Last weekend, we decided on something a little different for dinner and signed up for a food and wine tasting at Rimessa Roscioli. The Roscioli family is well known in Italy and have a bakery (Antico Forno Roscioli), restaurant (Roscioli Salumeria con Cucina), coffee shop (Roscioli Caffè), and this tasting room, Rimessa Roscioli. The tasting consisted of 8 wines and 12 paired foods and is offered every day at 5 pm (€59) and 8 pm (€65). Registration is required. For more information check out their website. We were seated with a wonderful Polish couple who currently live in Switzerland and had such a great time with them we ended up being at dinner for 3.5 hours, although most people who were there for the food and wine tasting were gone by the time we wrapped things up.

Our new Polish friends, Paulina and Adam.

Whether you know or don’t know a lot about wine, we highly recommend this experience to anyone visiting Rome and we look forward to the opportunity to go back when friends and family visit. The servers are sommeliers who are very knowledgeable about the Italian wines being poured, the dishes they’re paired with, and how and why they complement each other. Our sommelier shared with us that each week all the sommeliers at Roscioli are out talking with the wine growers, tasting the wines, and learning about the wines straight from the vineyards throughout the country. We had questions about every wine, from how it was produced, where it’s located, the climate, to what makes it so different from the others and he was able to answer all our questions in great detail. This dinner is a great way to not only learn about traditional Italian foods, but also to learn about lesser known wines varietals and smaller wineries. The company makes it a point to have wines from small producers that are mainly natural, organic or biodynamic all over Italy.

Food (L to R): buffalo ricotta with red onion chutney, buffalo mozzarella with semidried tomatoes Paglione, burrata from Corato with semidried tomatoes De Carlo.
Wine: Prosecco Col Fondo, Milbran from Veneto.

Food: Goat cheese Robiola with ashes Calcabrina, Smoked mackarel, fresh peto from Prà.
Wine: Katà 2017, Catina Olivella from Campania

Food: Tuna fish Vulcano, Nduja (spreadable pork salami), Caponata
Wine: Rosso di Contrada 2015, Marabino from Sicilia

Food: Prosciutto of Cinta Sense, Smoked Speak, Capocollo of black pork of Cinta Sense
Wine: Nobile di Montepulciano 2015, Contucci from Toscana

Food: Tonnarelli Cacio e Pepe
Wine: Cesanese di Olevano Romano Giacobbe 2017, Alberto Giabcobbe from Lazio

Food: Traditional Roman meatball with smoked ricotta
Wine: Same as above

Food: Parmigiano Reggiano from red cows aged 36 months and stravecchio d’Amandola aged 24 months
Wine: Barbaresco 2015, Cascina Morassino and Barolo Ciabot Tanasio 2014, Fratelli Sobrero both from Piemonte

Food: Homemade tiramisù
Wine: Moscato d’Asti 2017, Cascina Baricchi from Piemonte

We’re both really interested in learning about Italian wine and visiting wineries large and small. Our favorite thing we took from the dinner was the opportunity to network with our sommelier. In California (Napa, Paso Robles, Temecula, and areas near Santa Barbara), it’s very common to stop into wineries to go wine tasting. We weren’t sure if that was the case here, especially with the smaller producers, and asked the sommelier if that was something we’d be able to experience while living here. We exchanged numbers and the sommelier let us know anytime we were wanting to visit a winery, we could reach out to him and he would contact the winery for us.

Rimessa Roscioli also has a wine club and was one of the first in Italy. A few years ago, a group of about 30 Californians wanted to share their love for Italian wine with their Californian friends. They were shipping wine from Italy to California through their contacts at Roscioli and thus, the wine club was born. Find out more about their wine club here.

We can’t wait to return and hope you thoroughly enjoy Rimessa Roscioli as much as we did.