Burton Anderson’s New Blog; and Some Wines that Surprised Me

Burton Anderson has started a blog. If you are below a certain age threshold, that announcement may not make you sit up and take notice, but for seriously ancient winos like myself, that news is electric. For those who love Italian wines, Burt Anderson is the maestro, the pioneer, the guy who got there first and first pulled it all together so that it made sense to the rest of us. His book Vino was the eye-opener, and is still an enjoyable and useful read, after 30 years. Everyone who has written about Italian wine since owes Burton an enormous debt, whether they know it or not, whether they acknowledge it or not. And very few who have written about Italian wine since have done so with the style, thoroughness, and total honesty that Burt brought to the task. And now he is bringing the same qualities to a blog.

As his title indicates, this blog is about more than wine: he is turning out some his best writing yet on a whole range of subjects, Italian, cultural, and topical. In my not-especially-humble opinion, the blogosphere needs more good writing like Burt’s and more of his kind of directness.

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And now, as Monty Python would say, for something completely different. Every now and again I taste anew a wine I thought I was familiar with or a wine I’ve never encountered before. I’ve rounded up a few of those “Aha!” experiences to share with you.

Villa Matilde Falanghina 2006.  I drank this five-year-old in late November 2011, with smoked sturgeon toasts and shrimps creole. Falanghina is a grape and a wine I love, but I usually drink it in its second or third year. So I was nervous about the age: I seemed to have lost sight of the bottle and forgotten that I had it. Although the nose seemed fine – maybe a little sherry hint, but nothing off-putting – the color when poured terrified me. It was not just gold, but orangey gold, more than a little strange. The flavor, however, was just perfect: definitely Falanghina, but past its initial freshness and into dried-fruit sensations – apricot, Diane says; some dried fig too, I thought, but minus the sugar. It worked beautifully with both dishes, and drank just fine by itself as well. Who knew the grape took any age at all? Much less that it took it so gracefully? Yet one more proof that well-made Italian white wines can last.

Li Veli Verdeca 2010. A white from an endangered grape in Puglia. Lovely stuff: medium to full body, earthy, with mushroomy notes: a real food wine – vaguely Burgundian in its bulk on the palate, but emphatically Italian in its flavors and minerality. Made by the Falvo brothers, who achieved fame for many years at Avignonesi in the Vino Nobile di Montepulciano zone. In 1999 they acquired an old vineyard property in one of the most historic wine areas of Puglia, the Val d’Itria. They have sold their interest in Avignonesi and moved themselves to Puglia, where, among other things, they began the Askos project, an attempt to revive some of the most ancient varieties of the zone. On the basis of this wine, I’d say they seem to be about to do great things. We drank this Verdeca with a Basque hake with green sauce (predominantly garlic-flavored) which it took perfectly in stride.

Chave Celeste St. Joseph blanc 2007.  Enjoyed with a good lunch at brasserie Artisanal, this was not only a reminder of how good the white wines of the Rhône can be, but also a revelation of just how skilled a winemaker is the house of Chave. I think of Chave, first of all – and up until this point perhaps exclusively – as a red wine producer. The house is most famous – and rightly so – for its Hermitage, which is one of the greatest red wines of the Rhône. Some consider it the supreme rendition of that appellation, a wine of great depth and age-worthiness. This four-year-old white gave every indication of the same kind of age-worthiness – it was still fresh and vital – along with amazing nuance. It showed the kind of slate-and-wet-stones-with-dry-apricot that some connoisseurs associate primarily with Condrieu, which it more and more reminded me of with every sip. And at a small fraction of the cost! I should be surprised like this every day.

Formentini Pinot Grigio 2010. I used to know this wine as another one of the faceless “cocktail-style” Pinot grigios that Italy has been pouring out for decades now. Well, there have been big changes at Formentini, and this is no longer an airhead Pinot grigio to gulp at the bar. Now vinified from high-altitude plantings of low yield, and gingerly handled in the cellar, it has become a very interesting, medium-bodied wine to serve with dinner. Sure, you can still drink it enjoyably as an aperitif – but it now has complexity and character enough to be far more enjoyable with a good roast chicken or a delicate veal scallop. It’s a nice reminder of what Pinot grigio is capable of when some care is taken with it.

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And one after-dinner drink:

Clear Creek Grappa. Color me flabbergasted. An American grappa that tastes like the real thing! Who knew? It fooled me completely: I thought I had been handed a rather fine Italian distillate. This Oregon distillery uses local fruits and distills them in a very traditional manner to make a whole range of grappas and eaux de vie. On the basis of the single example of its work I’ve so far tasted, I have a lot of pleasant exploration ahead of me.

Wine Journalism: the Agony and the Ecstasy

Wine journalism is a glamorous job, right? Those free press trips to exotic locations, lavish hospitality from famous wineries, all-expense-paid attendance at international conferences where you drink the best of the best of famous vintages . . . that’s the lush life, isn’t it! Want to try it? Take a look at what the job really entails:

Marathon mornings. We all love drinking wine – but would you still love tasting about 75 of them, all young and raw, every morning for a week, every single one of them magnificently served from brown paper- or foil-wrapped numbered bottles by harried sommeliers in a cavernous – and cold – former railroad station amid the clatter and grumbling of about a hundred other equally cold, tired, already palate-weary colleagues? Do you think you can muster up the focus to taste, analyze in some fashion, and evaluate each one of those wines with equal attention? And record your impressions and evaluation in some fashion, from lined pad to iPad, quickly and accurately enough to get through your morning’s allotment of wines in time?

Arduous afternoons. After enough lunch to scrape the tannins from your cheeks and tongue, are you up for flying visits to three or four wineries, tasting up to a dozen wines at each, listening to the winemakers talk about their wines, this vintage, and what is slumbering in their cellars, and then asking them intelligent questions to elicit the kind of information that you and your readers need to know to properly understand and evaluate this harvest and its wines? After that, can you manage – if you’re very lucky, you may first have up to half an hour at your hotel to wash your face, brush your teeth, and “rest” – to sit to a multi-course, multi-wine gala dinner that will start late and run far too long, especially with a 6:30 wake-up call awaiting you back at your hotel? That hotel, no matter how Spartan it may be (forget about luxury suites and swimming pools), now looks like an unattainable oasis to you.

Bus bondage. Busses, of course, are the blessing and the bane of trips like this. The blessing is that you don’t have to drive yourself and can sit in comfort (sometimes) while the driver squeezes his giant Pullman through narrow streets and narrower entranceways. The bane is that you can’t drive yourself, but are stuck wherever you may be until the bus arrives, and then maybe stuck some more until all the passengers who are supposed to be there show up. It does no good that you know writers X, Y, and Z aren’t planning to join the bus: they’re on the list, and the bus doesn’t move until they’re officially accounted for. And then, for a random example, you drive at ponderous, regulated speeds into the usual massive traffic jam on the Florence-Siena autostrada, where you sit for anything from 20 minutes to 2 hours.

If you are masochist enough that all that really appeals to you, then welcome to the club: you’re at least psychically fit to play the pro on the wine circuit.

I always wanted to write a magazine story that would tell wine lovers what it was really like on a wine press trip – but I could never get any editors to OK the idea. Given what sells most wine magazines, they didn’t want to puncture any romantic notions – better to leave the illusions of luxury travel lubricated by the nectar of the gods intact! Believe me, ladies and gentlemen, for the vast majority of us serious working stiffs of the wine press, life aint like that.

This was all brought forcefully to mind for me by the fact that each new year brings with it the annual renewal of the three Tuscan new-release events – Chianti Classico, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, and Brunello di Montalcino. These three very important presentations are all crammed into one week in February, which is both convenient and borderline hellish. I love this week, and I hate it. I love it because, like the annual Barolo and Barbaresco presentations in May, it gives me a chance to really learn the new vintages – to see what the wines are like not just from one or two producers but across the whole spectrum of the appellation. You don’t get many opportunities for that kind of perspective or that kind of depth, however physically and intellectually trying the learning may be. That knowledge, and the small handful of truly unforgettable wines you will taste during the week, are as much ecstasy as you get.

Another reason I love it is that, like the May week in Alba, it also gives me a chance to schmooze with colleagues from all over Europe and (increasingly these days) Asia and get their perspectives on the events and the wines. These are often very different from those of the few American participants, and that makes the experience even more valuable. My European colleagues especially often look for different things in the wines than I do, and rate them by a different scale. It can be quite eye-opening to try to come to terms with those differences: you can learn a lot just by listening.

All of which, incidentally, always makes me wonder: Why are important American journals like the New York Times, the Wine Spectator, and the Wine Advocate never represented at these events? Just asking.

I hate the week for lots of reasons, most to do with personal comfort. To begin with, February isn’t the best time to visit Italy. Tuscany is cold, and the huge, centrally unheated, stone palazzi where the tastings usually occur are colder still. I remember more than one year when we foot-soldiers of the press corps tasted with our overcoats and hats on, and the producers put their best bottles right on the few and feeble radiators to try to bring them up to a drinkable temperature.

At least it didn’t snow that year. The year that it did, we all feared being trapped in Montalcino after the end of the tastings, because its steep streets and access roads were unsafe for cars and busses.

Other countries can be far worse. I remember a Portuguese trip where our van driver and the local guide/translator (whose solitary word of English seemed to be “No”) got lost the minute we left Lisbon. They stayed that way for a week, refusing ever to ask directions or to take advice. Iberian pride, I guess. We arrived at every appointment two to three hours late – only to discover that, no matter how late we were, our hosts weren’t ready to receive us – in fact, treated our arrival as a (we hoped pleasant) surprise.

Then there’s the hospitality, which is generous to the point of life endangerment. One trip to the Italian Piedmont, the week before Easter, produced multi-course meals (many antipasti, many pastas, huge secondo, many cheeses, desserts) of roast kid twice a day, every day. In Portugal, it was bacalao – another great dish, but not twice a day every day. By the end of a week like that, beer and pizza look like heaven.

But the reason I hate it most stems directly from the factor that makes the whole week worthwhile – tasting so many wines, one after another, without food, without conversation, without leisure. It’s artificial, it’s false, it’s completely untrue to the way we actually consume wine, and it makes every individual judgment provisional at best. But it is also the only possible way to gain a vision of the whole spectrum of a zone’s production in a particular harvest. So the agony is real, but the compensations, in the form of knowledge and experience, are great, very great.

As for glamour: Between bouts of waiting for busses and eating too much, you’ve been tasting somewhere between 80 and 100 young red wines, perhaps more, every day. You have to have learned something, but the payment for that knowledge is a tongue and cheeks that feel like the sole of your shoe, and a sleep deficit that a winter-storm-tossed transatlantic flight is not going to remedy, and who knows what other physical after-effects. I call on my fair bride as the state’s star witness. As I came through the door after one of these trips a few years back, Diane nearly screamed. “Good god!” she said, “what have they done to you? You look like the Michelin tire man.” So much for glamour.

The Feast of St. Apoconarcoleptis Magna

St. Apoconarcoleptis Magna is the patron of naps, endings, the last days, and ruins, of which I am rapidly becoming one – the latter not merely a function of age and slow time but also the direct result of far too much holiday eating and drinking. Like a volunteer Strasbourg goose, I have been reporting regularly for some first-rate gavage – so here is a roundup of the best of that: my Twelve Wines of Christmas.

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As a preliminary, much bubbly found its way into my glass and thence into my gullet this season. I’ve already given my account of the Wine Media Guild’s Champagne luncheon. The New York Wine Press’s fête at the Brasserie was only slightly less spectacular. It featured rosé Champagnes – eleven of them, so they don’t count in my Christmas dozen – around a nicely balanced luncheon that concluded with a positively sinful dose of triform chocolate.

Rosé is the hottest category of Champagne these days – why, no one is quite sure, though Ed McCarthy opines that rosé makes an ideal dinner Champagne, because of its slightly fuller body and slightly greater complexity. Pinot noir always seems to make a difference, and its greater presence in rosé Champagnes could be the factor behind their current popularity.

All the wines tasted that day would rank as excellent on any scale, but my favorites all bunched up in the middle luncheon flight: two prestige Champagnes, 2004 Perrier-Jouet Belle Epoque (approximately $300) and 2004 Taittinger Comtes de Champagne (about $250), plus 2006 Louis Roederer, the youngest and least expensive wine of the flight ($75), and finally my favorite, 2002 Pol Roger Extra Cuvée de Reserve ($100), a great wine from a great Champagne vintage.

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The Twelve Wines of Christmas all came from my own so-called cellar, over multiple dinners for Diane and myself and family and friends. Inevitably, these included some more bubbles: my old reliable Pol Roger NV Brut, a consistently pleasing, medium-bodied, mineral-driven Champagne, and Roederer Estate, vinified by the French Grande Marque in California’s Anderson Valley, and for my palate the best and most persuasively Champagne-tasting of California sparkling wines. Pommery Brut NV made a fine aperitif, working equally well with some duck rillettes and with Diane’s version of Torino aperitivi.

For my palate, the red wines formed the pièce de résistance. Despite that piece of French, they were a varied lot: some French, many Italians, and even some Californians. The latter included my last (sob!) bottle of Ridge’s 1993 Montebello Cabernet Sauvignon, as lovely – and as European-styled – a wine as California produces. It gorgeously accompanied a rack of lamb and garlicky rissolé potatoes, as well as a subsequent cheese course, where it fell in love with a ripe pont l’éveque only to jilt it in favor of a creamy gorgonzola dolce. As you can see, this was a wine of many faces and facets, and I’m only sorry I don’t have any more. I said this very loudly several times, but Santa did not take the hint. Another win for St. Apoconarcoleptis.

One of the most enjoyable Italian reds was an almost archetypal Chianti Classico, 1997 La Selvanella Riserva from Melini. This is a very traditionally made wine from a fine vineyard near Panzano, in the Classico zone’s prized Conca d’Oro. It also has special resonances for me, in that I participated, way back in 1998, in the process of choosing the blend for this wine. This occurred at the estate, in a session led by the very able winemaker, Nunzio Capurso, and attended by Italian and North American wine journalists. Aside from the astounding quality of each component wine that we tasted, my major memory of the session is of an idiot from Rome loudly and persistently declaiming that the wine wouldn’t be any good unless it was aged in barriques. He couldn’t have been more wrong, then or now.

We enjoyed another fine wine of this type – i.e., primarily Sangiovese blended with other native grapes – Lungarotti’s 2001 Rubesco. Although from Umbria, this wine is a kissing cousin of Chianti Classico and fully matches the very best of them in suavity and depth: a lovely wine, from an equally lovely vintage.

Of course I could not long stay away from the wonderful wines of the Piedmont, so I took the opportunity to test a few Barolos of the 2003 vintage, a hot, forward year that, frankly, I feared might already be over the hill – some bottles I’d tasted over the past year were. Well, in these two cases, no worries: Both Conterno-Fantino’s Barolo Sorì Ginestra and Einaudi’s Barolo Costa Grimaldi were live and, in the most complimentary sense of the word, typical. The Sorì Ginestra showed the merest trace of the vintage’s too-ripe fruit and green tannins, the Costa Grimaldi none at all – a nice tribute to careful grape selection and restraint in the cellar.

Equally lovely, by the way, and much less expensive, was an in-theory lesser wine, a simple Nebbiolo, but from a fine maker in an excellent vintage. Poderi Colla’s 2006 Nebbiolo d’Alba was fully ready to drink, with excellent Nebbiolo character (black fruit, leather, tobacco, miles of depth) and no sign that it might not last another five years. All “simple” Nebbiolo should be so good.

Our French selections played up very gamely as well. For me, Musigny is the red-wine sweet spot of the whole Côte d’Or. Its wines have a velvetiness and an elegance of fruit and mineral that for my palate define red Burgundy. Drouhin’s 2002 Chambolle Musigny didn’t let me down: it was a soft, luxurious wine whose flavor persisted long in the mouth. More forceful and in a leaner style – mineral to the fore, fruit after – Moillard’s 2005 Beaune Premier Cru Grèves matched quite beautifully with our Pintadeau Jean Cocteau. The wine we drank with the cheese course that evening was in a very different style, being a Bordeaux. 1989 Chateau Brane Cantenac showed the wonderful elegance of Margaux combined with the kind of structure and heft I more often associate with Pauillac: It worked beautifully with a challenging set of cheeses.

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Those are my top twelve, but I’ve also got a few Honorable Mentions. Amidst this red tide, we did manage to fit in a few lighter meals that leant themselves better to white wines. Pieropan’s 2005 Soave La Rocca shone with some shrimp. This single-vineyard wine has always been in the forefront of this too-long-abused appellation, and it remains a standard-bearer even now that the Soave Classico denomination is undergoing a tremendous resurgence. In a totally different style, but equally fine, Umani Ronchi’s 2002 Casal di Serra Verdicchio dei Castelli di Iesi Classico Superiore offered a mouthful of wine almost as big as its name. Still at nine years old showing a light touch of barriques, its biggish body and rich fruit very nicely accompanied a creamy veal and mushroom stew. Both these wines showed very dramatically, for those who may still be skeptical, that well-made Italian whites can age very well indeed.

Finally, lest anyone think that my holidays were just one triumphant sip after another, honesty compels me to record my great disappointment. I had reserved a place for one potentially excellent white wine to serve alongside the oeufs en cocotte and Alsace onion tarts that were part of our Christmas dinner. I was really looking forward to Labouré-Roi’s 2003 Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru, so you can imagine the depth of my chagrin when my only bottle turned out to be totally oxidized – just plain dead.

There has been a great deal of buzz in wine circles about the problem of premature oxidation in white Burgundies. Apparently the vintages between 1996 and 2006 are involved, and the blight strikes randomly, at every quality level. Some bottles pour brown and dead, while others even from the same case remain sound. No one knows what causes it, and the producers are loath to talk about it – not only because it’s embarrassing to them, but also because (I strongly suspect) they don’t have a clue. So since St. Apoconarcoleptis Magna looks after ruins as well as endings, I’ll conclude on this note: There is nothing like white Burgundy at its best – but be warned: that bottle you’re so keenly anticipating might be pinin’ for the fjords, and might already have joined the Norwegian Blue in the choir invisible.

From that comic note to a serious one: May your 2012 be happy, and both your New Year and your old wines healthy and enjoyable!

The Sparkling-est Time of Year

We are now deep in December, which means deep in the holidays, which means deep, deep, deep in the contemplation and purchase, gifting and consuming, of Champagnes. The two wine-journalist groups I belong to, the Wine Media Guild and the New York Wine Press, always sponsor Champagne lunches this month. My friend and colleague in both organizations, Ed McCarthy, who is the author of Champagne for Dummies and the American authority on Champagne, selects and arranges the wines for both events. The NYWP event, coming up soon, this year features rosé Champagnes. For the WMG event, which occurred two weeks ago, Ed chose têtes de cuvées – the top-tier wine of each Champagne house.

All the grandes marques – the great Champagne houses – and most of the smaller producers have a tête de cuvée. This will typically be the best wine they offer, blended from the best vats from the best vineyards in the most prized areas. It may be a blanc de blancs or a blanc de noirs, it may be a single-vineyard wine – but more often it is a blend of Chardonnay and Pinot noir from many different vineyards in Champagne, analogous to each house’s basic non-vintage brut but selected – commonly from a single fine vintage – and fine-tuned to reach an altitude of quality – and price, alas – well above that of the house’s basic wine.

Each house intends its tête de cuvée as the ultimate holiday gift, the peak holiday drink, the perfect, inevitable special-occasion toast. The wondrous thing is that they most often succeed, producing nectars so lovely, so attention-grabbing, that the most novice winos immediately realize that whatever that is that they have just put in their mouths is something special indeed.

It’s even harder to describe the taste of têtes de cuvées than it is regular Champagnes, because you are dealing with a degree of refinement, almost rarefaction, that operates for most palates in a realm of nuance and complication. Don’t look for frontal assaults: these are wines that appeal primarily by insinuation, intrigue, intimacy. Sure, the basic elements of Champagne are there – the enlivening sparkle, the wheaty, toasty flavors, the gentle taste of berries, the hints of mineral – but they are there simultaneously both vivid and subtilized, forward yet etherealized. Têtes de cuvée Champagnes have to be tasted with attention: They deserve it and reward it.

And note well: Têtes de cuvées always reward and often demand cellaring. They improve with age, integrating their many flavor components and growing in complexity and depth. The best of them get even better with the passing of time.

The 14 wines presented at the WMG luncheon at Felidia challenged ranking and discrimination. There were of course differences in each house’s style and differences of vintages, but the quality level was so high as to render any sort of standard assignment of points futile, if not fictional. So I’ve simply divided them into three groups: those that pleased me most; those that pleased me slightly less; and those that pleased me less than that. I add the emphatic caveat that those that pleased least (on this one day, in these special and unusual circumstances) still pleased me a great deal: There wasn’t a single wine here I couldn’t happily drink.

The wines in each group are listed in alphabetical order, along with their suggested retail prices.

Group 1

Deutz, 1999, Cuvée William Deutz, $175. “A star,” Ed said; “one of my favorites.”

Gosset, Celebris 1998, $150-$160. Ed pronounced this one young and needing time, but “Celebris is always good.”

Alfred Gratien, Cuvée Paradis nv; $130. A rare non-vintage wine at this level: Krug is another major house to do similarly – but Krug of course does not make an ordinary Champagne (if there is any such thing).

Henriot, Cuvée des Enchanteleurs 1995; $140-$150. This wine was Ed’s favorite of the day: he called it, simply, “outstanding.”

Group 2

Ayala, La Perle d’Ayala Nature 2002; $145-$150. This wine steadily opened in the glass, getting better and better with breathing. “Light and elegant,” Ed called it.

Mumm, Cuvée René Lalou; $160-$175. “Drinking perfectly now” was Ed’s judgment.

Pol Roger, Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill 1999; $190-200. Normally one of my very favorite Champagnes, this day it tasted closed: needs time.

Roederer, Cristal, 2004; $190-$200. Ed: “The magic of Cristal comes out with age; this one needs 15 years.”

Group 3

Charles Heidsieck, Blanc des Millénaires 1995; $179-$190.

Laurent-Perrier, Grand Siecle NV; $110-$120.

Paillard, N.P.U. 1995; $240

Perrier-Jouët, Fleur de Champagne 2002; $150-$165.

Piper-Heidsieck, Rare 2002; $168-$188. Ed described 2002 as “a great vintage in Champagne.”

Taittinger, Comtes de Champagne 2000; $130-$135.

Ferrari: Champagne, with an Italian Accent

Many years ago, an astute critic described Ferrari spumante as the Rolls Royce of Italian sparkling wines. It still is. Crafted only from Pinot noir and Chardonnay, grown on very restricted soils, and given the full metodo classico cellar treatment, these wines are champagnes in all but name.

And that is as it should be – champagne should come only from Champagne, in France: It’s a regional name, not a wine type, whatever common usage makes of it. Besides that, it really makes no difference what you call Ferrari – spumante, sparkling wine, Italian sparkler – because whatever you call it, it’s excellent.

Marcello Lunelli

Ferrari is no johnny-come-lately Champagne wannabe. At a recent tasting in New York, lead winemaker Marcello Lunelli, a member of the family that has owned Ferrari for three generations, explained how over a century ago founder Giulio Ferrari went to France and undertook a careful investigation of the whole Champagne production process. Knowing the long-established Italian fondness for sparkling wines – all of them to that point made by what has come to be called the charmat method – he reasoned there would be a substantial place for a more painstakingly made, higher-quality product. He also thought that the high slopes and hillsides near Trento, with their sparse and strongly mineral-laced soils, would be an ideal place to plant the Pinot noir and Chardonnay necessary to make the kind of wine he envisioned. He was right on target with both ideas. They resulted, 90 years later, in Italy’s first DOC for sparkling wines, Metodo Classico Trento. Ferrari still leads the production of this category, both in volume and in quality.

Lunelli also pointed out one major unforeseen advantage of Ferrari’s choice of location for his vineyards – protection from global warming. The Trento area has endured a temperature increase of 1° Celsius over the past 10 years. Higher temperatures in wine zones translate into higher sugar levels and riper grapes, which in turn produce higher alcohol levels and fatter, less acid wines – not what you want in a sparkling wine. As Lunelli put it, “For a winemaker, 1° means planting grapes 150 meters higher, and our hillsides will allow that.” (That last remark is a small dig at Champagne producers, who by and large do not have the same altitudes available to them.)

Lunelli guided a group of wine journalists through a five-bottle vertical tasting of Ferrari’s top-tier wine, Giulio Ferrari Riserva del Fondatore. The firm produces this wine only in the best vintages, of which there have been 19 to date – and every single one of them has won the prestigious Tre Bicchieri rating from Gambero Rosso. I wouldn’t claim for a moment that Gambero Rosso is infallible, but no matter how you regard it, that amounts to an impressive accomplishment and a striking testimony to the quality of this wine.

The Giulio Ferrari is a single-vineyard, 100% Chardonnay wine: in other words, a blanc de blancs (Ferrari uses its Pinot noir in its rosé). That category among Champagnes usually offers a somewhat lighter-bodied, aperitif-style sparkler. Not so in Italy: All five wines on show displayed medium to full bodies, with ample substance to serve splendidly as dinner wines rather than cocktail quaffs. These were the vintages shown:

2001: This led off with a lovely, deep, wheaty nose. It was very rich on the palate, suggesting pears and apples in addition to that wheat. Fine lively acidity and a very long finish completed the package. Unmistakably an Italian wine – something about the quality of the acidity is the giveaway – from an excellent vintage.

2000: I confess to having been dubious about this wine from the outset, because 2000 was such a hot year and troublesome vintage all over Italy. Initially the wine was very attractive, a sort of fleshier version of the 2001, with a slight but very pretty almond taste in the finish – quite enjoyable. But an unpleasant sulfur scent came up as the wine opened – “burnt match,” as the person seated to my left accurately described it. This was the one in-any-way flawed wine of the group.

1997: The almond presence became even more pronounced in this excellent vintage. The wine was very fresh and balanced, with a slight peach flavor developing alongside the almond in its finish. Lunelli said he thinks this wine “needs ten years yet.”

1995: All peach leather and almonds, especially in the finish, this wine was still quite live and very, very pleasing, tied with the next one for the best wine of the day. A long growing season developed the depth of this wine. The harvest was a full three weeks later than normal, Lunelli said.

1986: To my surprise, this 25-year-old was even more live than the 1995. Its fruit flavors are just starting to mature, moving more into the fruit leather range than fresh fruit. The very long-lasting finish had the richness of fresh toast slathered with butter. Very Chardonnay, very Champagne-like.

This would have been an impressive showing for any sparkling wine, but when you remember that these wines are all 100% Chardonnay, it raises the accomplishment even higher. This isn’t bubbly for pouring on the heads of the winning team: This is a superb wine to grace your most ambitious holiday dinner.

Vallana Spanna: Nebbiolo, From and For the Ages

Plenty of fog (the nebbia from which Nebbiolo purportedly takes its name) shrouded Alba during my recent visit, and plenty of rain later while I visited the Alta Piemonte, where Nebbiolo is traditionally called Spanna. It made for slippery driving and soggy walking – and it made the wines all the more welcome when I got to them and all the more wonderful in the sipping. Fog and rain don’t matter: This is a blessed zone.

These Novara and Vercelli hills produce an abundance of appellations: Boca, Bramaterra, Colline Novarese, Fara, Gattinara, Ghemme, Lessona, Sizzana. Most of them now sport DOCs. Many of them used to be called simply Spanna. The zones are mostly small, with few producers, so the wines are often difficult to find here in the States, but they are usually worth the search. The requirements of the DOCs vary widely, from as little as 60% to as much as 100% Spanna. The balance is usually Vespaiola or Bonarda (often known locally as Uva rara. Had enough names?). It’s commonly believed that the best wines approach 100% Spanna, but many of the area’s winemakers feel strongly that some addition of Vespaiola in particular contributes to their wine’s finesse and accessibility.

I had reserved the last day of my trip for a visit with Francis and Marina Fogarty, the brother-and-sister team who are now running the Vallana estate in the Colline Novarese zone.

It was impossible weather for visiting the vineyards (though we did manage glimpses of them from the roads), so there isn’t much I can say about them. The cellars proved to be very traditional north Italian cellars, almost a time warp, with lots of cement and fiberglass-lined cement tanks for fermentation and storage. In fact, it is so traditional it has almost become cutting-edge again: There is a big revival of the use of cement and fiberglass all through Italy.

The cellars are enormous, and right now barely used: Marina and Francis are in the process of reviving all the vineyards and wines their father and grandfather used to work with. After their father Guy Fogarty’s death, their mother, Giuseppina Vallana Fogarty, carried on the wine business while raising Francis and Marina and their younger sister Miriam. As Francis explained, a large part of grandfather Bernardo’s business was demijohns of vino sfuso, sold every week by the hundreds for local family consumption. As in Spain and France, that business has dried up: Per capita wine consumption (of which straight-from-the-barrel vino sfuso was a major part) has dropped dramatically in all the major wine-producing countries.

So the future for producers like the Vallana-Fogartys is unequivocally in quality wine, and all Francis and Marina’s efforts are being bent to that end, to revive Bernardo Vallana’s once highly prized labels, the Spannas (now officially designated Colline Novarese DOC) like the multi-vineyard Cinque Castelli and the single-vineyard Campi Raudii, as well as the DOCs Boca and Gattinara.

Long-standing fans of Piedmontese wines will forever associate the name Vallana with Spanna, which Bernardo raised to memorable heights. To commemorate that, the Fogartys provided an astonishing vertical tasting of their wines after we finished tasting current and recent releases. “The Time Machine,” Francis called it: six decades of Alta Piemonte Nebbiolos (eight if you count the newer releases). I was honored to experience it, and it was deeply moving not just to taste the wines but to hear Giuseppina recall the harvests of her childhood and youth. Even in the slow-moving world of wine, some of the bottles that Francis and Marina opened that afternoon were relics from a whole other age.

In the morning we had tasted through a passle of recent-vintage Spannas, Bocas, and Gattinaras, all very fine and quite distinctive. After lunch, Francis started us with an experiment of his, a 2010 rosé spumante, metodo classico, of 100% Nebbiolo. This was an astonishment: very Nebbiolo, very elegant, and at the same time all nuts and flowers; all the grape’s primary aromas captured and preserved. I doubt this will ever be a commercial wine – Francis is making very small quantities of it – but it certainly reveals a very different and intriguing face of sub-Alpine Nebbiolo.

Then we entered The Time Machine. Giuseppina had decanted, and Francis poured, Spannas of the 1997, 1988, 1971, 1967, 1955, and 1947 vintages.

Just to have a library of such wines is in Italy a rarity. To pour so many of them on one occasion is generosity – and confidence – of an order that one simply does not encounter often, even in the hospitable world of wine.

Here are my impressions:

1997: Big forward fruit, typical of the vintage; great balance. Walnuts and coffee throughout. A wonderful wine, fully live and almost electric.

1988: At that time still called Spanna del Piemonte, vino da tavola. Francis was seven years old, and Giuseppina handled the vinification. Though the bottle had been breathing for several hours, it still needed time. Very big, with no-longer-young fruit, more like dried fig, but still supple and live.

1971: A Cinque Castelli bottling: A Bernardo Vallana vintage. Spanna from five different vineyards: this was his basic Spanna. Even though 17 years older than the last wine, its color was still vivid. Its tannins had fully softened, and its acidity was holding everything together. The fruit was beginning to dry out, but the wine was still lovely – an elegant if somewhat fragile country gentleman.

1967: Also a Cinque Castelli, and a remarkable wine, still showing some fruit sweetness despite its age. A beautiful mature nose, slightly moving into the lacquery stage. The color was beginning to fade, but nothing else about the wine gave away its 44 years of age.

1955: Very pale color, but a youthful nose. Amazing fruit and dark chocolate flavors, amazing structure and vitality, even though ethereal. An incredible wine. This was a wonder year all through Europe, and this wine shows why. Francis says that it’s not likely to be all Nebbiolo, since in those days field mixes of grape varieties were normal practice.

1947: Very pale: the color almost entirely faded, and the nose gone very lacquery. Giuseppina’s birth year. But on the palate it was still fresh: the combination of the delicate, almost spiritous, palate feel and the freshness of the fruit was simply delightful. Sixty-four years old, and an absolute pleasure to drink – as well as tremendous testimony to the potential of the traditional wines of this very special zone.

I can only wish all readers of this blog had been able to share this parade of pleasures with me. An experience of that order would tell you more than my words can why I believe so strongly in the potential of this too-little-known wine zone.

“Judicious Drank, and Greatly Daring Dined”

Diane and I took a purely gastronomic vacation in Piedmont. I promised there would be no wine business – well, almost no wine business – just low-pressure touring and high-caliber dining and drinking – simply enjoying what we both enjoy most. Piedmont provided that in abundance.

Abundance is the key term – in Piedmont it is also true, as my friend Gene Bourg once observed of New Orleans, that there is no such thing as an appetizer. Or, as the great Renato Ratti warned me decades ago: The Piemontesi will let you dig your grave with your mouth. If you’re dining in Piedmont, wear loose pants.

Anyone planning a gastronomic or enologic trip to Italy, however, could do much worse than to use the little city of Alba as home base. The heart of both the Barolo and Barbaresco zones and the center of an astounding truffle zone, Alba offers some of the finest dining and drinking to be found anywhere. It was the first stop for us of a trip that would go on to include Torino, a sophisticated city that deserves much more attention than its reputation as a mini-Paris indicates, and would wind up in the alta Piemonte, the sub-Alpine zone of vineyards near lakes Orta and Maggiore. Like Torino, this area and its Nebbiolo-based wines – Carema, Boca, Gattinara, Ghemme, Spanna – deserve to be much better known.

We began our trip with high hopes of savoring the great white truffles for which Alba is famous. The Truffle Fair was on, and on the Sunday afternoon we arrived there the narrow shopping thoroughfare, Via Vittorio Emmanuele, was redolent with the scent of the tubers on sale at stand after stand.

Very promising indeed, until we saw the prices, which probably induced several coronary events in casual fairgoers. It turned out that this was not a good year for truffles: Summer and fall had been dry until quite recently – fine for grapes, but terrible for truffles, which were scarce (the abundance on display completely fooled me on that score), of not great quality (this we proved when we tried some at our first dinner), and expensive (also proved the same way). For more about the truffles, see Diane’s blog.

Despite that disappointment, the fearless gastronomes dined very well from start to finish of their trip. I offer purely as examples (I don’t intend to make you read about every mouthful we ate) our splendid dinners at Locanda del Pilone, a short drive outside Alba, and Antinè, in the town of Barbaresco.

The dining room at del Pilone

Normally I avoid Michelin-starred restaurants in Italy, because the higher Michelin rates a restaurant the less Italian it is, and I go to Italy for Italian food, not the mongrelized international cuisine that I can eat any unlucky day in New York. Alba provided these two exceptions to my rule, both one-star establishments, both excellent, both deeply Italian, and as different from each other as can be imagined.

Del Pilone provided almost classic French-style service, crisp and efficient, for a deeply regional meal that included carne cruda and finanziera. At Antinè the service was just as efficient but simpler, the ambience less formal, but the food just as fine and just as regional – agnolotti del plin, snails, and rabbit. The wines at both were superb – and by New York standards, practically giveaways: 2005 Cascina delle Rose Barbaresco Sordo (€45) and 1997 Produttori di Barbaresco Riserva Ovello (€60). Both wines interacted in incredible harmony with the foods.

The quality of those wines and the moderation of their prices – this in the restaurant, remember, not at retail; back home in the US those would be remarkably good retail prices – set the standard for the rest of our trip. Everywhere we went I was impressed by the scope of the wine lists and the gentleness of their pricing. There were plenty of options of wines from outside Piedmont, and even some (mostly French) from outside Italy, but Barolo, Barbaresco and their friends were among the main reasons we made this journey in the first place.

Most days we took a light lunch at a wine bar or a cafe: a glass or two of Barbera or Dolcetto and some bar snacks or a panino. We tried to save our calories and our capacities for our dinners, which were always worth it. In addition to the two I mentioned above, here are the rest of the wines we drank that week (the most expensive of them was €88, the least expensive €40):

2009 Prunotto Arneis: a fine example of one of Piemonte’s few white varieties, and a perfect accompaniment – medium-bodied, distinctive but not aggressive – for our solitary fish dinner.

2009 Castello di Verduno Pelaverga: a lovely light red from an almost-disappeared local variety, Pelaverga made an ideal lunch wine and our only mealtime deviation from Nebbiolo.

2006 Ferrando Carema Etichetta Nera: In Torino we enjoyed this fine Carema, a Nebbiolo-based wine from near the border with Val d’Aosta – a high-altitude, almost Alpine red of great refinement.

2004 Borgogno Barolo Riserva: This stalwart from an old, traditional house (sadly, it has recently changed hands, and no one knows what this portends for the wines) needed more time to breathe, even after careful decanting. Despite its youth, it loved my tortino of funghi porcini and truffle and partnered beautifully with other traditional dishes.

1996 Rocche dei Manzoni Barolo Vigna d’la Roul: a big, velvety wine that impressed us mightily with the elegant way it interacted with the regional dishes. Everything we drank did so to some extent, but this bottle was particularly lovely.

1994 Marchesi di Gresy Barbaresco Martinenga: our oldest wine rescued a rain-drenched day in Torino and accompanied a huge and splendid bollito misto. By the time we finished the bottle and what we could manage of the meats, we were in (metaphorical) sunshine: a big wine, but perfectly supple, fully ready to drink but not showing the least sign of age.

Next post: Our single wine visit, where we tasted Gattinaras and Spannas spanning eight decades.

A Frescobaldi Suite

Girolamo Frescobaldi of Ferrara was famous in his lifetime (1583-1643) for his keyboard music, publishing the first-known collections of variations on a single musical theme. The modern Tuscan Frescobaldis do similar things with wine, as a recent vertical tasting of 12 vintages of their prized cru Mormoreto demonstrated. (Most people assume Girolamo was an ancestor of the Tuscan clan, but he probably wasn’t, though no writer can let a mere fact get in the way of a good introduction.)

Leonardo Frescobaldi, the current Marchese and patriarch of the family, presented the wines, running from 2007 back to 1985, at a dinner at the Columbus Circle restaurant A Voce. Ian d’Agata provided what sportscasters would call the color commentary, but in fact the wines spoke for themselves – and what they said, loudly and clearly, was Rufina.

Leonardo Frescobaldi

Say Rufina to most winos, and the majority will think you’re mispronouncing Ruffino. Ruffino is a family name and a Chianti Classico brand. Rufina (accent on the first syllable: ROO feen uh) is one of the non-Classico Chianti zones – the best and most distinctive of them. It lies east-northeast of Florence, and it constitutes a totally different world, microclimatically speaking, from all the rest of Chianti. This is rugged country, high and cool, with precipitous slopes, pronouncedly limestone soils, and a different, wilder look than the other Chianti zones’ castellated and cypress-lined hillsides. Its vegetation even differs: no Mediterranean macchia here, but evergreens and rhododendrons and mountain laurel. Once seen, there’s no mistaking the difference.

Different soil, different climate, different wines. Chiantis produced in the Rufina zone taste different from the Chiantis of the other zones – earthier, more mushroomy, more mineral. The Rufina leaves a distinctive mark on its children. Taste Bucerchiale, Selvapiana’s brilliant Chianti riserva, or the Chianti riserva Frescobaldi produces at its Castello di Nipozzano estate, and the difference between these and what you’re used to in Chianti, no matter how good, is immediately apparent. The Castello di Nipozzano Chianti riserva offers one of the most distinctive and consistent values in Tuscan wine, vintage after vintage.

Castello di Nipozzano

The Frescobaldis have been cultivating vineyards at Nipozzano for hundreds of years, and in that time have tried their hand at a large variety of grapes. Back in the mid-1800s, one family member thought to import some French varieties – Cabernet sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet franc – which did well and adapted themselves happily to the cool Rufina climate. (They also put in some Chardonnay and Pinot noir, which for years have been the backbone of their fine Pomino bianco and rosso – but that is another story.) The grapes have been there so long that they no longer count as foreign, and the Frescobaldis’ use of them is firmly rooted in family tradition.

In 1976, the two Cabernets and the Merlot were planted in the Nipozzano estate’s Mormoreto vineyard, a relatively low-lying, slightly warm (for Rufina) single vineyard with highly diverse soils that provided ideal plots for the differing requirements of those three varieties – as well as, later on, for Petit verdot. The result was, in 1983, the first vintage of Mormoreto, making this the (more or less) 25th anniversary of the wine and providing the rationale for the vertical tasting I attended.

The 12 vintages shown appeared in three flights of four wines each:

• 1985, 1988, 1990, and 1994

• 1997, 1999, 2001, and 2003

• 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007

In the first flight, the ’85 and ’88 showed themselves live and vigorous and elegant, with almost no discernible oak flavor – this is distinctly a compliment – despite a pretty substantial time in barriques. The ’94 and especially the ’90 surprisingly seemed to need more time, both in the bottle and in the glass, to open up fully. For me, the ’88 was the wine of the evening. All four of these wines were vinified predominantly from Cabernet sauvignon, with as little as 5% Cabernet franc (1988 and 1990). The 1994 had 20% Cabernet franc and was (on that account?) my least favorite wine of the flight.

The second four wines seemed still a bit hard, though once again they gave no real taste of the barriques. The 1997 (85% sauvignon, 15% franc) seemed to be just emerging from eclipse: Mormoreto is clearly a slow-maturing wine and rewards patience. The 1999 vintage had seen the introduction of a large component of Merlot to the blend (60% CS, 15% CF, 25% Merlot), which radically changed the nature of the wine. As my friend and fellow wine writer Michael Apstein put it, tasting the wine was like having a big, happy Labrador puppy lick your face. 2001 and 2003 continued that blend. ‘03 was fine for that very hot year, but the 2001 was the stand-out wine of this flight, showing the great depth and complexity that that vintage produced all over Italy.

The final flight was the hardest to judge, both because the wines were the youngest and because the blend changed again, now to 60% CS, 25% Merlot, 12% CF, and 3% Petit verdot. This now forms the standard blend for Mormoreto. All these wines did show some oak, which the evidence of the older vintages says they will outgrow, but which right now masks a lot of their character. On that same basis, the odds are strong that these wines will grow into that same earthy Rufina character that all their older siblings displayed – especially the 2004, which like 2001, gave great wines throughout Italy.

So the history of Mormoreto somewhat resembles the history of music, evolving from classical harmony to modern . . . discord is too strong a word: to compositions that take a little time to get used to. Girolamo, ancestor or not, would be sympathetic.

Truffle Hound

When you read this, the Jewel of Gdansk (a.k.a. Diane) and I will be in Piedmont, sniffing out as many white truffles as we can.

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Alas, this may not be many, since I’ve been told that a very dry hot summer has made this a great year for wine and a pretty poor one for truffles.

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Nevertheless, we will devote our full energies to this arduous task, unrelenting in our devotion to duty: Science is a stern mistress.

Woof!

Campania Felix

Add one more name to the growing roster of distinguished wineries in southern Italy: Donna Chiara. This family-owned enterprise vinifies all the classic grape varieties of Campania – the whites Falanghina, Fiano, and Greco, and the noble red Aglianico.

A Donna Chiara Aglianico Vineyard

I’ve been singing praises of those varieties for 30 years now, and nothing makes me happier than to see a new winery enter the scene with a line of elegant and totally characteristic wines. This raises the bar for everyone, producers and consumers alike, and that can only be good.

Unfortunately, it is still news to too much of the wine public that those four varieties are among the finest in Italy. Aglianico in particular I firmly believe to have the potential to become the noblest red variety in the whole vine-laden peninsula. When the time comes that producers and consumers accord Aglianico the respect that the Piedmontese now give Nebbiolo and the Burgundians have long granted Pinot noir, I’m persuaded this ancient southern variety will give them both a run for the money. The grape yields a wine capable of extraordinary depth, complexity, and longevity, as Mastroberardino’s fabled 1968 Taurasi Riserva has been showing for four decades now.

Ilaria Petitto is the fifth and newest generation of the family behind Donna Chiara and the latest in a long line of dedicated and capable women to head the enterprise. They have been grape growers for five generations, making wine for their own consumption. It was the drive of Ilaria’s mother – the Donna Chiara for whom the winery is named – to fulfill the dream of her mother and grandmother (Marchesa Donna Chiara Mazzarelli Petitto) to produce pure and elegant versions of Campania’s most characteristic indigenous varieties. The family had for some time been accumulating vineyards in Irpinia’s prized zones – Taurasi for Aglianico, Tufo for Greco, and so on. 2005 saw the birth of the commercial winery.

Irpinia isn’t a familiar name to most American consumers, but it deserves to be as famous as Napa, or – dare it be said? – the Côte d’Or. Its hills and valleys lie about 30 kilometers (more by twisting local roads) east of Naples. Its high, cool slopes and rich volcanic soils support a vigorous agriculture – Irpinia is famous for its hazelnuts, among other crops – and its microclimates provide the prolonged growing season that Aglianico in particular demands. That fecundity was one of the main reasons the ancient Romans called the whole region Campania felix — Campania the blessed. Irpinia is the home, the center, for southern Italy’s most prestigious DOCG wines, Fiano di Avellino, Greco di Tufo, and Taurasi. In short, Irpinia is a formidable wine zone, with a potential for quality on a par with more famous zones in Italy and the world – so the Petitto family’s choice of locations for their vineyards was canny in the extreme.

I had the opportunity to taste the whole line of Donna Chiara wines last week in Ilaria’s company. We started with a seemingly modern take on an old grape: a Falanghina spumante. Dry and refreshing, with nice Falanghina minerality and acidity, this charmat-method sparkler might well hearken back to a very old tradition. In the south, they used to make sparkling wines out of all sorts of grapes, even the austere Aglianico, so the only real surprise about this wine is how enjoyable it is.

Donna Chiara’s still Falanghina showed equally well, with even more of the characteristic minerality and acidity in evidence. It even displayed a touch of elegance. While that is not a common trait in Falanghina, which usually relies on a sort of straightforward friendliness and liveliness, I soon found out that elegance is a hallmark of all the Donna Chiara wines – most markedly the whites, but also the Aglianico-based wines as well.

The 2010 Fiano di Avellino (all the whites were of the 2010 vintage) seemed the stand-out white wine to me. Medium-bodied and exquisitely balanced, with classic Fiano fruit – a distinct taste of almonds and hazelnuts in the long finish – and a pronounced elegance, already showing signs of depth and complexity, this is a wine that is impossible to fault. Given the Fiano grape’s well-known (at least it is well-known in Campania) ability to age, it would be a good idea to cellar some bottles of it for 5 to 10 years – if you can keep your hands off it. At a suggested retail price (SRP) of around $18, that may be difficult.

I liked the Greco di Tufo too: It showed perfectly the wonderful, slightly oily, almost olive-y, distinctly earthy flavors of its variety and zone. More robust than the Fiano, and not its match in elegance, Greco to my mind and palate makes the perfect wine for shellfish and grilled finfish, while I’d rather keep the Fiano for fowl and veal and even pork – but that’s very subjective: Other folks may well prefer the match the other way around. For the record, I drank both with a salmon carpaccio garnished with flying fish roe, and both were delightful. SRP for the Greco is also around $18, Falanghina around $16.

The red wines formed a handsome suite of increasing refinement: Campania Aglianico IGT ($18), Irpinia Aglianico DOC ($20), and Taurasi DOCG ($35). The IGT wine sees no wood at all, the DOC 4-6 months in barriques, and the DOCG 24 months – but only a small fraction of the barriques are new, so the wines show no striking oak flavors. Instead, they all reveal increasingly vivid characteristics of Aglianico, ranging from a deep, black fruit flavor that resembles intense sour cherry, to a compound of mineral-and-earth-and-mushroom that runs through them all like the bass support in a Charles Mingus number. Above all, they strike the palate as elegant – poised, complex, big enough to be assertive but polished enough to be inviting. These are very welcoming – and very welcome – wines.

Donna Chiara wines are imported by a division of Charmer Imports.