People who really love wine enjoy sharing their best bottles with others who understand and appreciate them. I’m certainly one of those: I hate opening a good bottle for people who would prefer a white Zinfandel or a cola, but I relish the chance to pour some of my best stuff for knowledgeable friends. So when I had the chance recently to introduce some fellow winos to the Caparone family’s Italian varietal wines, I jumped at it...
.
.
Ed McCarthy, Mary Mulligan, Charles Scicolone, and Michele Scicolone are in my opinion among the small handful of “experts” in this country who truly understand Italian wine, both in what it does well and why, and what it doesn’t succeed at and why. I thought a Caparone tasting would be as interesting and enjoyable for them as it would be for me.
Mary is an MW and head of a wine school here in New York, and she and Ed are co-authors of the Wines for Dummies series of books. Michele and Charles are experts on Italian wines and foods. A few years back Ed had tasted and liked Caparone’s Sangiovese, which impressed him at the time as the only moderately successful California version of an Italian variety, but that was all he knew of the wines. Charles and Michele had never had the opportunity to taste the Caparone wines at all, and Charles was deeply skeptical about what California does to Italian grapes – as indeed I had been until I tasted Caparone’s.
.
.
We all convened at the restaurant La Pizza Fresca, which provides a very welcoming space for such an event, with excellent service, fine and appropriate glassware, and good food to sustain the hungry winebibber. Ed brought a lovely bottle of Clouet’s Pinot noir-heavy NV Champagne and a bottle of Benanti’s 2010 Pietra Marina, probably Sicily’s finest white wine, to start us off.
The we got down to the business of the day: Caparone Italian varietal wines.
2014 Sangiovese
2014 Nebbiolo
2014 Aglianico
.
1996 Sangiovese
1996 Aglianico
That was the service order, the Sangiovese being the lightest-bodied and the Aglianico the fullest. We talked a lot about freshness and varietal character, and we agreed that all the wines showed the unique qualities of each variety very well. There was also universal agreement that these were the most successful California versions of Italian grapes that any of us was aware of. The disagreements concerned nuances and precise comparisons: Charles, for instance, thought the young Sangiovese slightly over-oaked, like a Super Tuscan, while I wasn’t bothered by oak flavors at all.
.
.
I’ve written about my admiration of these three 2014s before, and both Charles and Ed have published admiring accounts of the whole tasting, so I’ll spare you most of the details – except to emphasize that both 96s, at 22 years old, still tasted fresh, with mature and developed flavors playing side by side with still-young fruit flavors. Both seemingly have years of life ahead of them – and that would be no mean accomplishment for any of those grapes in their home territory.
.
.
An informal vote for the wine of the day ended in a toss-up between the young Nebbiolo and the old Aglianico. I could see the reasons for both, but when push comes to shove I am a person of mature years, and I like my wines the same way.
Postscript:
A few days after this tasting, I opened at home a bottle of Caparone’s 2012 Zinfandel, the first of Caparone’s non-Italian varietal wines I’ve tried. It was lovely, full of classic Zinfandel brambly, berry-ish flavors, but restrained and polished rather than exuberant and in-your-face. The bottle’s back label describes it accurately as a “rich, complex Zinfandel,” “aged for 24 months in small oak barrels” and “racked rather than fined or filtered.” It further claims that the wine “will continue to develop in the bottle for 25 years or more” – and I believe every word of that.
.
The Caparones, father and son, are clearly New World producers with a wonderfully Old World technique and style. The comparisons that spring to my mind are masterful family producers like the Chave family in Hermitage, or the Clape family of Cornas. If Paso Robles had the prestige of the northern Rhone, a lot more attention would be being paid to what’s happening at Caparone.
Interesting that you were able to hang onto ’96 bottles of Aglianico and Sangiovese as I try to let all my Caparone wines cellar for at least 10 years but usually drink them before 15. I have been a wine club member at Caparone for many years now and I will have to let a few cellar longer if I can just leave them alone long enough. Best wines available, by far, in their price range.
Thank you for the review. In the near future I will have take a trip to California to try these interesting wines from the Caparone family. Interestingly, the Caparone family has been producing an aglianico wine for commercial use longer than most of the wineries that I have visited in Campania and Basilicata. A fun fact – the McCarthys are in part responsible for my obsession for Italian wines. Fifteen years ago, my wife, mother and I attended a Barolo tasting in Boston that the McCarthys were the speakers, tasters and guides. From that moment I switched from beer to Barolo – but only for three years. My cousin, Mchael Bonadies, an author of a book on wine, Sip by Sip, and a former Charles Beard awardee, encouraged me to look to the South – our heritage – and now my hobby.
Interesting how often paths cross in the wine world, isn’t it? I think you will greatly enjoy your visit to Caparone: They are fine people.