Recipe: Pesche al Vino | Peaches With Wine
As local as it gets, try this Roman dessert for a fresh blast of summer!
A Recipe with Ancient Roots
The ancient Greeks and Romans traditionally infused their wine with fruits, honey and herbs (among other unlikely things (Look up garum for a shocking taste of ancient Roman cuisine).
Flavoring and infusing wine was also a common solution to less than palatable wine.
Infusions with plants and herbs were also used to cure digestive ailments. This ultimately led many of today’s aperitif and digestif wines and spirits.
A Break in the Fields
Drinking on the job? You bet.
In the Roman countryside, for as long as anyone can remember, during the wheat or grape harvest, farmers would enjoy this simple preparation in the middle of the afternoon.
It provided immediate relief from the heat, along with natural sugars and much-needed hydration.
Le pesche (peaches) proved to ideal as they maintained firmness, even when fully ripe, which made them easier to slice.
Local Fruit and Local Wine
If you have access to local peaches, by all means, use them.
As for the wine, to get closest to what we’re tasting over here, look for wines from Lazio containing local, aromatic variety, Malvasia like Frascati Superiore.
Moscati di Terracina would also work well. Terracina is located in Latina, on the coastline south of Rome.
Terracina produces bright, sunny Moscato wines bursting with ripe fruit and floral aromas that finish with a swish of sea-salty minerality.
Don’t waste a drop!
Serve the peaches in glassware, and save the juice. Drink it as is, or add some ice for a refreshing after-lunch or after-dinner sip.