A Milan Diary
Milan,
meet Château
Rieussec
Experience Milan in a new light with Mathieu Crosnier, our Vineyard Manager. From midday to midnight, Mathieu explores a wide array of fresh flavours at the city’s finest restaurants, uncovering
new pairings for Château Rieussec. Its ‘Noble Rot’ enhances not just grapes, but perceptions — transcending clichés and reputations.
SCROLL DOWN / DRAG
2023We started our Milan stay early, with a visit to the Duomo. Once we’d had our fill of the cathedral, we walked over to Peck — the city’s great delicatessen — and put together a picnic brunch on the spot.
Rieussec 2023
x picnic brunch Peck X
Ciacco Lab
Since 1883, Peck has anchored Milan’s appetite for the exceptional: three floors near the Duomo, in the shadow of the cathedral’s spires, stacked with culinary wonders. Filippo has been behind the cheese counter for over a decade; Anna the same at the pastry till. We left with smoked scamorza, a sbrisolona, the crumbly almond cake that has been Lombardy’s answer to dessert for centuries, and an apple pie.
A short walk away, at Ciacco Lab, we picked up the best panettone in the city: the one Milanese bring home for Christmas and argue about for weeks after.
We laid it all out on Piazza Mentana and opened the 2023.
The panettone was the obvious match: its dried fruits and toasted almonds finding their echo in the glass, sweet answering sweet. The sbrisolona pushed it further, its nutty bitterness drawing out notes of almond in the Rieussec. The scamorza was the surprise: the 2023’s honeyed weight wrapping around the cheese’s smoke and salt, softening its edges, making the whole thing richer than either alone.
Confine knows its classics well enough to know exactly where to push them. Tucked into Porta Romana, it takes the Neapolitan canon — the cacio e pepe, the parmigiana, the margherita — and delivers each one at full strength, then goes one step further.
2001, R de Rieussec 2023
– Lunch Confine
The result feels so natural that you wonder why nobody got there first. Mario, who runs the floor with the calm of someone who has heard every reaction and enjoyed all
of them, steered us through it.
Miseria e Nobilt à — bucatini, cacio e pepe, bluefin tuna tartare, smoked herring caviar — opened with R de Rieussec. The richness of the tuna and the brine of the caviar needed something with freshness still in it; the R delivered without flinching.
The Margherita, pure and uncluttered — San Marzano, fior di latte, basil — was where the 1967 came in. A wine this old needs a dish that won’t compete. The simplicity of the pizza let it speak at full volume: dried apricot and forest floor, unhurried, extraordinary.
Il Carciofo — artichoke in four preparations, smoked provola, Podolica cheese — was where the 1967 came in. Artichoke is the enemy of most wine; an old Rieussec, oxidative and balsamic, turns the difficulty into the point. Dried apricot and forest floor against smoke and bitter green: the wine met it without blinking.
La « Parmigiana » proposée ici est une pizza qui est un pur délice : la pâte est d’abord frite, puis cuite au four, et garnie de tomates San Marzano, de pulpe d’aubergine fumée, de parmesan affiné 36 mois, de basilic et d’une huile d’olive extra vierge monovariétale Leccino. En accompagnement, le Rieussec 2001, l’un des plus grands millésimes de Sauternes, apporte une richesse miellée et des notes d’abricot et d’agrumes confits qui encadrent l’acidité de la tomate
plutôt que de s’y opposer, à l’instar d’un vinaigre balsamique vieilli sur une tomate San Marzano à maturité. Vingt-cinq ans plus tard, ce vin conserve encore la fraîcheur et la vivacité nécessaires pour sublimer le plat et en faire le mets le
plus commenté du repas.
Paradiso sits in Brera like it owns the street. Polished steel and marble tops, serious bottles, a list that runs from old nobility to the kids rewriting terroir from hillsides you’ ve never heard of.
de Rieussec
2023, Château Rieussec
1978 & 2023
x APERITIVO Paradiso
The Milanese crowd on the terrace knows exactly what they want. The corner table is still deciding — and in no rush. Snacks you don’t stop eating. The neighbourhood hums. Inside, the wine keeps flowing.
We ordered everything: focaccia with slow cooked pork shoulder and Fontina DOP, shaved horseradish on top; torta di rose with mountain culatello; bresaola aged three months; giardiniera in agro, all vinegar and crunch.
We started with a magnum of R de Rieussec — the right format for aperitivo, its freshness and acidity cutting through the pork fat and the cheese, fruit sitting alongside the bresaola without competing. The giardiniera, sharp and bright, met its match. Then a bottle of the 2023 Château Rieussec. The shift was immediate: more weight, more
concentration, the wine’s depth drawing out the culatello’s nuttiness and the slow sweetness of the torta di rose.
The 1978 arrived last, as it should. Nearly fifty years old, it had moved somewhere beyond fruit entirely — wax, saffron, something close to ancient honey. Against the bresaola and the horseradish focaccia, it was a reminder that Sauternes, given time, becomes something else altogether.
2024Il Gelato di Musillo makes no claims. The shop is small and the gelato is excellent. Mango, strawberry, pistachio: we took three cones to the canal as the sun went down over the Navigli, Milan’s old waterway network that once connected the city to Leonardo da Vinci’s engineering ambitions and now draws the city toward its sweetest evening ritual.
X Gelato Navigli
The 2024 was already open. Mango and Sauternes is almost too easy: the wine’s apricot and citrus folding straight into the fruit. Pistachio was more interesting: the wine seemed to lean into it, bringing out notes of almond and toasted nuts, a pairing that felt accidental and right.
A good last evening in Milan.
