Pizza and wine pairing is not a completely crazy idea, in fact it’s one of my favorite combinations. And since we’re here at Bubbly Side of Life, you know our pizza and wine pairing is not going to be red or white wine, but bubbly, of course.
In my world bubbly pairs well with everything. Ok, maybe not everything, but I do love a good pizza and bubbly night.
Being from Chicago, it’s a prerequisite to love pizza. And we have paired deep dish pizza and bubbly before and truly love it. But since October is National Pizza Month and you know we’ll come up with any reason to celebrate, we decided to try something different with homemade pizza.
Pizza and Wine Pairing Ideas
When I was thinking about how I wanted to celebration National Pizza Month, I had this brilliant (if I do say so) idea for a pizza and wine pairing menu unlike anything else I have ever done before.
We thought a super fun way to explore new and different pizza recipes would be to also explore bubbly from different countries. Of course, no pizza and wine pairing menu would be complete without an Italian themed pizza, which means we chose a prosecco, but also a sparkling red wine.
And since you know I love Spain and wanted to see if I could recreate one of my favorite tapas as a pizza, we had to include a Spanish themed pizza with a cava.
We had a brilliant idea for a pizza from Greece and believe it or not, I’ve never had an bubbly from Greece before, so I began the hunt for a bubbly from Greece. It took a bit of hunting, but I finally found a brut rosé to pair with this pizza.
And lastly, a few years ago, I tasted the bubbly all throughout England and wanted to re-live that, so we got super creative with a pizza and searched for a bottle of bubbly from England and our final pizza and wine pairing was complete.
Pizza and Wine Pairing Menu
Italy
We know an Italian themed pizza is traditional and that’s why we created two different types of pizzas to pair them with two different sparkling wines. Let’s start with the pizzas.
The key to these pizzas was the dough we got from Trader Joe’s. They have a dough with seasonings in it already and it was perfect for these two pizzas.
One the first one, the base was olive oil, topped with fresh mozzarella cheese, some shredded mozzarella cheese to fill in the gaps (and can there ever be too much cheese?) and prosciutto.
On the second pizza, I made a homemade sauce that I shared once before. It’s so darn good and worth the day it takes to simmer on the stove. We topped this pizza with mozzarella cheese and Italian sausage.
We chose two sparkling wines to pair with these pizzas. 90 Plus Cellars Brut was the prosecco of choice. This was a new prosecco to us and it was delicious. It’s now a prosecco I keep chilled in the refrigerator for any impromptu celebration.
The second bottle we chose was a frizzante. La Monella is a sparking barbera and was perfect for the sausage pizza with red sauce.
Spain
I spent some time in Spain and ate all the tapas and drank all the cava I possibly could. So, re-creating one of my favorite tapas as a pizza was so much fun and delicious!
To make this pizza, we cooked the dough first so that we had a base to work with that reminded me of toast. Then we took multiple garlic cloves, crushed them just enough to rub them all over the crust. We then took a tomato, cut it half and rubbed it all over the dough. Top top it off, we used three cheeses: manchego, iberico, and cabra al vino along with some jamón iberico.
To pair with this pizza, of course, was a cava. If you’ve been around, you know I love cava and one day I’ll share all about the differences in cava, but for this pairing we chose this organic Kila Cava which is a blend of Xarel·lo, Macabeu, and Parellada and it’s perfectly dry and crisp and perfect to pair with these three cheeses on this pizza.
Greece
For Greece, we had this idea to take the filling of a spanakopita and put it on a pizza crust. The feta cheese topping paired with this sparkling rosé was so darn good. I would make a few changes next time, but overall, we enjoyed this pizza.
We paired it with this Akakies 2022 Sparkling Rosé. And when I tell you this rosé is so good, I am not kidding. It was bright and red fruit forward and paired perfectly with the feta cheese topping.
Not only did we love this bubbly by itself, but we loved it so much, we instantly created a cocktail with it for the holidays. This rosé will be stocked at Bubbly Side headquarters for sure.
England
Now this pizza definitely screams comfort food and it was certainly delicious. When I decided I wanted to a bubbly from England it was really because that wine country is starting to boom and I really feel like we’re going to see more and more in the near future.
And when I think of food I ate when I was in London always revolved around some sort of potato. So, naturally this pizza had to be one giant potato.
It was simple and paired perfectly with our bubbly. We simply took a pizza crust and topped it with mashed potatoes, bacon and cheese. The key to this one is definitely cooking the crust first so the mashed potatoes don’t make it soggy.
And the bubbly was so good. We paired it with a 2018 Gusbourne Brut Reserve. This blend of pinot noir, chardonnay and pinot menuier was the perfect pairing for this pizza.
Sparkling Wine Pairing Ideas
We absolutely love creating pairings not only as a new way to try new bubbly, but to change up the experience.
Pairings like this pizza and wine pairing make for a super fun girls’ night in celebration. One fun idea is to have each of your girlfriends choose a country and they bring the toppings for that pizza and the bottle of wine or bubbly from that country to pair with it. The ultimate girl dinner for sure.
Want More?
First of all, we want to know what other pairing ideas you have that you want us to try. But in the meantime, go check out some others we have done in the past, many of which we included kids and sparkling grape juice pairings.
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