Z is for Zidarich
I was googling away as one does when I saw the tag “Parker reviews Nissan’s Terrano”, and I thought, in my Alan Partridge way, ah-ha, Uncle Bob has finally forsaken the fleshpots of Cali-Merlot in order to sample the more angular charms of Trieste’s finest. But I was mistaken… unless the Wine Advocate had abandoned the notion of reviewing wine in favour of giving them straightforward MOTs. This lively little mover (available only in red) has great straight-line speed across the palate, corners easily over the edges of your tongue and has a delightful framework of fruit on top of a firm chassis of minerality… Can go from 0-90 points in 6 seconds.
Carso is a limestone-rich plateau that extends out from the city of Trieste and reaches toward the Julian Alps to the north. The heavy limestone content of the soils likely gave the zone its name (Carso is thought to be derived from a Celtic word (karst) meaning “land of rock”), and it lends the wines, both white and red, a firm acidic backbone and mouth-watering minerality. On the white side, this means flinty, fragrant accompaniments to fresh seafood in Trieste, Muggia, and other fishing towns along Friuli’s Adriatic basin, while the red Terrano is a high-acid companion to the heartier, Slavic-and-Austrian-inflected food further inland. More on these food combos anon.
The Azienda Zidarich is located in Prepotto, near Duino Aurisina, which is a small and characteristic village of the Carso area. The landscape is extremely varied and stimulating. The vegetation of the environment is very different and enhances the peculiarity of this territory dedicated to viticulture. Jagged chalky rock is the keynote of Carso viticulture, which is carried out on small terraces of red, iron-rich soil that have been reclaimed from the woodland. This lends the wines the characteristic acidity and mineral notes.
Benjamin Zidarich has always had a love-love relationship with the vines of his homeland, although it has been gruelling work creating a vineyard of any meaningful size.
In 1988 I started to replant my father’s half hectare; then “four by four”, I planted many other rows of vines over a space of sixteen years and a bit of progress has been made.
Today those few square metres have become more than six hectares. To many this might seem little or perhaps even ridiculous, but for those who know the Carso and what it means to make a hectare of vineyard to grow on rock, it’s another story. If you haven’t lived through a similar experience you can’t understand what sacrifice is involved in being a vine-dresser on this border land, what stoicism it takes and how much self-abnegation there is in the work of a man who, alone, breaks the hard rock one meter deep, fills the pit with red earth brought up from the bottom of the valley and plants the vines which, after years, may produce grapes.
It’s tough and not always gratifying work, a job that keeps you for whole days and months in the vineyard, that makes you sweat and hope, that disheartens you when you’re tired and exhausted and impels you to talk to the vine, to the water and lastly to the rock, trying to understand it and shape it, to make friends with it and make it a companion in the adventure you have decided to live to the full and that will surely last all your life.
So you start in with pickaxe and hammer and you dig down beyond that meter of rock so you can plant vines, and you realize you’re going farther and farther down, into the bowels of the earth, to build your cellar in those rocks. There, dozens of meters underground, deeper and deeper, following the veining of those rocks where one day you’ll lay your wine to rest peacefully in a place where it will feel protected and guarded.
A job which, I can assure you, is indescribable if you have to do it with the only means at your disposal: arms and brains.
Hands that split and arms that stiffen and then hurt in the evening; a head that becomes empty from tiredness and the heaviness of a sacrifice that seems endless. A numbness that enfolds me, but it disappears as soon as I get back home and find my wife Nevenka and my children Jakob and Martina waiting for me.
I take courage from these smiles that give me new strength to commit myself here in the Carso, seeking the highest quality from these vineyards that fight, as I do, on this very difficult land."”
Friuli, land, people, wine (2004)
Actually, make that a hate-love relationship with the vines!
The red grape that intrigues us here is Terrano or Teran - better known as Refosco. There is plenty of ampelographical spaghetti to unravel. The full moniker of the grape that is most often used to make the finest “Refosco” wines in Friuli is named “Refosco dal Penduncolo Rosso” which means “Refosco with the red stem”. As with so many ancient varieties, however, there has been a considerable amount of both natural mutation and cross-breeding that has left the contemporary Refosco family with several “siblings”. As implied above, Refosco dal Penduncolo Rosso is considered to be the most noble of the varieties, but there are green stemmed versions, as well as a Croatian/Slovenian branch of the family that goes by the name of “Teran” in the former country, and as “Refosk” in the latter. To complicate matters, in many cases, both types of Refosco are planted side by side in the same vineyards. Furthermore, Refosco is cultivated a bit in neighbouring Veneto under the name “Terrano”, and further south in the Romagna region under the name “Cagnina”. And just in case you’re not yet completely confused, the “Mondeuse” variety from the Savoie region in France has been proven to be none other than Refosco, though precisely how and when it arrived there is uncertain.
Refosco dal Penduncolo Rosso seems to have, judging by references made to what is almost surely the same variety, a very long history in Friuli. The earliest references to the variety were made by the Roman historian Pliny the Elder in which he refers to a black-skinned grape with a red stem that produces good wine and which was the favourite wine grape of Livia, Augustus Caesar’s second wife. Later, in an early renaissance work entitled The Annals of Friuli published in 1390 by one Francesco di Manzano, the author also makes reference to a variety that is almost surely RdPR.
Enough grape nerdery. Call it what you will, this Terrano hits all my Marcillac buttons in delivering its refreshing, sappy cargo of wine-plasma. An alluring purple-black colour leads you to sniff a wet-slate, violet-scented nose shot through hints of wild red berries and brambly fruit. The terrific belt of acidity on the palate is reinforced by mineral stoniness akin to melted iron filings (soils in this part of Friuli are very high in iron), red cherry-stone fruit and blackberries. The wine is light-bodied (11.5%) and the acidity washes the mouth beautifully. Bye-bye bottle… It doesn’t really matter what you trough with this. It would be good with lamb or beef stew, anything cooked with duck fat, or a damn fine osso buco. Classic Friulian dishes include Muset co le brovade: boiled spiced gelatinous pork sausages with grated pickled white turnips, or Marcundela, sliced sausage fried in butter, then served with a plate of pasta or an omelette. You could also have this slightly chilled with wild salmon or trout.Another good local dish to match with is crespelle gratinate al Montasio e Sclopit (Ricotta-stuffed crepes with a Montasio cheese frico garnish and a bit of sclopit, chopped bitter spring greens).
Our other wine from Zidarich, and one I could drink endlessly, is Vitovska. The wine is fermented with natural yeasts in open-top wood vats where it sees contact with the skins for eight to ten days. Aging takes place in mid-size Slavonian oak casks and the wines are bottled without fining or filtration. Zidarich’s wines are cloudy in colour, but that is simply the result of wines that have been made with a bare minimum of intervention. Like all whites macerated on the skins, these wines should be served at cellar temperature in large glasses. Representing the purest expression of varietal in its effusion of spices, pears, jasmine and flowers Zidarich’s Vitovska has a rosy, cidery haze to it and enticing aromas of yellow cherries, apples, pears and smoke. In the mouth it is dense, yet not heavy at all, honeyed yet dry and packed full of mineral flavours. It is almost a paradoxical wine, resting on that fragile border between lightness and weight, dry and sweet. It gives the wine tension and energy and makes me want to drink more of it.
In Trieste and its environs one might drink Vitovska with mussels, fresh anchovies or fried baccala. I imagine it would also be excellent with the gnocchi, risotti and the gorgeous local polenta with warm Montasio cheese melted into it.