Bolla’s Back!

Long ago, when I was young and serving my time deep in the heart of Woody Hayes country, I used to revere the Bolla company. Bolla’s wines were then the best-known and best-distributed Italian wines in the US, and in the Midwest were often the only drinkable wines I could get. So I blessed their makers and drank a lot of them – Bardolino and Valpolicella and occasionally Amarone (I wasn’t earning much money back then) and of course the firm’s Soave, so well-known, so popular, and so reliably good that it practically became one word: Soavebolla.

That, of course, eventually became its undoing: Popularity led to increased demand led to overproduction led to decline in quality led to, eventually, a watery, characterless Soave and red wines that, if not following down the same road, at very least shared a fallen reputation. Sic transit gloria mundi, and Bolla went from being a dominant figure in the American wine market to playing a very marginal role in the Italian wine boom of the 70s and 80s.

Well, Bolla’s back, and that is welcome news. The source of the firm’s original quality lay in the fine vineyards it held in the heart of the Veneto’s prized wine zones. Those are still in place but under new management, so to speak.

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In 2008, Bolla was taken over by a joint venture of the Italian GIV group and the American Banfi firm. Christian Scrinzi, who had been winemaker with Bolla since 2001 and in 2006 had been appointed director of oenology, then began a complete renewal of Bolla’s winemaking – everything from vineyard management to cellar equipment and procedures – with the goal of restoring Bolla’s premium quality and consequent reputation.

Lots of firms announce goals like that. With its new ownership, Bolla seems to be achieving them. My interest – and that opening fit of nostalgia – was originally kindled by drinking a bottle of its Amarone Le Origini 2006 some weeks back, as the holiday season dwindled down to its end. That bottle of Amarone provided closure for the holidays and opening for my curiosity. It was lovely and thoroughly classic: suave and deep and velvety, and drinking beautifully despite its – for Amarone – extreme youth. If Bolla was making wine that good again, I had to find out more.

To that end, I tasted through half a dozen of Bolla’s line. Here are the wines and my reactions to them, with all my usual caveats about the limitations of tasting notes.

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2012 Soave Classico DOC
Light floral/mineral nose, medium body, showing nice white fruit (mostly undifferentiated, in the apple/pear range) and some minerality: The Soave zone is Italy’s northernmost volcanic terroir. The same generalized white-fruit finish. A very pleasant, enjoyable wine, with no sign of fragility or fading.

2013 Bardolino DOC
Here’s an old friend back after a long absence. Bardolino for some years just about disappeared from the American market, which was a shame, because it’s a charming wine with a real niche of its own. This one is a fine example of a lovely, slightly old-fashioned (thank god!) style of wine: light garnet in color; raspberry/blackberry notes in the nose; light body with berry-ish flavors and just a hint of tobacco (toasted oak?); good acidity; and a pleasant almost blackberry finish. Thoroughly enjoyable, and a perfect light lunch wine.

2013 Valpolicella DOC
In style, this simple Valpolicella is similar to the Bardolino. Berry/tobacco nose again, and the same notes on the palate. Slightly heavier in body than the Bardolino, with good acidity, and a longer, dried-fruit finish. Not complex, but very enjoyable.

2011 Le Poiane, Valpolicella Ripasso DOC
The ripasso technique referments Valpolicella on the lees of Amarone: It’s like giving the wine a dose of steroids. Very dark in color and in style. Earth, black plums, and tobacco (definitely toasted oak) aromas. Obvious tannicity, tasting of grape skins, earth, and black fruit, with a long, drying finish. For my palate, too much evidence of wood throughout makes this wine a little clumsy.

2009 Amarone Classico DOC
Very dark garnet. Mostly wood on the nose, with black, plummy fruit well underneath. The same dark fruit shows through on the palate, but there is still an abundance of tannins. Good black fruit again in the very long finish, which bodes well for this wine, but it needs years yet. As it opened, however, the up-front fruit got very sweet and even more forward, so it will please greatly those who drink Amarone young (fruit nuts, I say).

2011 Creso IGT
Markedly different aromas here from the rest of the wines. I smelled wood and Cabernet and Merlot as almost separate strands, but I was wrong about the Merlot. This wine is vinified from 65% Corvina (both fresh grapes and some partially dried ones) and 35% Cabernet sauvignon, and it sees a lot of barriques. On the palate, Creso shows sweetish black fruit (plum from the Corvina, I suppose): It’s big, soft, and slightly tannic, with a long, tannic, black-fruit finish. This wine is very well done of its kind, though this international style is far from my favorite in Italian wines.

All in all, coupled with that classic Amarone Le Origini, this lineup of wines shows that Bolla has terrific versatility and is turning out very enjoyable wines in a variety of styles. I’m a traditionalist, so I like best the wines that hew closest to the tastes of yesteryear – which is probably why I’m so inordinately pleased by the return of Bolla Bardolino.

 

Escape from Winter with Bartolo Mascarello and Ciro Picariello

On a recent evening, Diane and I enjoyed a very bright moment in the middle of this dreary winter. To accompany some braised short ribs, and to give us a treat and alleviate a bit of the depression that this seemingly endless grey, chill weather induces, I opened a bottle of Bartolo Mascarello’s 1998 Barolo.

I expected an enjoyable bottle of a traditionally made Barolo: What we got was a marvel. By a great serendipity of timing, the bottle was absolutely at its peak, poised beautifully at the precise balance point of freshness and maturity. It was suave, it was elegant, it was complex, it was linear and structured, fleshy and fruity and voluptuous all at once. In trying to articulate what we found so wonderful about it, we both fell back on the image of our favorite Modigliani nude – linear and round at the same time, abstract and carnal, immediately accessible to the mind and the senses. Barolo just doesn’t get any better than this.

As most Barolo lovers know, Bartolo Mascarello was for decades an icon of traditional Piemontese winemaking, a model of integrity and consistency in his craft and in his life. I was lucky enough to have a conversation with him a few short years before he died, and his recollections were fascinating. He spoke quite modestly, even reluctantly, about his experiences in the Resistance, but he waxed eloquent and enthusiastic about his first experience, after Liberation, of American cigarettes: “Oh that aroma! That taste! I still remember it. So rich. We had been smoking straw, and those American cigarettes were intoxicating.”  Given his subsequent career in wine, it’s not surprising that aromas and flavors should stay fixed in his memory.

As he had resisted Fascists, he resisted fads in wine and fools in politics. He hated barriques, and he hated Berlusconi. One of his wines was once banned for sale in Italy because its label – he designed his own – proudly proclaimed “No Barrique  No Berlusconi.” Another said “We should make not barriques but barricades.”

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He even refused to make cru wines. Even though he owned vineyards in prime areas (two in La Morra – Rocche and Ruè – and a piece of Cannubi in Barolo), he continued the traditional practice of blending their unique characters to achieve the balance and harmony he and many other Barolistas consider the hallmark of fine Barolo.

In his last years, his daughter Maria Teresa had largely taken over the actual winemaking, and the recent vintages of Mascarello wine I’ve tasted indicate that she is following firmly in her father’s footsteps, both in style and in quality. Even though climate change in Piedmont has made all Barolos much more drinker-friendly much earlier than they used to be, these remain wines to cellar. Sure, you can drink them young – but given the amazing grace with which they mature, you’d be a fool to do so.

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On another such serendipitous evening as our Mascarello experience (yes, I’ve been dining well this winter), I opened a bottle of Picariello’s 2012 Fiano di Avellino to drink with some simple but excellent broiled chicken legs from a great poultry farm on Long Island. Ciro Picariello is first and foremost a classic Campanian grape grower, honest, hardworking, unpretentious, passionate about his wines and justifiably proud of their quality. He farms about 7 hectares – roughly 18 acres – high in the hills of Irpinia, and he oversees his lovely Fiano from blossom to barrel. Though, in fact, he doesn’t use barrels: His Fiano ferments and ages entirely in stainless steel. He and his wife started their winery in 1997, but he didn’t bottle anything under his own name until 2004 – and he attracted attention right from the start. Now he is a frequent winner of Tre Bicchieri from Gambero Rosso and Cinque Grappoli from the Italian Sommeliers Association.

2012 was a lovely white wine vintage in Campania, and Picariello has made the most of it. His wine is medium-bodied – almost full-bodied for a white – and round and soft in the mouth, with abundant but totally unobtrusive acidity to keep it vivacious. This wine struck us immediately by its purity and intensity: White flower and hazelnut scents, and apple/pear toned fruit, with hazelnut undertones and the generous minerality of its volcanic soils. It was an intriguing, complex wine from the very first taste, and one that constantly grew and changed in the glass. For all its immediate pleasure, it also hinted an ability to age and mature in very interesting ways. I’ve not tasted any bottles of Picariello’s more than five years old, but they all seemed still very fresh, with years before them. For anyone with a taste for fine, mature white wines, I’d suggest that Picariello’s Fiano is a name to add to your cellar list.

It’s being a long, hard winter, but happily there are ways to escape it that don’t involve long plane trips.

Brunello 2010

By now, I’m sure that anyone with the smallest interest in wine has heard at least some of the hoopla about the 2010 vintage of Brunello di Montalcino. The ’10 Brunellos are just now being released, because of the strict aging requirements that the Brunello DOCG demands. I didn’t make it to the Benvenuto Brunello event in Montalcino this year, where almost all the Brunello producers showed their wares, especially their 2010s, so I only caught up with any of the wines recently.

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Last month at Gotham Hall in New York, 44 Brunello producers showed their new releases. Forty-four may sound like a lot of Brunello makers, but it is only a fraction – about one-fifth – of the ones who pour their wines at the Montalcino event, so the New York version hardly gives a comprehensive view of the vintage. As you might expect, most of the participants here were larger estates, and all were wines that have already established at least a toehold on the American market. Consequently, I can’t make any judgments about what the vintage was like throughout Montalcino: My comments can reflect only the group of wines I was able to taste.

Enough qualifications: Let’s cut to the chase. What do I think of Brunello 2010?  Well, it’s unquestionably a good vintage, potentially a very good one indeed, but it’s not of the same caliber as the 2010 vintage was in Barolo and Barbaresco, which are superlative wines. Brunello producers love their 2010s, especially because they follow a few less-than-exciting harvests. The winemakers themselves who were actually in attendance in New York – very few, unfortunately – all raved about how equable the growing season had been, how problem-free the harvest went, what perfect ripeness the grapes achieved.

And I could taste that: All the wines, across the board, had fine structures, with good acidity, already softening tannins, and an abundance of dark-cherry fruit. Some displayed remarkable accessibility, being already pleasantly drinkable, though most still need time to fully come together. Almost all of them displayed the kind of equilibrium of fleshy fruit and acid/tannin/alcohol structure that promises not only long life but really interesting development. I think many of these 2010s will get better and better as they age. Certainly, were I a few decades younger than I am, I’d put some cases away and forget about them for as many years as I could.

This is not to say there weren’t the usual evidences of the human ability to screw anything up. A few wines were perceptibly over-oaked and/or over-manipulated, so that good Sangiovese fruit was submerged in a sweet stew of oak and vanilla and coffee. But there were in fact very few of those, and most of the wines I tasted reflected admirable restraint in the cellar, letting the pure pleasure of Montalcino’s grapes and soils shine through.

So why am I hesitating to be as super-enthusiastic about these wines as I have been about the 2010 Barolos and Barbarescos?  Good question, and one I’ve been trying answer for myself ever since I tasted them. Partially, of course, one cause is the difference in the grapes themselves. For my palate, Sangiovese, much as I love it, never achieves the amazing complexity and layered-ness that the best vintages of Nebbiolo reach. Granted, that shows best with older wines, and younger Sangiovese almost always makes pleasanter drinking than young Nebbiolo. But I think the main reason I’m hesitating is the growing season itself and its results in the two zones.

Good as the 2010 harvest was in Montalcino – especially in comparison with the two preceding ones (both generously overvalued by the consortium) – it just doesn’t seem to me that it was as off-the-charts good as 2010 in Alba. As much as I enjoyed the vast majority of 2010 Brunellos I tasted, very few of them made me tingle with anticipation from the very first smell and smack my lips with relish at the very first taste as so many of 2010 Barolos and Barbarescos did. Granted, that may be purely a subjective response – but it’s the only one I’ve got to work with. I’m just not getting from Montalcino’s wines the intensity, the perfect pitch, that I got from Alba’s.

Still: For all that, these 2010 Brunellos offer extremely high quality and the probability of very long life. Just because I’ve got an almost impossible standard of comparison for them is no reason to ignore them. As I implied before, if I had the slightest chance of living long enough to drink them at their maturity, I’d be stocking up on them. And these, in alphabetical order, are the wines I’d buy first:

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Argiano
Very good; still lots of tannin, but plenty of acidity and fruit – a meaty wine in the very best sense.

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Armilla
A very small estate. Soft tannins, lively fruit, a bit of astringency in the finish, but developing nicely.

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Banfi
This one’s going to go long – a big, structured wine, with excellent fruit. Totally worthy of the vintage.

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Barbi
The basic Brunello has a lovely nose, good fruit, terrific acid, soft tannins, all developing very nicely. The cru Vigna del Fiore is huge and will need years to show its no-doubt spectacular best.

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Belpoggio
Deep, dark nose, slightly tobacco-y. Big dark fruit on the palate, beautiful long finish, almost licoricey. Well structured, like all the best wines of this vintage.

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Canalicchio di Sopra
Lighter-bodied than most, but well balanced and juicy. Structure is sound, on a slightly smaller scale than the very best wines of the vintage.

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Col d’Orcia
Good tannic, grape-skin nose. On palate, soft tannins, fine fruit, lots of acidity, quite long finish. Should develop and improve for many years.

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Ferrero
A classically structured, classic tasting example of this very fine vintage.

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Lisini
Another slightly light-bodied wine, but beautifully put together and already juicy and flavorful.

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Sassetti Livio Pertimali
Simply a gorgeous wine, one of the best of the vintage I’ve so far tasted.

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Talenti
A huge wine, beautifully balanced, with deep black cherry fruit supported by excellent acid and tannin, for me the outstanding wine of the vintage. My hands-down favorite. I think this is a great wine.

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So there you have it, 2010 Brunello as I’ve so far experienced it. I may report on the vintage again in future posts as I taste more of it, especially if I come across anything I like better than these.

Let’s Have More Champagne

The New York Wine Press’s annual Champagne luncheon was held last December, as it always is, in a private room at The Brasserie. This year’s event was a standout even among those normally fine tastings, however, both because of the selection of Champagnes – all Rosé – and because of the sheer pleasure of the dishes that The Brasserie matched with them: Kudos to everyone involved. Here is the menu.

Once again, Maestro Ed McCarthy chose and introduced the wines – and make no mistake about it, these were wines in every sense, not just pretty party bubbles. Rosé Champagne usually has more body – more substance – than most other Champagnes, and because of the importance of Pinot noir in its blend, it can often show more complexity and depth than other Champagnes. As Ed pointed out, Rosé has had a terrific growth in popularity here in the US (which may lead the world in its consumption), from a mere 5% of the total Champagne market about a decade ago to 15% of it now. Once regarded by the great houses as almost a novelty, Rosé is now taken seriously indeed and produced with steadily increasing care and quality.

As you can see from the menu above, Ed and The Brasserie carefully matched the wines with their food and their role in the meal, starting from the lightest-bodied as aperitifs and working up to the heftiest (at least in price) – the vintage Champagnes – with that beautifully rare Beef Wellington. The interplay of the wines and their accompanying dishes was a good part of the pleasure of the day, and I enjoyed all the Champagnes and was impressed by the quality of every single one, even though a few of them caused me sticker shock. Most, however, fell comfortably into the range of very fair price for the quality of the wine.

So: to specifics. I’m not going to comment on every bottle, since all fell into the good-to-very-good range, but I’ll concentrate on the wines that I found most appealing. (Regular readers will understand that that means on this particular day in these particular circumstances:  As I’ve said repeatedly, no tasting note by anybody about any wine is engraved in stone and forever true.)

Among the aperitif Champagnes, I was most impressed by the Ruinart, which showed a greater liveliness on the palate and complexity in its attack and finish than the others. Note that this is not Dom Ruinart, which is a much more expensive cuvée than this reasonably priced bottle.

The next flight had to face the challenge of the lushness of fresh foie gras and its accompanying poached pear. All performed admirably: The sweetness of the flesh and the fruit called up all the wines’ Pinot noir subtlety. These are all very reasonably priced wines for their quality: roughly $65 to $75, which is certainly not extravagant for Champagnes of this caliber. The Laurent-Perrier, by the way, was the only 100% Pinot noir wine of the entire line-up, and very good it was. For all that, my favorite of this group was the Henriot Brut Rosé, which had a restraint and elegance that greatly pleased me. Ed thought it “a bit too young,” and he is probably right: It certainly seems to have the stuff to develop well for a few years yet.

The next course presented a very different sort of challenge to the wines, to integrate with the lushness of buttery lobster and chanterelles. It rarely occurs to me to match chanterelles with seafood, but they went together very well, presenting two different yet complementary kinds of intensity for the Champagnes to partner with – which they did quite superbly. This was my favorite flight of the day, both for the wines in themselves and for the way they married with the lobster and mushrooms.

Ed said that the Pascal Doquet – a Premier Cru – had been blended of four different vintages. This was a big wine, almost gutty. Not quite as big but equally fine, and elegant and complex to boot, the Charles Heidsieck didn’t so much challenge the intensity of the food as merge with it almost seamlessly. My favorite wine, however, was the Gosset Grand Rosé, which, while still a big wine, had the lightest body of these three but also extreme elegance and poise. For me, it was in fact the single best wine of the day, even though Ed thought it too “a bit young,” and even though he may well once again be right.

The final flight had to deal with the woodsy flavor of morels paired with the richness of a rare and juicy beef filet, encased in the thinnest possible pastry crust that had been smeared inside with foie gras pâté. All four of the wines that Ed matched with those flavors were vintage Champagnes, and all were very good, quite substantial enough to deal very pleasurably with the meat and mushrooms. Because they were vintage bottlings, these were – with the exception of the Louis Roederer, which is quite modestly priced – the most expensive wines of the day. Nevertheless, I have to say I found them less complex and intriguing than the flight that preceded them. I think Rosé may be one case in which the blended, non-vintage wine surpasses the usually more prestigeous vintage bottlings. For the record, my favorite of this flight was the Pol Roger Extra Cuvée de Reserve.

It’s not often one experiences so utterly unmitigated a set of pleasures as this occasion presented – not a dull wine or bland dish in the array. Would that we – all of us – should always be so lucky!

VINO 2015

To anyone hoping to attend my seminar on Campanian wine at Vino 2015 in New York, I must tell you I won’t be there. I have withdrawn completely from the event. The subject is important to me, and I wanted to offer a well-planned, clear, and useful presentation of a large, complicated, and significant mass of information. As of two weeks before the event began, I had received no information about, nor been consulted about, the scope of the seminar, what supporting materials (if any) will be provided, what wines will be available for tasting (that is, not individual producers’ wines: which kinds of the many Campanian wines). I think this lack of organization is unprofessional. It is disrespectful to me (and any other serious wine journalist), to the Campanian producers who will be disserved by its consequences, and to the individuals who will attend.

Bah! Humbug! Let’s Have Some Champagne

Regular readers of this blog probably noticed a one-hundred-percent absence of any mention of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanza, or any other  opportunity for retail recently loudly proffered by what seems to have been the entire universe. This was not an accident, but deeply felt revulsion against a commercialism to which I don’t want to contribute any more than absolutely necessary.

However, contribute I must. I love wine – drinking it, talking about it, writing about it – and wine is of necessity as much a commercial venture as it is a craft, and so unfortunately is wine writing. Alas, that two and two make four!  This makes me something of a commercial quisling or fifth columnist (I guess as a writer the latter is all too appropriate) and I’m stuck with it: As the Borg told Picard, “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.”

So: I give up. Here – belatedly – is all the stuff about Champagne that I held back during the frenzied shopping/holiday season. If you love Champagne, you don’t need holidays to justify drinking it.

The first major event I want to talk about was the Wine Media Guild’s annual Champagne luncheon, held at Felidia Ristorante. The wines for the day – all Blanc de Blancs Champagnes – were selected and commented on by Champagne connoisseur extraordinaire Ed McCarthy, who probably loves the fizz more than any other human being I know. Here is the full slate of the day’s wines:

• NV Marion-Bosser Blanc de Blancs Extra Brut
• NV A. R. Lenoble Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru
• 2007 Ayala Blanc de Blancs
• NV Bruno Paillard Réserve Privée Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs
• NV Mumm de Cramant
• NV Ruinart Blanc de Blancs
• NV Henriot Blanc de Blancs
• 2002 Pascal Doquet Le Mesnil sur Oger Grand Cru
• 2007 Deutz Blanc de Blancs
• NV Lanson Extra Age Blanc de Blancs
• 2004 Pol Roger Blanc de Blancs
• 2005 Taittinger Comptes de Champagne Blanc de Blancs
• 2002 Perrier-Jouët Belle Époque Blanc de Blancs
• NV Gosset Célébris Blanc de Blancs
• 1995 Charles Heidsieck Blanc des Millénaires

There were also two non-Blanc de Blancs wines: NV Leclerc Briant Les Chèvres Pierreuses 1er Cru, a producer new to this market, and an unscheduled but very welcome magnum of 1999 Henriot Cuvée des Enchanteleurs.

An impressive lineup indeed, especially since, as Ed pointed out, Blanc de Blancs constitutes in volume by far the smallest fraction of Champagne production. He explained that that is because of Champagne’s three main grape varieties, Chardonnay is the most expensive and least widely planted, because, in turn, of the variety’s demands about soil, exposure, and care. Some large houses just don’t have enough Chardonnay to spare from their blends to make a Blanc de Blancs, and others – because of its cost – simply opt not to. Consequently, many of the most interesting Blanc de Blancs Champagnes on the market come from small grower-producers, who don’t face the volume demands of the grandes marques.

This is not to imply that all Blanc de Blancs Champagne is great. Far from it: A lot of it can be pretty ordinary fizz, though “ordinary” in the rarefied world of Champagne can still be very good. In fact, several of these Blanc de Blancs struck me as run-of-the-mill – bearing in mind that the mill in question is a fine one. Blanc de Blancs all tend toward greater dryness than most other Champagnes, and most also have a comparative lightness of body and liveliness on the palate that make them, for many drinkers, the ideal aperitif Champagnes. A few have the heft and authority of the red-grape-blended Champagnes, but they are exceptions to the usual Blanc de Blancs style.

I’ll confine my remarks here to the wines that I enjoyed most and that the others at my table cast their votes for – the latter by emptying the bottles, the surest sign that a wine has been enjoyed.

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These included both Henriot wines, the NV Blanc de Blancs and the 1999 Cuvée des Enchanteleurs. Henriot is not as well known here in the states as many other of the grandes marques, but it is much esteemed in France, and consistently produces Champagnes of great elegance, as were both these examples.

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The 2007 Deutz was relished with the largely fish menu:  Ed says the 2008 will be even better, and no more expensive. The 2004 Pol Roger and the 1995 Charles Heidsieck were among the fullest-bodied of all these wines, as well as among the earliest bottles to be finished – which tells you a great deal about the palates of the WMG members and guests.

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For me, the stand-out wine of the day was the Gosset Célébris, a Champagne that combined Blanc de Blancs suppleness with both great muscularity and great elegance. I admit I’m partial: Gosset and Pol Roger are probably my two favorite Champagne houses. Neither has ever let me down.

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This post is already long enough: My next one will take up the season’s other key Champagne event, The New York Wine Press’s annual Champagne lunch, this year featuring Rosé Champagne.

A New Generation of Fellugas to the Fore

Another generation of Fellugas is attracting attention in Friulian wine production. Marco Felluga has been famous for decades for the quality wines he has created at his two estates, Villa Russiz and Marco Felluga. Now, his grandchildren, Antonio and Caterina Zanon, and their mother, Patrizia Felluga, have established a new winery in Collio. It is called Zuani. That is the ancient place name of the 30-acre hillside vineyard in Giasbana, in the heart of the Collio zone, where this latest generation of Fellugas has set up shop.

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Patrizia learned winemaking at her father’s knee, and she has passed that family lore on to her children, both of whom remember growing up in the Felluga vineyards. For all practical purposes, winemaking is embedded in their DNA, so this new venture is hardly a surprise. What may be a bit of a surprise is their choice to treat their horseshoe-shaped hillside site as a single cru, and to produce from it only one wine, a DOC Collio Bianco that blends – in more or less equal parts, depending on the harvest – Friulano, Pinot grigio, Chardonnay, and Sauvignon blanc.

Collio, of course, excels in white wine production, consistently turning out many of Italy’s absolutely top-flight whites. For decades after World War II, the vast majority of those wines were monovarietal – Friulano, Pinot grigio, Sauvignon, Pinot bianco, Chardonnay, and the region’s lovely, endangered Picolit. Just about 30 years ago, some bolder spirits began experimenting with an older tradition, a pre-World War I tradition, of blending varieties. What followed was a succession of truly great wines – Silvio Jermann’s Vintage Tunina, Livio Felluga’s Terre Alte, Marco Felluga’s Molamatta and Col Disôre. Few, if any, of those wines are field blends. Rather, their grapes are selected from different sites and meet for the first time in the cellar. So, while it is clear where the notion of a Friulian blended wine comes from, what seems unusual about Zuani is that it is a single-site wine.

What lies behind that choice seems to be a quirk of Friulian, or more specifically, Collian geography. Open-ended U- or horseshoe-shaped valleys, locally called ronchi, are a fairly common feature of the terrain in this part of northeastern Italy.

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The Zuani hillside seems to be one of the more compact ones, but it has the same advantage as larger ones: The inward-facing slopes of its U afford a whole range of different exposures, all within the protected confines of the valley. The soils throughout the hillsides are what Friulians call ponca, a mix of marl and sandstone. For viniculture, that’s a great combination: Different varieties, with different requirements of sunlight and maturation, can be accommodated at different sites around the valley, all enjoying the same soils and general growing conditions. Ergo, a ready-made cru site for a blended wine: nature cooperating with wine making – or winemakers taking clever advantage of what nature offers. Antonio, the winemaker, says that this allows them “to express the character of this place” rather than the character of the varieties.

I said above that Zuani makes only one wine. That’s not entirely correct: Patrizia and her offspring make one blend but in two versions: Zuani Vigne and Zuani Zuani – the latter in essence a riserva. In both cases, each grape variety is harvested separately and kept separate and cold-macerated before fermentation. The Zuani Vigne grapes are fermented in temperature-controlled stainless steel and never see any wood. The Zuani Zuani grapes are harvested about two weeks later than the Vigne grapes and are aged on their lees in small French barrels, resulting in a fuller wine of very different style from Zuani Vigne.

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I had the opportunity a few weeks ago to taste an intriguing small vertical of both styles.

Zuani Vigne 2013:  Nice mineral nose and nice acidity on the palate. White fruit showing up front – apples and pears – and also in the finish, along with slate/mineral notes. Very enjoyable already. Antonio says this is the best harvest of the last ten years.

Zuani Vigne 2012:  A warm vintage and an early harvest. Very ripe-apple nose. Fat and round on the palate, with less acid than the preceding wine, and stronger fruit presence. Slightly leathery finish.

Zuani Vigne 2011:  A very elegant aroma, counterpoising earth and fruit. On the palate, lovely balance and the beginnings of complexity. A very long apple/mineral finish. This was a lovely wine, and my unequivocal favorite of the tasting.

Zuani Vigne 2010:  The harvest conditions were similar to 2013, Antonio says. The wine is nicely evolving into complexity and elegance, but it needs a little more time: Right now it’s at a slightly awkward in-between stage. All these wines have fine structure and should last quite well: I wouldn’t hesitate to cellar any of them for a while.

Zuani Riserva 2012:  Very deep, ripe-fruit nose, an almost Alsace-Pinot-gris quality to its intensity. On the palate, the wine is round and fat, with lots of mineral notes and ripe-berry-ish fruits. Antonio grins broadly as he calls it “our red wine.”  It does not taste markedly of oak. This is a very interesting wine, especially for a not-great vintage.

Zuani Riserva 2011:  This wine has a much more mature aroma than the ’12, with less Pinot gris quality and more balance. The palate is slightly closed now but already shows balance and complexity. A very intriguing wine, with a long, pleasing finish.

Generally speaking, I preferred the Zuani Vigne wines to the Zuani Riserva (or Zuani Zuani: the family really must make up its mind how it’s going to label them). I like the clean taste of the fruit and the soil, un-adjusted by oak. Even when the taste of oak isn’t obvious, it still alters the wine. Those who like that shift will love the Riservas; those who don’t will definitely prefer the Zuani Vigne.

Principe Pallavicini: Roman Wine Nobility

Back at the end of October, while lazing in Lazio, I did take one day out from vacation for what my friends and relations usually refer to – ironically, of course – as “Tom’s work.” With the help of the good people at Vias, the American importer, I arranged a visit to the Principe Pallavicini estate near Frascati – now almost a suburb of Rome and for centuries its closest source of refreshing white wines.

The Pallavicini estate is one of the oldest in that antique landscape. Still in the hands of the same noble family, owners since the beginning of the 18th century (before that the property had belonged to the Colonna, one of the most powerful families of medieval and renaissance Rome), the vineyards roll back bucolically from behind a plain, massive palazzo now fronting on a heavily trafficked road.

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On the grounds themselves, among vine rows and old buildings, occasional smooth, black stones had pushed up through the soil — two-millennia-old remnants of Roman roads, once heavily trafficked themselves, now silently and patiently reposing. A very evocative place to visit, with suggestions of a vinous history running farther back than records or memories extend. The site alone prepares the visitor to be impressed. I was not disappointed.

Mauro di Angelis

Mauro de Angelis, the resident winemaker and factotum, conducted my visit, and we were later joined by Claudio Latagliata, the CEO of the winery. After the usual tour of the cellars and the winemaking facilities, and just a glimpse of the extensive vineyards rolling over gentle hills to the horizon – unfortunately this was the only cloudy day of my whole week-and-a-half in Rome and Lazio – we adjourned to the tasting room.

Pallavicini’s main production is, of course, Frascati, which used to be the white wine of Rome, served in every caffe and trattoria and the object of weekend excursions to the countryside by every Roman family that could manage them. Pallavicini’s Frascati has always been excellent, even during the period when – as with so many other white wines all around the world – the appellation’s popularity stimulated overproduction and subsequent decline in reputation and sales. Now that Frascati producers are attempting to reclaim their Roman and international markets, Pallavicini is doubling down on quality, as quickly became evident in my tasting.

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The first wine I tasted was Pallavicini’s basic DOC Frascati 2011, a thoroughly enjoyable light wine, with lovely white fruit character, slight overlays of a sort of volcanic minerality, and a long delicate finish – exactly what my memory says the ideal Frascati was in its glory days. An auspicious beginning, to be sure.

Poggio Verde, a Frascati Superiore DOCG 2011, followed. This wine spends a good deal of time on its yeasts and consequently develops more body and roundness. It showed a fine, floral nose, nice medium body with good white fruit and minerality, and a long, pronouncedly mineral finish – again suggestive of the volcanic nature of the Frascati zone soils. Much more a dinner wine than a cocktail wine, unquestionably. By the way, it just won Tre Bicchieri.

The third white wine was Roma, Malvasia Puntinata DOC 2013 (made from the grape of the same name, also known as Malvasia del Lazio). I found this wine intriguing – a fully dry Malvasia, with tangerine skin and mineral aroma and palate, big-bodied and round, with, under all the variety’s characteristic notes, the distinctive mineral-and-white-fruit tang of the Frascati terroir. It was very long-finishing, and had the kind of structure that suggests longevity and interesting bottle development. I wouldn’t mind having a half a dozen bottles of this to put away for four or five years, just to see how it matured. I think it would make a great companion to roast chicken or turkey or roasted fresh ham.

Then we switched to red wines, starting with Rubillo 2013, an IGT Lazio Cesanese. Virtually unknown in this country, and indeed not well known even in Italy, Cesanese is Lazio’s indigenous red variety. Not much information is available about its origins or affiliations: Even Jancis Robinson has very little to say about it, other than that it can be a difficult variety. Lazio producers have recently begun to take a lot more interest in working with it, which in my opinion is a very good development, because it tastes to me like a variety of very great potential. Even the simplest versions of it, like this basic Pallavicini example, characteristically show a pleasing softness and roundness (some call it a Merlot-like quality, but aside from the softness, I don’t see that comparison) and inviting blackberry/mulberry fruit notes.

We made a considerable jump up in quality and intensity with the next wine, Amarasco 2012, IGT Lazio Cesanese. This is a selection made from 50-year-old vines, whose juices undergo long maceration on the skins and are then aged for 12 months in tonneaux. It had excellent bitter cherry fruit, deep and dark, and an almost chewy texture – all on top of an evident structure and fine balance. This is an estimable wine, of beginning complexity: I would very much like to taste it again in a few years’ time.

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While I was most interested in what Pallavicini was accomplishing with Lazio’s native grapes, I shouldn’t neglect to mention that the estate also produces several bottlings of non-local and international varieties. I particularly enjoyed Moroello 2011, IGT Lazio, a blend of Sangiovese and Merlot, grown in the Lazio portion of the Maremma, a soft, pleasing, fruity wine that would be a perfect accompaniment to simple trattoria meals. Soleggio 2012, IGT Lazio, a Cabernet sauvignon from 21-year-old vines, shared the same soft fruit that seems to be almost a hallmark of the Pallavicini red wines. Mauro de Angelis attributes that to the soil: Along with the slight mineral tang, it’s what the Frascati zone gives the wine, he says.

La Fiorita: A Fine Terroirist Brunello

Roberto Cipresso is a very highly reputed consulting enologist in several parts of the world (e.g., Italy, Brazil). Originally from the Veneto, he first made his name in Tuscany and his heart lies there, at the Brunello di Montalcino estate La Fiorita, of which he is co-owner with Natalie Oliveros.

A devoted terroirist, he speaks with passion of the soils of the Montalcino zone and his desire to express them in his wines. A few weeks back, over a tasting lunch at La Masseria restaurant in New York, he explained his stance. “There are two main styles of winemaking,” he said. “You can choose to express the variety or you can choose to express the terroir. Montalcino is the perfect place to do the latter. My ideal wine is like a glass – transparent, so the soil shines through.”

To that end, Cipresso does what he regards as minimal work in the cellar, opting instead to cleave to what the vineyards give him. He has three of them to work with: Poggio al Sole, between the hamlets of Castenuova dell’Abbate and Sant’Angelo; Pian Bossolino, slightly further north; and a new vineyard, not yet fully on line, Podere Giardinello, west of the town of Montalcino. The latter has completely different soils and exposure from those of the other two vineyards, and Cipresso is very excited by what it will add to his basic Brunello – so much so that he is contemplating the possibility of bottling it as a cru.

At present, the grapes from each vineyard are fermented separately for 25 days in large Slavonian oak vats and then drawn off into tonneaux, one-third of which are new each year, one-third of second passage, and one-third of third passage. The wines stay in the tonneaux for just eight months, then finish their two years of wood aging together in large Slavonian vats again. All La Fiorita Brunello then receives extra bottle aging beyond the DOCG requirements: Cipresso prefers to do this so the wine will integrate more fully and be readier to drink on release. La Fiorita’s 2008 vintage, for instance, is just coming onto the market now.

Over lunch, Cipresso showed four of his wines: the two most recent Brunellos and his first two Brunello riservas.

Brunello 2008: The first things that struck me about this wine were its balance and elegance. This is the antithesis of fruit-bomb, in-your-face Brunellos. It starts light and grows on the palate, finishing big and persuasive. Dark cherry and tobacco in nose and mouth, with excellent acidity to keep it supple, and a long cherry finish. A thoroughly enjoyable wine with what tastes to me like true Brunello depth.

Brunello 2007: More tannic and tobacco-y than the 2008 but with equally fine balance. This wine shows a bit less fruit and a lot more structure than the preceding one, though this may simply be part of the normal evolution of the wine. Unquestionably as fine and elegant as the ’08, though the vintage difference is apparent.

Brunello Riserva 2006: This was La Fiorita’s second riserva bottling, and I found it initially still slightly closed, though it opened gradually and steadily in the glass. For sure, it will reward at least a few more years’ cellaring. It’s a big wine, balanced, and tasting emphatically more of earth and gravel than of Sangiovese fruit (though that is still abundantly present). An excellent example of the best that Montalcino can do, in my opinion.

Brunello Riserva 2004: This was La Fiorita’s first riserva. The vines, which had been planted in the 1990s, had just really come of age. It isn’t a huge wine, but it has great elegance and balance. It shows classic Montalcino dark cherry flavors and prominent acidity, with a very lively, long finish and overall great structure.

For all that, Cipresso doesn’t think this ’04 will live as long as the ’06 Riserva – and I’ve got to say, I kept going back to that 2006 all through the lunch, because it kept opening and changing in the glass in fascinating ways. All four wines were marked by the kind of great elegance and balance that Cipresso strives for, but each differed from the others in intriguing ways, expressing different aspects of Sangiovese, Montalcino climate, and Montalcino soil. What else can you ask of a great Brunello?

Properly Cellared For Long Life: Livio Felluga

Livio Felluga in 2003

Since I’m one of the last berries on the grapevine, I’m only now catching up with the fact that, back in September, Livio Felluga, a pioneer of quality Friulian wine, celebrated his 100th birthday, an accomplishment he attributed to regularly consuming fine wine. Who am I to disagree?  I hope he’s right, since I’m doing my best to follow his example – in consumption, that is, not in production.

I first met Signor Felluga more years ago than I care to accurately count, when he was just a young pup of 60-something and I was a fledgling wine journalist, writing for the still-lamented (it folded owing me money) Attenzione. I’m pretty sure that my article about Felluga and Friulian wines was among the ones I never got paid for. Such is life: I long ago decided that coming to know these wines was payment enough.

Meeting Livio Felluga was an important and, as it turned out, a delightful event for me. I was travelling with a few other wine journalists, all of us on our first visit to Friuli, and we could have hoped for no better introduction to the zone and its wines than a day with Signor Felluga. He was already back then a fount of information about the soils and districts and grape varieties of Friuli. Tasting with him through his line of wines – he worked with all the important white varieties and even, if I remember correctly, a few reds – amounted to a graduate seminar in Friulian wine, and we were all eager students.

Later, sitting around the fire in the traditional fogolar and drinking those wines while he grilled sausages and veal chops, we also discovered that had he not chosen to be a winemaker, he probably could have been a successful stand-up comedian. I have never heard anybody tell a seemingly endless succession of carabinieri jokes as well as Livio Felluga. A belated Cent’ anni di piu, to you, Signor Felluga!

Nowadays, of course, younger members of the Felluga clan are running the vineyards and winery. But the quality of the wines and the intensity of the family’s devotion to Friuli’s patrimony seem not to have wavered in the slightest. Just last week I tasted a small selection of Felluga’s new releases, and they conformed in every respect – quality, varietal typicity, balance, and elegance – to the high standards the senior Felluga established decades ago.

Pinot Grigio 2013
Medium-bodied, smooth and round, with marked floral and mineral scents and flavors. Long finishing. Elegant and, by the standards of the mass of contemporary Pinot grigios, quite substantial. In short, a real wine.

Friulano 2013
Almond and mineral nose; medium body. Lovely balance of acid and fruit, with a long dry finish. This is the wine we used to know as Tocai. In Friuli, it is a wine of all uses and is particularly popular with the salty sweetness of Prosciutto di San Daniele. Often drunk here in the States as an aperitif, for my palate it’s far better as a dinner wine, where it really shines alongside preparations of fowl, veal, or pork, and even savory dishes such as Szekely Goulash, – to which I can testify because that’s what I just drank it with. For years, Livio Felluga’s Friulano has been an informal benchmark for the breed.

Terre Alte 2011
This is Felluga’s chef d’oeuvre, a masterly blend of (usually and approximately) one-third each of Friulano, Pinot bianco, and Sauvignon. The Pinot and Sauvignon are fermented and aged in stainless steel, the Friulano in small French oak. This is one of Italy’s great white wines and is always better for at least a few years of aging. In the best vintages, it rewards much more. The 2011 is very young and still tastes a bit closed, but it already shows the substantial body, elegance and balance that earned it Tre Bicchieri and Cinque Grappoli, among numerous other awards. This 2011 Terre Alte may not live as long as Livio has, but it surely has a lot time before it. A great wine.