Yes, Italy makes GREAT BEER, too!

ITALY HAS all those varieties of regional cuisine, terrific wine, stupendous architecture, designer clothes and magnificent Mediterranean scenery. It hardly seems fair that it also has some of the world’s best craft beer.
And bison, too – pretty tasty bison at that.
To be fair, the bison served along with the Italian beer this week at the Hilton Sukhumvit Bangkok’s Italian-American restaurant Scalini probably came from the US, where the buffalo still roam (against all odds).
But the beer was definitely Italian, and the focus at Scalini was specifically on the suds from the L’Olmaia brewery in Tuscany.
Italian craft beer has made all of its impressive progress in the last 20 years. The artfulness, sublime taste and meticulous attention to detail for which its people have been renowned for millennia obviously gave them a leg up in this very modern variation on winemaking.
Italy now has more than 300 establishments in every region producing quality artisan beers for both the local and overseas markets. L’Olmaia was just a farm in Val D’Orcia, near Siena, before the owners started brewing, in late 2004, the beer that adopted its name. The first batch was 300 litres.
In 2009 the operation moved closer to Montepulciano and blossomed.
It now produces six types of beer (plus seasonal beers) in bottles and kegs, all the while shunning pasteurisation and any sort of filtering.
Pacific B&B has been the official distributor in Thailand for almost a year, and it was Pacific that hosted the “beer-pairing dinner” on Tuesday, with Scalini chef Egidio Latorraca working his usual magic with three kinds of L’Olmaia beer.
First up was Frisella with Filo Pastry in four different flavours and textures thanks to its combinations of tuna, seaweed, Iberico pork, black truffle, pistachio paste and a “tempura of zucchini flower”. We got the “water” in the form of the tuna and seaweed, “mountain” with the pork, “natural” with the veggies and “soil” with sirloin carpaccio –altogether a fun and quite stunning dish.
Riding along for the amusement was L’Olmaia 5, a cloudy yellow brew with a subtle floral nose and refreshing citrus notes that kept up with the food’s diverse flavours reasonably well.
Next came the Char-grilled Sirloin of Bison served with deep-fried mozzarella, roasted baby leeks, butternut puree and chocolate sauce. This succulent array with its slightly sweet yet savoury sauce was matched with L’Olmaia 9, a complex English-style brew decently balanced between the initial sweet, caramel notes and the bitterness of the finish.
L’Olmaia BK, a creamy, malt stout, was paired to Panettone with Champagne Sabayon and the Banana with Caramel that followed. The beer had a slightly bitter and vinegary finish, making it the perfect partner for sweet dishes and dried or candied fruits. It’s pretty good on its own, too.
L’Olmaia beers are available at Scalini and other leading Bangkok restaurants and bars.
Mondo, the lobby bar at the Hilton Sukhumvit, is hosting a Craft Beer Festival all this month, complete with accompanying snacks.