Joelle Thomson's Amazing Value Picks: Mid-week Pizza vino

Italy is the home of pizza, so it seems only natural to drink Italian wine with mid-week pizzas. Anything else just seems wrong. Especially when Italy has the most diverse range of wines to match with pizzas, ranging from the beautiful simplicity of Primitivo with a margarita pizza of tomato, fresh mozzarella and crunchy basil leaves to Sicilian sfincione with its surprisingly thick crust topped with intensely salty anchovies and rich cheeses such as caciocavallo, then laden with ripe Mediterranean sun-ripened tomatoes. Such ripe flavours beg for wines with smooth tannins, medium body and a semblance of acidity tucked in to add freshness to the whole affair. The following three over-deliver on all fronts. 2017 Castellani Chianti DOCG 16.5/20, 3.5 stars Chianti is Italy’s most famous wine and contains the country’s most planted grape variety, Sangiovese. This is a dry, juicy and medium bodied with characteristically earthy flavours that define good Chianti. This is a good quality wine offering great value for money and will make a superb match with classic Italian pizza toppings - especially black olives, fresh herbs, tomatoes and mushrooms. Sangiovese is grown all over Italy but finds its greatest expression in the central region of Tuscany, home to all wines labelled Chianti. 2018 San Marzano Negroamaro Talo 4 stars , 17.5/20 Negro Amaro is a deeply coloured red grape from the south of Italy, best known for its role as a richly flavoursome blending grape in reds made in Puglia; that long, hot region forming the calf muscle and heel of Italy’s boot. It grows all over this long, arid region, finding its pinnacle not only in blends but, increasingly, in single varietal wines such as this one. Dark black fruit flavours combine with refreshing acidity, which adds character and length to each delicious sip. This wine significantly over-delivers on flavour and value for money. 2018 San Marzano Pumo Salice Salento 4 stars, 17.5/20 Primitivo is king in this extraordinarily good value, smooth, full-bodied Italian red. It comes from Puglia in the deep south, a region with heat and a dry climate on its side, every year, which makes for incredibly consistent, powerfully great value reds such as this spicy, appealingly tasty, low priced one. Its smooth mouthfeel and body and enormously rich flavours combine to deliver great taste and value for money. 2017 Saluti Puglia Rosso Merlot Negroamaro 3.5 stars, 16.5/20 This cheeky little Italian red is a surprisingly happy marriage of one of the world’s best known, grape varieties (Merlot) with one of its least known rising stars - Negro Amaro, which originates in Puglia, Southern Italy. This deeply coloured, dark and flavoursome red grape combines power with approachability. It’s a winning combination with body and flavour, which makes it hard to beat when it comes to delivering consistently outstanding value for money. It’s also great to see it sealed with a screwcap, which enables this wine to retain freshness. La Chiave Montepulciano d'Abruzzo 2018 4 stars, 17.5/20 La Chiave is Italian for the key and is made from the super soft and approachably smooth Montepulciano grape, which has its home in central Italy. This is a stunningly good value red for year round drinking and works a treat with pizza thanks to its fleshy fruit upfront fronts, which lure you into another sip of this incredibly smooth red, which finishes on a savoury earthy note, making it a stunning red to drink with pizza topped with mushrooms. The smoky notes in the wine match those in the food superbly. Joelle Thomson is a wine writer, journalist and author. She’s an avid lover of wine and currently writes for Capital magazine, Good magazine, NZ Winegrower, Drinksbiz, and her own site, www.joellethomson.com. She also teaches, works in radio, and more, so we've enlisted her help to sniff out our amazing value wines!