Italy - 2007 - State of the Many Nations Report
During the last year we had several sensuous epiphanies in Italy. Imagine wallowing in a heated spa swimming pool toasting a snow-capped Mont Blanc with a glass of sparkling Blanc de Morgex, or tasting 1961 Barolo in the Borgogno winery, or eating almonds under the pergola vines in Sankt Magdalener.
Much hithering and thithering has allowed us to probe the hidden corners of this amazing country. Friuli, abutting Slovenia, has provided perhaps the most varied and recondite taste sensations: the biodynamic wines of Benjamin Zidarich, for example, (consider salty-mineral Vitovska and sapid, cherry-bright Terrano), the more constructed amber efforts of Princic nodding and winking to Gravner, a spicy ramato (copper-hued) Pinot Grigio from Bellanotte, and a dry Verduzzo and Schioppettino respectively from Bressan - to name but a few. In Piedmont we are working successfully with Giacomo Borgogno, one of the oldest estates in Barolo. The wines are organic and delicious, drinkable now and endlessly ageworthy. Another estate that prides itself on using no chemicals is Sottimano in Barbaresco. The 2004 Fausoni is destined to be a memorable vintage, its supreme elegance making up for the natural austerity of the wine. After a long hunt we finally discovered two superb Brunellos: Poggio di Sotto and Il Paradiso di Manfredi. Signor Palmucci makes uncompromising wines at the former; no kowtowing to the palates of certain American wine critics at this establishment whilst the authentic Brunellos from Manfredi magically capture the essential purity of the Sangiovese grape.
When you�re choosing Italian wine you don’t have to sacrifice yourself on the altar of orthodoxy. PG has for too long stood not for Parental Guidance but for vapid Pinot Grigio or Pappy Gruel. Ditch the dishwater! How does unfiltered Prosecco, made in the ancestral fashion from pre-phylloxera vines, sound instead? Or Sicilian Cerasuolo - fermented in amphorae? Or perhaps you have an irrational hankering for a Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi from 1991? Or a dry Lacrima di Morro d’Alba? And wouldn’t you like to open a bottle of Vecchio Samperi (a dry, unfortified traditional-style Marsala) from Marco de Bartoli and know that it would be still in perfect condition in several weeks time? From the communes of Valle d’Aosta, nestling on the Swiss border, to the baking volcanic plug of Pantelleria swept by hot winds off the Sahara, every corner of Italy throws up a grape variety, a quirky tradition or some delicious vinous ambuscado that keeps the most jaded palate on taste-bud tenterhooks.
In The Vineyard - The Biodynamic Clock
We don’t set out deliberately to buy wines that are organic and biodynamic - these labels are practically irrelevant as many wine growers adapt elements of natural philosophy or vineyard practice in order to make better wines from healthier vines, but, it so happens that about half of our Italian wineries are working to a consistent and rigorous programme of sustainable viticulture and minimal intervention. The link between organic/biodynamic farming and terroir (or typicity) is surely undeniable, and, if it cannot be proven by lab technicians in the sterile conditions of a laboratory, it can certainly be tasted time and again in the wines. Of course, good winemaking exalts the expression of terroir, but it doesn’t have to be overtly interventionist. This year, at our “Real Wine Tasting” we brought together growers from various regions of Italy - the link being that they all worked without chemicals in the vineyard (encouraging biodiversity) and without adjustments in the winery. With no make up and no pretension the wines simply tasted of themselves; the strong, distinctive flavours announced proudly that the wines could only come where they came from, a bonus and a relief in the face of global pressure to create styles to please the “common denominator palate” (whatever that might be). Thank goodness for diversity; vive la difference, as they don’t say in Rome.
Enotria Tellus
For whereso’er I turn my ravished eyes/ Gay gilded scenes and shining prospects rise; /Poetic fields encompass me around/And still I seem to tread on classic ground.
Joseph Addison - Letter From Italy
In the last couple of years we have assembled an agency portfolio of “Italian terroiristes”, a group of growers dedicated to producing wines of purity, typicity and individuality, who are not only perfectionists and passionate about their own wines but also fine ambassadors for their respective regions. Our idea was to represent growers from both Italy’s classic and lesser-seen regions. From the Alpine valleys of Valle d’Aosta to its baking southern Mediterranean coast Italy is many countries with a fascinating diversity of cultures, climates and wine styles. It is our intention to demonstrate the Italian wines can match the French for regional diversity and sensitivity to terroir. We have examples of rare traditional indigenous varieties such as Longanesi, Albana, Monica, Mayolet and Petit Rouge and also the best expression of better-known grapes such as Sangiovese, Nebbiolo and Montepulciano.
Californian Chianti
Perceived convention is the curse of interesting wine. Take Chianti - once upon a time in this country it was viewed as low-grade quaff-juice, a fiasco in a fiasco, no more than rough-and-unready red wine. Then Tuscany was given the kiss of money and the DOCG pulled itself by its bootstraps (or rootstocks) and multidimensional, complex, relatively extractive and increasingly expensive wines were produced. Modernity, in the guise of expert oenologists, cleansed the wines; lashings of new oak transformed them into the safe international style that we recognise and - ahem - applaud today. All to the good, of course, but reconfiguring and overcomplicating wine in the winery suppresses any whiff of individualism or sniff of unorthodoxy and has had a knock-on effect. Now when we taste rustic Chianti we think it somehow “incomplete”. Unfortunately, notions of correctness condition our palates & colour our critical judgement, and we succumb to the great intentionalist fallacy of wine criticism by assuming that we know the grower’s purpose better than they do, and that it must be inevitably to manufacture perfectly balanced, fruitfully fruity, clean-as-a-whistle, commercial wines. In this respect, as Voltaire observed: “The best is the enemy of the good”.
False or True
Imperfection can be a kind of truth and variability is an intrinsic quality of so many interesting wines. Mascarello’s Nebbiolos, for example, are full of challenging contrasts: tough yet delicate; full yet soft; fruity yet mineral. Their colour, an orange-tile red, and earthy-truffly aromas, deter drinkers who are searching for “melonosity” in their wines. That Valentini’s wines from Abruzzo excite even more debate (amongst the privileged few who have sampled them) is a rare quality in itself: to some the wines are a testament to passion, obsession, individuality and purity, a reconnection to terroir, to others they are “quasi-defective”. One journalist told me that the Trebbiano gave her “goosebumps”. (Good goosebumps!) The great thing about Valentini’s wines (red, cerasuolo and white) is that they are constantly changing in the glass, shyly revealing then retreating into the shell, always suggestive, never obvious, inevitably very mineral, certainly very strange - and, because they are released with bottle age, they exhibit intriguing and offbeat secondary and reductive aromas. We are inculcated to respect transparent cleanness, and to accept the notion that a wine that is not clean must, ipso facto, be faulty. This view is an immaculate misconception. Some of the greatest wines are borderline mad and downright impertinent. The genius of the wine that does not surrender its secrets in the first aromatic puff is also often missed; I suppose if people want absolute consistency they won’t venture beyond the tried and trusted; if they want to be touched by greatness they will risk drinking something that defies easy categorisation. We tend to search for exactitude in wine that does not exist in nature and evaluate it by a pernickety sniff and a suspicious sip. Wines, however, can evolve, or change in context; you can no more sip a wine and know its total character than look at one brushstroke of a painting or hear a single musical note in a symphony and understand the whole. In other words, with certain wines, we have to drink the bottle, to see if our initial judgement was correct. And the truth can be hard to drink.
People are still fixated with labels and reputations and ignore what lies within the bottle. It is not so difficult, for example, to sell sherry any more - the brand recognition facilitates this - but try to suggest a solera-style Vernaccia di Oristano from Attilio Contini or Vecchio Samperi from Marco de Bartoli and you will startle a veritable herd of bewilderbeest. No wonder Marco says: “Marsala is dead. No one drinks it”. These wines don’t transcend the genre - they are the genre. On the one hand critics claim to be utterly objective, but objectivity per se can be utterly conformist and lead to what Keats called a “pale contented sort of discontent”. Sometimes we need a leap of faith (or understanding) to appreciate recondite or reserved wine styles. The fault is occasionally not in the wine, but in the taster and contemporary arbiters of taste. Dedicated followers of fashion - journalists - often write for their audience and a common denominator of taste; they are primarily interested in what is widely available and consequently what can be sold commercially. It is patronising to assume that a wine that has been made for centuries in a particular old-fashioned style is an irrelevant frivolity.
Better red than, dead boring
No one ever said that tasting Italian red wines was a doddle. Obduracy is a caricature of Italian reds and although we shouldn’t brush all reds with the same tar, so to speak, their very identity nevertheless rests on a familiar sour bite, that peculiar astringency that makes perfect sense with food. Flattering wines rarely possess the edge and drive to challenge hearty food, therefore what’s tough for the palate in this case - is definitely sauce for the goose. Even the grape names romantically suggest the style of the wine: Sangiovese (the blood of Jove) or Negroamaro (bitter-black). A bloody bitter wine with edges is a wine that challenges the palate; there are enough denatured beauties and vacant models in the world of wine. Italy’s contrasts are manifold: the classic and the modern; the north and the south; the raw and the cooked; the bitter and the sweet. There’s a charm in contrariness, in being capatosta.