Linguine carbonara and English chardonnay

Spaghetti carbonara is one of my favourite pasta recipes so it seemed a brilliant idea to alleviate the boredom of lockdown by having a ‘carbonara night’ with some friends on Zoom.

The idea arose because the same group had gone to a magnificently retro Italian restaurant after a rather boozy burgundy tasting at Avery's back in January and given we had a couple of bottles of white burgundy with us it seemed a good plan to order a carbonara.

I generally feel carbonara is better home made than in a restaurant though because it benefits from being made in small quantities and eaten straight out of the pan. It’s also well suited to Zoom cooking as you can rustle it up really quickly.

I stuck to the chardonnay theme my end but went for an English chardonnay from a quirky biodynamic producer Tillingham I’d just bought from my local natural wine bar, Kask which like many bars is operating as a wine shop at the moment.

At 10.5% it was lighter than our burgundies but with a lovely freshness that went perfectly with the rich carbonara sauce. Not the first wine you might think of pairing with a carbonara but a really good option - price aside, maybe. At £32 it’s not cheap so here are some other more affordable options

Six of the best pairings with spaghetti carbonara

Oh and linguine works just as well with a carbonara sauce as spaghetti. I'd run out of spaghetti so it was what I had available.

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