tasting notes.
Mainly, we tend to prune everything during a descending moon when the sap is very low in the plant. The moon impacts water, so sap flow is clearly very dependent on the moon. When the moon is descending, the sap flow is very low in the plant, so when you cut, you don’t do much harm to the plant. But when the moon is waxing, everything is attracted, which is actually very scientific.
There is a Japanese couple, the Collis couple, who have dedicated their lives to studying the moon phases in agriculture. They have worked in France all their lives and have observed that if you plant the same seed during different moon phases, the growth varies significantly. It’s amazing how just a two-day difference in the moon phase can lead to such different results. So, for farming, racking, and bottling, I pay a lot of attention to the moon phases.
Most pruning is done during a descending moon, except for the more vigorous parts. I have certain vineyards that are more vigorous, and to calm them down, I prune them during a waxing moon. When it’s a waxing moon, the sap flow is close to the top of the plant, so when you cut, there is sap flow that is lost, which helps to calm the plant. We’ve been doing this a lot, and I’m also trying to prune very late in the season. Despite the changing climate, I’m trying to let the vineyards behave as they would in normal times.
With global warming, the cycle is very stretched and short. This means processes are not completely resolved and not done slowly and beautifully. So, I try to stretch the cycle by pruning late, which delays bud break and extends the growing cycle. I never cut the apexes, so the plant moves slower but grows for a longer time. The apex registers all the climatic conditions of the year, so it is very important for everything to move slowly to the end. What is very important for me is to pick at full phenolic ripeness. Currently, the trend is to pick a little earlier, which results in simpler wines. I don’t want to make wine with a lot of alcohol, so I use biodynamic preparations to ensure the maturity of tissues, like the skin and polyphenolic compounds, without concentrating the sugar.
Biodynamics really help with this. The idea is to pick later with beautifully ripened skins, but not too much alcohol and with beautiful acidity. I don’t plow the soils or cut the apexes, which helps me pick later when the temperatures are lower, which is very important.
What is your favorite vintage of your wines and why?
I am very attached to Montepulciano Pepe 1985. I think it’s one of the most incredible wines my grandfather ever achieved. It is a difficult wine, but compelling and intellectually stimulating. To me, it has a distinctive nose. I feel that it smells like home, and it’s very, very special. It also has an incredible balance that I believe exceeds any other wine.
And what is your perfect meal paired with your wine?
I’ll stay with 1985. Because, to me, one of the greatest pairings I’ve experienced of all time was Elkano turbot and Montepulciano 1985. I love pairing red wines with turbot or fish that have a certain flesh sensation.
When older Montepulciano gets refined to the level where the tannic impact is not too powerful, it can be incredible. So I’ll say that. Trebbiano can sometimes be pretty spectacular with everything that is green and crunchy. I like the idea of San Sebastian’s little peas, which are green, crunchy, and sweet. That can be incredible, but I have to say, recently I’ve had Bruno Verjus’ incredible lobster with Pecorino. The creaminess of lobster… And one would always mention foie gras. It’s fatty, yet it tastes very lifted, and I thought the best pairing would be Pecorino. Pecorino matches the sensation of fattiness, but it’s also so fresh and lifted. Together, they make an incredible combo.
Thanks to the support from @sarah_vision_stories.
