Maculan Award: sweet wines with savory dishes

Sweet wine enthusiasts your time has come. Professional restaurateurs and lovers of food and wine, you have until April 13, 2025 to submit your application and participate in the Maculan Prize from the historic company in Breganze (Vicenza), world-famous for its Torcolato, the pinnacle of its sweet wines.

The award is aimed at the discovery and enhancement of the best pairing of a savory course and a sweet wine. An unmissable opportunity to show that sweet wine can be cleared from its traditional place at the table, next to dessert, making it free to express itself in pairings that for many are still unknown, thus bypassing the equally classic pairing of sweet wine and fois gras or blue cheeses.

Sweet wine and gastronomy, let’s break out of patterns

To participate in the presentation of this award, I was a guest at the Daniele Canzian’s restaurant in Milan (Brera area). Upon entering, one cannot help but be open-mouthed in front of a kitchen without veils. In fact, it is possible to dine on the counter facing the open kitchen and equally impeccable cooks, a true show sign of great openness and confidence in one’s abilities and a more informal bistro touch within the restaurant.

Daniel is an entrepreneurial chef of Venetian origin, he was executive chef of Gualtiero Marchesi’s restaurants, and he has been the soul of his restaurant for many years, and his creations can even reach our homes with take-away formulas or on-site cooking classes. The manifesto of his cuisine is summarized in seven points of which the fil rouge most important is the recovery of essentialityGualtiero Marchesi’s concept of subtraction, and the enhancement of the natural taste of raw materials with a strong focus on seasonality and love for regionality (in his case, Veneto, precisely).

During lunch, the idea came to me to propose to Angela Maculan, Daniel in the role of chair of the jury panel that during the final evening scheduled for Monday May 19, 2025 at the Maculan company, will decree the winner of the Prize. To the delight of the family, Daniel gladly accepted.

The lunch was held in a family atmosphere with relaxed tones. “Since the 1980s, we have chosen to study and interpret in our own way the ancient art of producing sweet wines, a niche as challenging as it is fascinating for a winemaker, as well as for a chef- explained Fausto Maculan. – We have always wondered about the best way to tell the story of our selection, choosing yes the right words but also taste-olfactory and emotional combinations capable of ranging from the immediacy of concordance to the wonder of contrasts. Here is that the challenge we issue to the participants is precisely this: deconstructing to build together the present and the future of sweet wine.”

A family matter

The nouvelle vague of the company was born with Fausto himself, following in the footsteps of his father Giovanni who started in 1947. Thanks to his gift as a great communicator, his ambition, his travels around the globe, and his friendship with influential figures in the world of wine and cuisine, such as Luigi Veronelli and Gualtiero Marchesi, Fausto has succeeded in more than fifty years of work to make his wines, especially sweet wines, known to the whole world and made iconic, think of the Torcolato di Breganze OVER ALL.

The eldest daughter Angela, born in 1977, tells us that as soon as she was 18 years old, she began to travel with her father, falling in love with the work that also allowed her to cultivate her great passion for quality food, declaring that she could leave Breganze only and exclusively for love.Her energy, friendliness and outspokenness perfectly offset the technical, precise and passionate nature of her younger sister Maria Vittoria, born in 1985, the winery’s winemaker to whom no detail related to vineyard management and production of their wines escapes her notice.

The winery is located in Breganze (Vicenza), in the center of the Doc of the same name that stretches in the foothills area, between the Astico and Brenta rivers, at the foot of the hills leading to the Altipiano d’Asiago. The varieties grown are mainly Vespaiola, Chardonnay, Sauvignon, Tai bianco (also called Bordò bianco here), Merlot, Cabernet, Pinot Nero, and Marzemino.

Today Maculan cultivates 40 hectares divided into 14 vineyards, and produces 650,000 bottles distributed in more than 40 countries. The production of sweet wines constitutes 30 percent of total production, however, contributing more than half of the company’s sales.

Focus on wines

The Torcolato is the first ambassador, unmistakable for the technique of drying the twisted Vespaiola grapes (hence the name) and hanging them in the fruttaio for four months. In January, when the drying is complete, the grapes are pressed directly in the press, obtaining a particularly thick and sweet juice, but very limited yields. Fermentation of the must into wine takes about forty days and stops, leaving the wine with a generous residual sugar. To be consumed, however, Torcolato still needs to spend time aging in small oak barrels and a rest in the bottle.

Luigi Veronelli liked to call it “a non-sweet dessert,” and this is the definition that best describes the distinctiveness of Torcolato, where the undoubted sweetness is balanced by an extraordinary freshness.

Over the years it has been joined by the refined Acininobili, produced from the same native variety affected by noble rot, from the Dindarello made from Moscato Giallo (Moscato Fior d’arancio) and the Madoro, a red raisin wine made from Marzemino and Cabernet Sauvignon. The Fratta remains their iconic Bordeaux cut (so obviously not sweet).

Pasting with a parterre of only sweet wines is therefore possible, although the pairings chosen by Daniel tended to remain in the vein of traditional sweet white wine and savory dishes, whether based on fois gras, of more delicate and sweetish meat, guinea fowl and duck, as well as vegetables such as pumpkin. However, I was really amazed by the last two dishes paired with their red wines, Madoro and Fratta , that have twisted the traditional sweet dish and sweet wine pairings. Here “châpeau” is a must. Judge for yourself anyway and maybe try them again or invent new ones, using fish, for example, and be in the running to win the Maculan Award. (For info and applications visit: www.maculan.net)

The menu and the pairingsaments proposed

The debut was with Dindarello 2023: Corn tart with “Ada ragout” (pairing rating 91/100). The ragout is guinea fowl and guinea fowl breast, Daniel Canzian’s grandmother’s recipe, which he claims is faithful to the original. This type of delicate meat goes very well with the sweet wine. Interesting pairing in terms of taste and structure of both the wine and the dish.

So the Torcolato di Breganze 2022 proposed together with theRoast pumpkin and asiago stravecchio (pairing rating 93/100). Baked pumpkin, fried sage and cream of Asiago aged twenty-four months. Dish all about enhancing the raw material in its simplicity. Nice play of textures, crispy and soft, on a background of sweetness that goes well with the Torcolato, which gives persistence to the dish.

Acininobili 2019 accompanied the Guinea fowl with fois gras (pairing rating 88/100). Cold plate with guinea fowl breast, misticanza salad and marinated spring onion, fois gras shavings. As much as fois gras pairs well with Acininobili and the guinea fowl was of excellent quality for flavor and tenderness, the dish in my opinion was slightly unbalanced on acidity.

The other second course was theDuck, orange, chocolate civet which was served with Madoro 2021 (pairing rating 94/100). This pairing was excellent, perfectly accompanying the sweetness of the meats and balancing, with the sweetness of the wine, the slightly bitter aftertaste of the dark chocolate.

Following the logic of opposites, the last dish of the lunch, the Chocolate cupcake was offered paired with Fratta 2022, the only non-sweet wine of the evening. Very successful pairing (rating 95/100)! The dish was a slightly salted dark chocolate ingot with pistachio sauce. Beyond all expectations I consider this the most original pairing, it twists the classic pairing of important red wines. The structure of the dish is in perfect harmony with that of the wine. The interplay of savory and sweetness of both harmoniously return an overall feeling of mutual enhancement.

*The bottles are all 750 ml.

TO READ THE WINE DESCRIPTIONS, WITH SCORE AND AVERAGE SHELF PRICE, CLICK ON THE TABS BELOW.