This is the glorious Italian realisation of an old sentiment. Evan Rail (nytimes.com) writes:
HALFWAY through our six-course tasting menu of regional Piemontese cuisine, the sommelier? arrived with a special beverage to accompany the plate of raviolini stuffed with local pumpkin and asparagus?.
"I think this will go well, because it matches the sweetness? of the pumpkin," he said, setting down a glass not of wine, but of a slightly oxidized? golden ale, which, he explained, had been fermented with wine yeast? and had spent four years aging in the bottle.
A cold beer might seem like a strange pairing for traditional Italian cuisine, especially in the heart of wine-loving Piedmont, but the entire meal that night was based on local brews, and the sommelier himself was Teo Musso, a brewmaster with near-rock-star status in the Italian culinary scene. Through his artful small brewery, Le Baladin, Mr. Musso has helped bridge the worlds of craft beer and fine dining, ensuring that fine beers have a large presence in Eataly, Turin's high-end supermarket, and founding his own beer-themed restaurant and hotel, Casa Baladin, where my wife and I stayed one night this spring.
"I want people to think of my beer as something that belongs on a table in a good restaurant," Mr. Musso said. "I do not want them to think of it as something from the pub."
*tears? of joy*