A CHEF A WINE

Chefs.
Some creative, some traditional, but all perfectionists.
Made in Italy maestros wielding a kitchen stove,
stubbornly passionate about their work.
We listened to them translating culinary art into discourse,
with their dishes eloquently reflecting their words,
accompanied by a flûte of ’61 Nature, maison Berlucchi’s latest creation.
The fruit of that address was UNO CHEF UN VINO (A Chef, a Wine), a dynamic portrait of two intriguing personalities.  
Come along with us and we’ll discover them together.

Our journey into celebrity cuisine begins with Vittorio Fusari, of Iseo, near Brescia.

Fusari is a cook, in his own words, but he is also a philosopher of Franciacorta gastronomic traditions, and over the past thirty years he has lived, and stimulated, their evolution.

In 2015, he took up the challenge represented by Pont de Ferr, Milan’s storied canal-district establishment, but his beloved hills often lure him back to Lago d’Iseo.
Fusari’s personal style is a duet between a deep rootedness in this area and an openness to the world’s styles.
Using natural, meticulously-selected raw ingredients, he has succeeded in bringing tradition into the present, to offer it to the future.

One of his signature dishes is manzo all’olio, beef in olive oil. The first recipe was revealed to him forty years ago by the cook in the railway station cafeteria in Rovato, the village that still boasts an influential meat market. Fusari reworked this rich, scrumptious traditional dish a full six times. The seventh reincarnation brings it to us remarkably lightened but without losing anything of the original; the main elements are all there, but “sublimated”: the tenderest of beef, but in small morsels; the polenta, too, is near-ethereal; and the extravirgin olive oil, the ingredient that gives body to the dish, takes the form of olives. Technique serves the chef, but it is sensitivity that guides his hand.

All in all, his manzo all’olio revisited is an extraordinary dish. On the Pont de Ferr menu, Fusari pairs it with Berlucchi ’61 Nature 2009.

Maida Mercuri, patronne of Pont de Ferr and its sommelier, describes the pairing: “In the glass the wine appears a green-veined straw yellow, conveying the superb crispness and delicacy of the Franciacorta. The nose is complex, with yeast, delicate caramel, and hints of blossoms and papaya. It exhibits fine structure and body, which is precisely why we revisited this historic Franciacorta dish. Enjoyed with the manzo all’olio, the structure and lengthy progression of the Nature tease the taste buds, even stealing the spotlight at times.
The meat’s succulence is immediately cleansed by the first sip of wine, leaving on the palate the luscious promise of a long marriage.”

Such delicious beef, such a pleasurable wine. Grazie, Vittorio

Vittorio Fusari e Maida Mercuri

Il manzo all’olio