ITALY; Springs Eternal

Spring to the Market

Self-indulgent to a point, one of the important things about wine is the opportunity to be self-exploratory in the physical sensations and unique properties that a fine glass offers us. On a recent food & wine tour of northern and central Italy, continual reminders of the delightfully integral relationship between these joys of life were presented to us on a daily basis.  The fruitful bounty of this sun blessed landscape, the rich woodlands, and the generous sea produced marvels making each day a special occasion; a delicious reminder of what springs eternal.

A crisp Arneis and a grapey Barbera from Alba; Lombardy's delightful Franciacorta Rose' from producer, Cola; tart, food-friendly Dolchetto from Dogliani; a thick skinned Grechetto from Umbria's Torgiano DOC; and bright Verdicchio from Jesi of the region le Marche were all wonderful palate discoveries that enhanced each of the meals that accompanied them.  Regional wine tastings with agricultural entrepreneur Lungaroti of Umbria and then Poliziano of Montepulciano with its award winning, mouth-watering Rosso di Montepulciano (2012) only confirmed the joie de vivre that beautiful springtime Italy can offer. Regional wine events such as Asti's, Vinissage, a wine showcase of organic, bio-dynamic and natural products afford springtime visitors here a unique occasion to taste a broad range of emerging Italian wines in a single public location. Should you care to explore the surroundings by foot or auto, there's the serendipitous scattering of outdoor/indoor individual producer tastings during the fun annual weekend event known as WineStreet with numerous locations around the Piemonte area.

It is the delicious regional food, too, as much as anything that reflects so positively on springtime in these rich, undulating hills. Here products from the woodlands: pig and fungal(mushroom & truffel) populations are introduced in countless ways to enhance many types of dishes. Year round produce of fertile valleys festively decorate rural farmstands and the many colorful city markets. Fresh, unpasteurized dairy products, yogurts and fresh cheeses enhance the farm to table movement that seems always to be alive in Italy. Ultimately, there are marvelous plating's of delicate pastas with truffel, funghi, panceta, sausage or wild boar, a baseline to crescendo of second courses displaying the freshest sea foods, poultry and savory woodland rabbit(and my favorite, veal).

Whimsical New Age slow food plating with foam essence: Il Postale

Here in these diverse regions there is found the evolution of traditional Italian cooking as well as the advance guard of the new age gourmands, like Marco Bistarelli of Il Postale outside Perugia. There are the high standards regulated upon traditional regional winemaking, as well as the consistency of excellence created in the sustainable winegrowing of Verona's Aldrighetti family. In our recent tasting, their Adlrighetti Lorenzo e CristoForo Valpolicella offered bright, fresh aromas of dried red fruits that carried a food-friendly song throughout the generous and lengthy finish.

Vinissage exhibitors offer broad quality selections

Each day of our tour of these regions, Piemonte to Umbria to le Marche, offered the rich excitement not only of new regional discoveries, but also of seeing familiar things anew.  Wines here are an essential part of the balanced meal, and we rarely found ourselves spending any more than 13 Euro for a quaff-able bottle, even in a restaurant.  Sunshine filled these many days of discovery, and around every corner we delighted in what Italy today offers the food and wine visitor.  Here, the celebration of the land and of its life springs eternal.

 
Grazie mille, and salute!

WINE STUDY: Grape Characteristics (3)

Appearance, aromatics and flavor characteristics of any wine are assessed by each candidate of the upcoming Wine Educators Certification exam. By virtue of this process, tasters will be challenged to identify the dominant grape varietal of the wine, and in a separate exam, any of its potentially numerous faults that cause a wine to be out of balance.  As our exploration of global grape varieties continues, we arrive at a place where the grape names are not as familiar, but remain a principally important commodity not only to their individual international localities, but also to any aspiring wine educator. Fortunately for domestic consumers, these varieties can represent some of the greatest quality to price values on the broad, sometimes obscure, wine planet. Let's raise our glasses to some of the role players.

Pinot Blanc(Pinot Bianco, Weissburgunder) offers fruity aromas of apple, citrus and flowers while being typically medium to full bodied.  It's character is not unlike Chardonnay, which is understandable as they are both have history in Burgundy and may be genetic mutations of the same variety: Pinot Noir. Full bodied examples can be found most notably in Alsace and northern Italy, whereas in Germany or Austria the grape is shown as a medium bodied varietal where it can be found in stylings that are either dry or slightly sweet.
Semillon, easily cultivated and of prolific yields,  is a white grape distinguished by being modestly low in acid for such an early ripening variety.  Although easily sunburned, this thin skinned grape of almost oily texture is typically susceptible to Bortrytis cineria or noble rot fungus, and thus a principal partner in some of the world's greatest sweet wines. It can't be a Sauternes or a Barsac without Semillion in the blend. When grown as representative, this rich grape variety can show mineral elements, with rich and complex flavor notes of citrus, stone fruits and apples. Today, there are some terrific examples of the unique character of this grape in balance with Australia's Chardonnay.

Noble Rot fungus

Torrantes is an aromatic grape variety that typically is floral-citrus in its aroma, and is the principal white wine grape of long-isolated Argentina. On the palate it tends to be bright and crisp with good acid, flavor notes of flowers, stone fruit(like peach, apricot) and citrus. This perfumed variety can offer tropical fruit and distinctive kumquat flavors, and is a good foil for the regions staple chimichurri sauces. Today, most quality Torrantes wines are value priced and becoming more widely available throughout our marketplace 
Trebbiano(Ugni Blanc) is among the most widely planted wine grapes in the world! This high yield grape is generally undistinguished, but offers usually high acid to carry its fresh fruit flavors. Such 'fresh' characteristics allow Trebbiano to be very popular in its native Italy where it is broadly planted, and is principally important in the production of French distilled Cognac, Armagnac and even industrial alcohols. With its tough skins, it is easy to grow, and can offer subtle citrus and apple aromas/flavors, and finds itself typically blended with other white grape varieties.

Serralunga de Alba, Piedmont, Italy

Barbera is widely planted in its native Piedmont region of hilly northern Italy, where it grows vigorously, offering opaque skinned grapes of relatively low acidity. In its youth, it can be intensely aromatic, offering a nose of red and black berries. As it matures losing its freshness, the flavor notes become more of stewed or pruned vine fruits with the oak spice of its barreling becoming increasingly prominent.As the most widely planted and consumed grape of its native region, it is a terrific food wine for regional cuisine.
Gamay, an old cultivar in its native eastern France, is a purplish low tannin grape with naturally high acidity and typically high yields. Grown in the right soils, it can become very Pinot-like in the best growing years. Outlawed in Burgundy in 1395, it continued to prosper to the south in Beaujolais, as well as in the Loire Valley prior to becoming a world traveler. As an early ripen-er, the best of it today produces lighter, fruity wines with bright aromas of sour cherries, strawberry and even banana. On the palate, flavors of raspberry, dried berry and orange peel can be balanced with a hint of chalk, and rarely a dominant trace of oak.

Post-veraison Nebbiolo

Nebbiolo, may take its name for the Piedmont term for fog, 'nebbia'. In its youth, this high extract dark variety can produce light wines that are heavily tannic.  In fact this aromatic and structured native, with its aromas of tar, truffles and violets, is among the most tannic of all grape varieties.  It necessitates years of aging to expose its charms; offering herbal and woodsy notes of high acid red raspberry, ripe prunes and bitter chocolate. Generally producing wines of higher alcohol, this is one of the few of the world's noble varieties that has not successfully gone international.
Tempranillo (Cencibel, Tinta Roriz) has the distinction of being the Spanish 'noble' grape, getting its name from 'temprano', as in early to ripen. Here too, is another important grape that has not traveled auspiciously with any of the achievements it earns in its native vineyards. Across northern Spain it produces early ripening, thick skinned dark clusters that offer a woodsy and dusty character.  It can be 'fruit challenged' in the bottle, offering lean aromas of cherries, strawberries, leather, and road dust. Typically bush trained, it is a moderately tannic high pigment grape variety that also happens to be low in acid. As a result, its best examples tend to be blended with brighter varieties, producing more faint berry notes as well as increasingly earthy with advancing age.

Any of these or other grape varieties will stand ceremoniously in front of the aspiring wine educator on a placemat field of white paper. The best of these applicants will successfully identify principal grape varieties and major production regions using deductive reasoning from all the wine grape knowledge they have accumulated. They will ask themselves why that wine sample is not a Barolo from the Nebbiolo grape, but rather a Syrah. Or perhaps they will deduce that the white wine sample is a Sauvignon Blanc and not a Torrantes from the Salta region. In a separate testing, altered faults and imbalances of the same wine must be identified from the eight(8) similar wines that are displayed in front of them. An ability to recognize concentrated traits of sulfur dioxide or excessive tannin will serve the aspiring wine educator well in this portion of the faults exam. Only one sample in this field, however, will match the control sample, but which one?  For the successful student such questions will have the foundations of their answers in dedicated wine study. It probably doesn't hurt to also know as many grape variety characteristics as possible.

"Best while you have it to use your breath,
  for there is no drinking after death"
Cheers!

ITALY: Defined by Grapes that Hang On

Life is wine and wine is life in Italy, among the world's largest consumers, producers and exporters of this ancient libation. If the whole of Italy is a vineyard, with over 300 defined production zones in twenty(20) political regions, then perhaps Italy can be defined by its regional and native grape varieties. The vine has been here in this hilly, mountainous peninsula with its moderating sea influences since the colonization of the ancient Greeks. Here it is the time-honored tradition to match the right grape(native or international) to the perfectly compatible climate, soils and landscape.

In the foggy North, from the Alpine foothills of Piedmont, the tannic red grape Nebbiolo(Spanna) produces the regions famed Barolo DOCG's within its delimited production zone of the Langhe hills. To the east of central Alba, the more feminine Barbaresco's are found from three(3) communes, and in the northern hills the communes of Gattinara and Ghemme produce lighter blended styles from the same grape base. The surrounding provinces produce defining whites from the Moscato and Cortese grapes(Gavi DOCG), as well as aromatic, red Brachetto d'Acqui DOCG, still or frizzante(sparkling), long established as a regional specialty. High acid, low tannin red Barbera and fruity Dolcetto are among the most widely planted varietals in these hills, but usually found in the less prestigious soils.

Head east and Chardonnay in Lombardy's traditional method Franciacorta DOCG is the sparkling superstar, while the remote outpost of Valtellina DOCG, is still a Nebbiolo(Chiavennasca) blend, and a white workhorse, Malvasia is found here as well. A Red Moscato, grown near Bergamo, is the passito base for the speciality Moscato di Scanzo DOCG. Emilia-Romagna, to the south is home to Italy's first white DOCG, Albana di Romagna, made from the local Albana grape, in a volume region mostly known as the producer of volumes of light, red Lambrusco blends.

Old & New: Alto Adige trellis & pergolas

One of the tri-states, autonomous Trentino-Alto Adige is a northernmost region proudly growing international varieties, most of it DOC status, with whites like Pinot Grigo, Pinot Blanco and Muller-Thurgau. Sweeping eastward is the Veneto, cultivating huge amounts of white Garganega blends for Soave DOC's. Another important regional grape is the red Corvina Veronese, found as the base in Bardolino and Valpolicella DOC blends,  reaching its greatest expression  as partially dried recioto in the notable Amarone della Valpolicella DOCG. Popular Charmat method Prosecco is made traditionally from the Prosecco(Glera) grapes, and the base of the region's Bellini cocktails. As the eastern border Slovakian neighbor, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, once part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, is a prominently white wine region, with a mix of international and native varietals like Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon Blanc and Malvasia. The region has one DOCG, sweet Ramandolo from the Verduzzo white grape. An important regional DOC is Colli Orientali del Friuli from the Friulano grape, with native Picolit produced as another important white grape which is allowed in the passito sweet DOC.

Montepulciano d'Abruzzo

Vast central hills of Tuscany, have cultured numerous clones of the native Sangiovese grape over the centuries. Delineation of a Chianti Classico region from 1716 recognized an original zone of production and was officially canonized in 1932, finally becoming part of DOC regulations in 1966. Hilltop Brunello di Montalcino DOCG is derived from an un-blended  Sangiovese clone, having a brown skin when ripe, it can produce one of the world's great wines.Vino Nobile di Montepulciano DOCG is from the 'Prugnolo gentile' clone of the same grape, and can produce great wines of good value. Carmignano DOCG is also based in Sangiovese, but was the first DOC to allow amounts of Cabernet Sauvignon or Cabernet Franc in its regional Italian blend. Notably, the region's white Vernaccia of San Gimignano was the first in Italy to be awarded DOC status

In the South, Umbria's popular Orvieto DOC is made from widely cultivated Trebbiano, Grechetto and Malvasia white grapes within the historic commune. The same grapes are blended further South in Latium's Frascati DOC, so popular in the cafe's of Rome. Local native Sagrantino grapes are the base of Umbria's Sagrantino di Montefalco DOCG, which is produced in dry or sweet(dolce) styles, and we also find Sangiovese blended again in the communal DOCG Torgiano Rossa Riserva. Widely planted Trebbiano(Ugli Blanc) appears again in mountainous Abruzzo as Trebbiano d'Abruzzo, but the regions DOCG comes from a local red variety, Montepulciano d'Abruzzo. Towards the Adriatic, the hills of Marche have the high-acid white grape variety Verdicchio, a perfect partner for the local catch of the day, as well as white Vernaccia grapes in numerous DOC blends. Red Montepulciano shows its cloned head again in the regions DOCG, Conero-Rosso Riserva.

Volume-producing Apulia is a dominant red-wine region and home for many migratory ancient varietals, such as the red/black Primitivo and Negromaro grapes. Aglianico is another ancient Greek variety, and known as the Nebbiolo of the South. It is proudly found as the principal red grape in Campania's Taurasi DOCG and in Basilicata's only DOCG, the volcanic-nurtured Aglianico del Vulture. As 'Magna Graecia' other historic white grape varieties, like Greco di Tufo, in still or frizzate styles, and the classic, aromatic Fiano di Avellino found DOCG homes in the Campania sunshine. Fiano was also planted on the large island of Sardinia, but is overshadowed by a more famous white, Vermentino di Gallura DOCG. Across the sea in Liguria the same Vermentino grape is known by the synonym Pigato. While under the Crown of Aragon, the vineyards of Sardinia also rooted imported varieties like the white Tourbat, the red Carignan and Nerello.Not every variety of the South has been imported. Autonomous and mountaneous, Sicily has the native black Nero d'Avola grape, important in producing the islands' Cerasuolo di Vittoria DOCG. Often conquered Sicily is known more as a volume producer and the home of Marsala DOC, a fortified and aged sweet wine from a collection of native white grapes dominated by Catarrato and Grillo.

Today, the wines of Italy are a curios mix of appellation and varietal labeling, as they have throughout history, perhaps because the region is defined by its grape(s). Labels offering a 'Riserva' designation additionally reflect additional aging, usually 2 years longer. While the often used 'Classico' claim typically refers to the original zone of traditional production for that regional product. Veiled over all of this are the top quality tier of the DOCG wines, those of 'controlled designation of origin guaranteed', applied to 47 regional wines, who in theory represent the best of their appellations. All that needs to be done is to match the right regional grape with the perfect spot to cultivate it, and then hang on for more than 2000 years.

ITALY: Need to Know, Too

From its calf to its toe, Central and Southern Italy produce an ocean of everyday wine for thirsty regional consumption. Here we find mostly DOC regions. A small portion of this wine has fortunately evolved to higher EU standards to become DOCG; but, just about all of it has ancient origins.

South of Emiglia-Romana, and east of Tuscany lies the hilly Adriatic region of Marche. Here Conero DOCG is based on the native red grape Montepulciano, and grown in the hills overlooking seaside Ancona. Thought once to be extinct, the region's ancient red Vernaccia grape, produces Marches other DOCG wine, sparkling Vernaccia di Serrapetrona. Venerable Verdicchio, and old world white grape, is the base for the regions generously consumed and best white DOC wines produced throughout the region.

Like Marche to the North, Abruzzo is mostly mountains and hills that run to the eastern sea. The regions only DOCG wine, also made from Montepulciano grapes, can be found in its extreme northernmost  zone, Montepulciaiano d'Abruzzi Colline Teramane.  Trebbiano, a native variety, produces the regions best white DOC wines. A reductive vino cotto or cooked wine, is a regional specialty here, much like Portugal's Maderia.
Without any DOCG appellations, Latium can only claim to be the home of Frascati DOC, a white blend of Malvasia Bianca and Trebbiano grapes. It can be found in dry, sweet or sparkling styles. Of note is a simple wine with a big thousand year reputation, Est! Est!! Est!!! di Montefiascone DOC.  It is based in a similar white grape blend, and then benefits from centuries of apostolic marketing following its discovery by a bishop.

Originating in Greece, high acid red Aglianico, produces the popular Taurasi DOCG in Campania, and Aglianico del Vulture DOCG in neighboring Basilicata. The regions white DOCG's are from the Greek introduced Greco grapes, Greco du Tufa, and raisiny Fiano da Avellino produced from the Fiano grape.

Apulia, the prolific wine producing heel of the boot, does not have a DOCG, in-spite of being one of the country's largest wine producers. Red grape dominated, it is the home of Salice Salentino DOC and Brindisi DOC, prominent among its 24 DOC appellations. It is home to red Negromaro and Primitivo grapes.

Calabria, Italy's toe, has its most famous DOC, Ciro', a rosso from the ancient Galioppo grape that it is said has been produced here for thousands of years. Also notable is Greco di Bianco DOC, a dessert wine made from dried greco grapes along the regions coastline. Documents indicate that this specialty has been produced here since the 8th century BC!

 
One of Italy's largest producers, Sicily, is most famously known for Marsala DOC, a dry or sweet fortified wine produced on its western edge. White Cataratto Bianco grapes dominate the islands landscape, and its only DOCG, Cerasuolo di Vittoria, is from the red grape Nero d'Avola. Two important dessert wines are produced here, Moscato di Pantelleria DOC, and Malvasia delle Lipari DOC, it made from malvasia grapes on the islands of Lipari.
Vermentino di Gallura comes from the white grape(Vermentino) of Spanish origin that is Sardinia's only DOCG zone. On the other side of the island, a bone dry, partially oxidized wine, Vernaccia di Oristano DOC, from the local white Vernaccia variety is produced.  It is said to be reminiscent of a simple Sherry. Continuing today to reflect its Spanish past, the most widely planted red grapes on this island are Connonau, also known as Garancha, and Carignano(carignan).

With a historical perspective, it probably is important to realize that Italy was not united as one kingdom until the last part of the 19th century.  Prior to that, these independent city states that sit at the crossroads of the old world were visited time and again by foreign powers. Yet, throughout it all, century upon century, with local wine traditions firmly in place, it has remained distinctly Italian.  For one of the world's foremost producers, it must be the wine. Salute!

'Wine is Life' -Petronius