On the first weekend of October, the Italian Food Wine Travel group AND the Wine Bloggers’ Conference will be experiencing a LOVE OF LUGANA!

Because Lugana DOC will be pouring their wines at the 2018 Wine Bloggers Conference this weekend in Walla Walla WA AND I’m hosting the Italian Food Wine Travel group as we check out this wine and region with a twitter chat on Sat Oct 6 from 8-9am Pacific Time using these hashtags

and with posts by the following bloggers on these topics:

• Marcia at Joy of Wine: Lugana is “Not just Another Italian Grape”
• Jane at Always Ravenous: “Crab Herb Crusted Chilean Sea Bass and Lugana Wine”
• Wendy from A Day In The Life On The Farm:“Seared shrimp and wild mushroom Risotto with Lugana wine”
• Camilla from Culinary Adventures With Camilla: “Turbiana Grapes and Tuna Tacos”
• Jill at L’Occasion  :“Lugana: An Italian White Wine For All Season”
• Jen at Vino Travels: “Love for the Wines of Lugana”
• Katarina of Grapevine Adventures: “3 Lugana DOC Producers in Comparison at #italianfwt”
• Lisa at The Wine Chef: “Seafood Pasta With Tomatoes, Garlic And Lugana White Wine”
• Li of The Wining Hour:  “Lugana Loves Lake Garda”
• Rupal the Syrah Queen: “Exploring Lugana – Italy’s Elegant White Wines.”
• Lynn at Savor the Harvest: “Change It Up With Lugana DOC and Turbiana”
• I’m hosting here at Wine Predator with “Love for Lugana and Chicken Piccata”

As you may recall from the invite post, Lugana is a white wine from the Lake Garda area of northern Italy nestled below the Dolomites between Venice, Verona, and Milan:

But just because you are drinking an Italian white wine from a lake region, don’t be afraid to experiment with different cuisine!

While we generally go with the premise of what is grown together goes together, we decided it would be fun to do some more summertime grilling and make fish tacos for this preview post– and I must say, our fish taco meal proved to us that it can be just fine to experiment and go beyond the local cuisine.

While I preferred the roast peach version, the homegrown tomato version was also plenty tasty.

2016 – Perla del Garda – Lugana DOP – 13% alcohol –
Organic
Sample given to me at the 2017 Wine Bloggers Conference
for my review consideration 

Color: Gold, pale gold, light bounces off of the color nicely, bright and cheery The color shows up beautifully against a white background.

Nose: Gardenia, tuber rose, fresh cut grass, divinity candy, the sweet vanilla nougat with walnut.

Palate: Honeysuckle, meyer lemon finish,

But for me, Lugana is all about the mouthfeel:

It has a nice roundness, with fresh white peach on the palate with the skin of the peach on the finish. The finish is nice and lingers on. The divinity characteristic hangs around on the finish. Nicely complex in the mouth. There is a lusciousness to this wine. There is bright acidity.

Palate: This wine loves creamy goat cheese, and it went great with the Sini Fulvi Fontina D’ Aosta that was on our cheese tray, We were also pleasantly surprised at how well it went with our funky rined LeCremeux Kal Tbach cheese. This wine really likes food leaving us to think of lovely creamy seafood dishes, or fresh mediteranian fare.

We think it might work with citrus really well which is why we will be trying our next Lugana extravaganza with Chicken picatta, and cesar salad for Saturday’s post.

We happened to have a few crab and lobster cakes hanging around from another wine dinner, so we decided to try them with this wine. They were so rich and buttery, our mouths were covered in richness. The wine with the cakes did not need anything else, an aioli or cream sauce might even be too much with this wine.

So, how does Lugana go with fish tacos?  MMMMM so good, roasted peach is so good! I enjoyed the creama without the spice on my taco; I appreciated the milder flavors with the Lugana. Sue felt the lime in the tortilla was more prevalent and enjoyable with the wine.

Yo generally expect to lay a wine down — and to pay for storage yourself. Not so in Lugana! Lugana can lay down, and it becomes this entirely different beast over time.  Some one who is hot and sexy and ready to go in a completely different stage of life when you would think that they would be dried up like corn husks. Think about the correlation between a Cougar and an aged bottle of Lugana.