Other than all the of Italian options (which I’m sure will be spoken for here), I actually really like inexpensive Bordeaux with pizza (basic Bordeaux and Bordeaux Superior AC, Graves, the various Cotes ACs). I’m probably a bit of an oddball . . . . well that’s a given, but in this particular regard.
Lambrusco from a good producer. Zinfandel or zinfandelish blends can also be good, though it’s depressingly difficult to find a good one under $20. Marietta Old Vine Red would fit the bill.
Pizza=Naples=Aglianico. I prefer a softer more open one, like something from Campania closer to Naples, or Aglianico del Vulture further inland. Taurasi is nice if properly aged, but probably well over $20/bot these days.
I know food and wine ultra-purists will recoil in horror at this comment, but I find 90%+ of good Italian red wines go well with pizza. Not that pizza is the most perfect pairing or the traditional local pairing for all those wines, but just that they go perfectly well together in a “what to quaff with pizza on a weeknight” kind of sense. So my answer would be “whatever are your favorite Italian red wines at the price point you want.”
Barbera, Chianti, Etna, Rosso di Montalcino, Langhe Nebbiolo, those all seem like pretty obvious places to look. In that huge category, I’d say it’s more about what varieties, regions and producers you like, than it is one being more perfect for NY pizza than the other.
Rustic reds certainly work - a nice cut of acidity and not too substantial/rich. I agree Lambrusco can work, though it is my favourite food/wine pairing with cured meats - the pairing significantly improving both.
I wonder whether champagne would work well…? I’ve not tried it.
NY style is thin crust, you heathen! Always thin and crispy, or it’s cooked wrong.
My view is that it’s based on Neapolitan style, but the red sauce usually has a secret spice element to it (garlic, oregano, dried basil, s&p), where Neapolitan style tends to be fresh tomato diced/crushed without much else. Also the cheese is almost always some type of blend of mozzarella (not fresh), asiago, romano & parmesan, and most cheese on your typical NY pizza slice probably comes from Wisconsin.
There’s more to it than that - traditional NY pizza is made from NY flour and cooked in American gas ovens. That produces a different product that pizza cooked with European flour in European-manufactured ovens. Also, by-the-slice pizza has a distinct (and for my biased and native palate, superior) texture in the crust because of reheating - essentially toasting the bottom crust while the middle of the crush stays moister, which requires a thin crust to avoid a doughy slice.
Put differently, I would consider a slice of white pizza from a good NY slice joint to be a quintessentially NY pizza, though there’s no sauce at all. (FWIW, white pizza is one of the great wine pairings there is, requiring none of the machinations you see in this thread to pair with the high-acid/high-sugar tomato sauce). Similarly, I would consider a grandma slice to be NY pizza, even though many of those slices have little cheese, and the sauce is often generously spoon on TOP of the cheese.