The 2022 Barbera is a ruby red wine from Lodi, California.
The best description I have for this wine relates to my childhood. In the middle of the blazing hot summers, my grandmother, whose house had no air conditioning, made jam. This wine smells like jam leftovers (more on that in a minute) and it tastes like licking the spoon being used to stir the strawberry mixture just after the sugar is added but before the pectin. (If you don’t know what that means – read this article.)
The thing about jam making is once you start, you have to keep going until either all the fruit is used, or all the jars you’ve sterilized is used. Sometimes you run out of one fruit – so you substitute another, and another until its all gone. The smell of this wine reminds me of those bits of leftover berry (strawberry, blackberry, blueberry) that got mixed together to make “berry” jam with maybe a little peach or grape thrown in. All that to say – it’s really fruity.

The taste explodes on your mouth, and I really enjoyed this wine. It lingers on the tongue, much like jam, making you want to take another sip.
I paired it with hot Italian stuffed mushrooms and cacio e pepe ravioli. The wine was excellent with the meatball stuffing and the spiciness of the meat made the wine sweet (if that’s even possible), while the wine brought out the spice.
It was also really good with the ravioli. It accentuated the cheese, and the wine stayed a bit sweet without losing its fruitiness from the overwhelming creaminess of the cheese and ravioli combination.
Final Thoughts
Overall, this was a perfect meal for a Wednesday night. Not only was it super easy to make (Thank you HEB ready made) but the wine paired perfectly. It does make me wonder how it would stand up to a steak, or even a pizza, so I’ll have to try that soon.