White Wine Weather

By now it’s news to no one that white wine weather has arrived. Heat and humidity reign here in the Northeast, and in other parts of the US the weather is much worse, running from extreme drought to extreme storms. The last are probably not alleviated by white wine, but otherwise, summer heat can always be countered with a chill, pale glass of a dry, lightly fruity, refreshing white. Today, I’m celebrating two that help me through the dog days: one from the north of Italy, Abbazia di Novacella’s Kerner, and one from the south, Salvo Foti’s Etna Bianco Aurora.
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Abbazia di Novacella Kerner
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The Abbazia di Novacella may be the northernmost winery in Italy, seated up at the top of the Adige Valley in what used to be the German Sud Tirol. It is also a working monastery and a tourist site of some repute, with gorgeous baroque buildings and libraries, and lovely mountain views. My geography is a little weak, so I’m not sure whether those mountains count as eastern Alps or western Dolomites, but they are impressively high, and the Abbey’s vineyards lie on their lower slopes.

The grape Kerner is hardly a household name, even among ampelographers. The variety was created in Germany in 1929 from a deliberate cross between Riesling and the variety known in Italy as Schiava grossa (Vernatsch in German). At one time Kerner was widely planted in Germany, but those acres have dwindled, and the German-speaking territories of what is now Italy seem to be its last stronghold. It has never had a large presence on the American market, but I can speak from sorry experience when I tell you that there currently seem to be several very mediocre bottlings of Kerner available, so watch out.

The Abbazia’s version is a very long way from mediocre: Light-bodied and charming, with a little zing of Riesling fruit and plenty of minerality from those mountain soils, it’s a reliably refreshing warm weather drink, versatile with any number of foods. For instance, it dotes – as do I – on prosciutto and figs, and works just as happily with shellfish and white-fleshed fish – the kind of foods we all eat more and more of as the solstice passes and the warm weather stays.

Incidentally – and because it would be criminal of me not to mention this – the Abbazia’s premium version of Kerner, Kerner Praepositus, is one of Italy’s great white wines. It has more heft than the “simple” bottling, but no less charm. Neither version is expensive, especially not for their quality: Careful shopping can find you Kerner for around $20, Kerner Praepositus sometimes under $40.
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Salvo Foti Etna Bianco Aurora
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Aurora presents a very different story. It grows on mountain slopes too, but those of an active volcano, Etna, in Sicily, just about as far south as you can get within Italy’s borders. It’s made by Salvo Foti, one of Etna’s leading exponents. For years, he was the head winemaker for Benanti, a pioneer of Etna viticulture and champion of its indigenous varieties. Aurora is his fantasy name for a blend of 90% Carricante and 10% Minella, both traditional varieties in that corner of Sicily but neither very widely grown – Minella hardly at all – anywhere else.

Aurora is a bigger wine than Kerner, and a touch more expensive – but it is every bit as fruit-and-mineral-propelled. Its flavor is complex and its fuller body indicates a primary role as a dinner wine. As such, it is superb, adapting to everything from fish and shellfish through chicken, pork, and veal.

I have also found that slowly sipping a glass of Aurora while cooling down after too much time in the sun is an intensely pleasurable experience, so I wouldn’t hesitate to rank it also in that exalted Italian category of vino da meditazione. All of which is a long-winded way of saying that it’s always worth your attention, and I’m happy to drink it anywhere, anytime.
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Let the heat waves come: I’m ready for them.

 

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2017 Tre Bicchieri Winners

On the day of our heaviest snowstorm so far this year, the annual New York presentation and tasting of Tre Bicchieri award-winning wines took place just about half a mile from where I live.

So I slogged through the flying snow and the street-corner slush to take advantage of what I hoped would be a sparse crowd and a lot of idle winemakers, thus allowing me to actually taste some wines. For the first hour, I was right, and I did have the opportunity to taste some remarkable wines – but then the storm let up and the hordes came in, and my chances for thoughtful tasting ended. I’m happy for all those hard-working winemakers that the Tre Bicchieri tasting is such a popular event, but as a hard-working journalist I do most seriously wish there was some better way to experience and evaluate these wines.

But you’ve heard that lament from me before, and are probably quite tired of it now. Besides, the key thing about this particular tasting is how many top-flight Italian wines it gathers in one room, and I don’t want to let the circumstances of the tasting obscure that. My palate and the collective palate of the Tre Bicchieri judges don’t always agree 100%, but those guys sure get an awful lot right, so a collection of almost 200 top-ranked wines amounts to an event to pay serious attention to, no matter how many people you have to elbow aside to do it.

Not that even under the best circumstances I could manage to taste all 200 in one afternoon, but I did my best to get to a reasonable assortment of old-favorite, regular prize winners and some of the new kids on the block. I was impressed by everything I tasted, without exception. I don’t get the chance to say that often, so let me repeat it: Every single wine I tasted that snowy afternoon deserved its Tre Bicchieri designation. Here are the ones I tried: first reds, then whites.

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From Basilicata

Re Manfredi’s Aglianico del Vulture Manfredi 2013, a wonderful example of a grape I love

From Piedmont

Elvio Cogno’s Barolo Bricco Pernice 2011, another masterpiece from winemaker Valter Fissore

Bruno Giacosa’s Barbaresco Asili Riserva 2011, one of Barbaresco’s finest crus, beautifully rendered

Elio Grasso’s Barolo Ginestra Casa Maté 2012, benchmark Barolo, as always from this estate

Giacomo Fenocchio’s Barolo Bussia 90 Dì Riserva 2010, macerated 90 days on the skins, with consequent depth and intensity

Oddero’s Barolo Bussia Vigneto Mondoca Riserva 2010, a classic Barolo of a great vintage

Vietti’s Barolo Ravera 2012, a lovely, beautifully balanced wine with potentially great longevity (and I also liked Vietti’s very nice but not prize-winning Barbera d’Asti La Crena 2013)

From Sicily

Palari’s Faro Palari 2012, year after year the best red wine made in Sicily, in my opinion (and the 2012 Rosso del Soprano is right on its tail in quality: It got Due Bicchieri)

Planeta’s Cerasuolo di Vittoria Classico Dorilli 2014, a lovely light-bodied wine, refreshing and vigorous

From Tuscany

Boscarelli’s Vino Nobile di Montepulciano Il Nocio 2012, as always an elegant, complex wine

Castellare di Castellina’s I Sodi di San Niccolò 2012, graceful and lovely Sangiovese from winemaker Alessandro Cellai

Castello di Volpaia’s Chianti Classico Riserva 2013, medium-bodied, perfectly balanced, with the elegance that always marks Volpaia

Il Marroneto’s Brunello Madonna delle Grazie 2011, as always from this remarkable cru and maker, a very great wine

Mastroianni’s Brunello Vigneto Schiena d’Asino 2010, maybe the best Tuscan wine at this gathering of greats

Ricasoli’s Chianti Classico Gran Selezione Colledilà 2013, a luscious, juicy wine that drinks far too easily

Terenzi’s Morellino di Scansano Madrechiesa Riserva 2013, very young Sangiovese, with this maker’s trademark balance and elegance

From the Veneto

Allegrini’s Amarone 2012, already big and textured

Bertani’s Amarone 2008 and 2009, both still young and evolving, with great depth and the promise of decades of life

Masi’s Amarone Vaio Armaron Serègo Alighieri 2011, a stunning wine from a great site

Speri’s Amarone Vigneto Monte Sant’ Urbano 2012, another fine example of what seems to be a great year for Amarone

Tenuta Sant’Antonio’s Amarone Campo dei Gigli 2012, an infant Hercules

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I doubt anyone is surprised by the fact that Italy is producing so many fine red wines, but for me the best news of the day was how superior so many white wines showed themselves to be. Every single one I tasted had distinct varietal flavors joined to genuine goût de terroir. This for me was the most fun of the afternoon, and I kept switching from big reds to whites of every kind to keep my palate fresh. (It worked for a couple of hours, then I gave out.)

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From Alto Adige

Abbazia di Novacella’s Valle Isarco Sylvaner Praepositus 2015, a stunning, fresh, and vigorous wine from a grape of usually no great distinction, this year slightly better than the Abbazia’s normally superb Kerner Praepositus

Produttori San Michele Appiano’s Pinot Grigio St. Valentin 2014, high-altitude, rounder than usual PG – a real dinner wine

Produttori Valle Isarco’s Sylvaner Aristos 2015 – this seems to have been Sylvaner’s year; a lovely, lively wine

From Campania

Marisa Cuomo’s Costa d’Amalfi Furore Bianco 2015, a lovely, fragrant dinner wine coaxed from postage stamp-sized terraced vineyards along the steep Amalfi coast

Fontanavecchia’s Falanghina del Sannio Taburno 2015, lovely, characteristic Falanghina, invigorating and lively

Pietracupa’s Greco di Tufo 2015, medium-bodied and deeply flavored, with strong mineral accents, a fine wine, almost as good, in my opinion, as the same maker’s Fiano di Avellino, which didn’t get Tre Bicchieri

From Friuli Venezia Giulia

Livio Felluga’s Bianco Illivio 2014, a masterful blend of Pinot bianco, Chardonnay, and the native Picolit, sapid and intriguing

Primosic’s Collio Ribolla Gialla di Oslavia Riserva 2012, one of the briefly fashionable orange wines, but better than simple fashion: intense, distinctive, rich, and with the right food incomparable

Russiz Superiore’s Collio Friulano 2015, a lovely medium-bodied, deeply flavored (hints of almond) example of Friuli’s native grape

Torre Rosazza’s Pinot Grigio 2015, what PG used to be, fresh, vigorous, almost rambunctious

From Lazio

Casale del Giglio’s Antium Bellone 2015, distinctive, flavorful wine from an almost disappeared variety that merits preservation (Charles Scicolone has written about this estate here)

From the Marches

Cocci Grifoni’s Offida Pecorino Guido Cocci Grifoni 2013, a lovely wine from a variety that had been in danger of disappearing

Velenosi’s Offida Pecorino Rêve 2014, another fine example of the same grape variety, medium-bodied and mouth-filling; very enjoyable

From Sardinia

Vigne Surrau’s Vermentino di Gallura Superiore Sciala 2015, textbook Vermentino, fresh and bracing

From Sicily

Cusumano’s Etna Bianca Alta Mora 2014, capturing beautifully the volcanic nuances of Etna’s slopes

Tasca d’Almerita’s Sicilia Carricante Buonora Tascante 2015, a very characteristic version of Etna’s great white grape

From the Veneto

Pieropan’s Soave Classico La Rocca 2014, always the finest cru from this consistently great producer

Graziano Prà’s Soave Classico Staforte 2014, one of many excellent cru Soaves from this producer, all fresh, enjoyable and very age-worthy

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There were many more wines to taste, but I had about reached my limit for tasting accurately and for elbowing, so I trudged my way back home through the remnants of the snow storm. I wish I had had the capacity for more, because I’m sure there were more discoveries to be made and reported on. Ars longa, vita brevis. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Non sum qualis eram, etc. You get the idea: I’d do more for you if I could, but . . .

 

 

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Alto Adige Essentials: Peter Zemmer

About a week ago I was invited to lunch with Peter Zemmer, the top-flight Alto Adige winemaker, at Gotham, which is also top-flight (and celebrating its 30th anniversary, no commonplace occurrence in New York’s brutal restaurant scene). The lunch was fine – varied, flavorful, with the quality of the ingredients shining through each course. The wines were every bit as fine, radiating a varietal purity that is exceptional even for a zone as dedicated to its pursuit as Alto Adige. I’ve posted about Peter Zemmer before: the sheer pleasure of his wines is my excuse.

The family-owned winery is located in a tiny village in Alto Adige, which is certainly one of the most beautiful wine zones in the world. The facts that (a) it used to be a part of Austria – the Sud Tirol, (b) whichever way you look, the horizon is bounded by snow-capped mountains, and (c) the majority of its population still speaks German, lead most people to associate it first with skiing and only secondarily, if at all, with wine. Anything called the Tyrol must be too cold for vines, right?

Well, no. The Alto Adige gets a tremendous amount of sunshine – 1800 hours a year, better than 300 days of it, on average. In high summer, Bolzano, the regional capital, can be hotter than Palermo. Lush fruit orchards line both banks of the Adige river as it winds its way down from its origin in the Alps, past Bolzano and ultimately into the Adriatic. As you move away from the river, all directions become one: up, through vineyards sited at different altitudes as the soils, exposures, and microclimates dictate suitability. That’s why Alto Adige can grow so many different varieties so well, and with such distinctiveness to each.

Which brings me precisely to what I find so extraordinarily pleasing about Peter Zemmer wines: their fidelity to their varietal character. For instance: If you want to remind yourself about what Pinot grigio tastes like, and why it became so popular before most makers turned it into mildly alcoholic water, try a bottle of Peter Zemmer’s 2013. My tasting note consists of several exclamation points and the words “Lovely ripe pear scent and taste. Great, live acid. Clean, crisp. Very long dry fruit finish. Just fine.”

I was similarly enthusiastic about the second wine of the day, 2012 Pinot bianco Pünggl (a vineyard name, hence a cru wine). Just having them side by side highlighted their fidelity to type. Where the Pinot grigio was all pear and bright acid, the Pinot bianco was all apple and roundness, fuller and more supple in the mouth – still live, with that characteristic acidity that enlivens so many Italian wines, but more Burgundian in its attack than the Pinot grigio.

So too the 2012 Riesling Rohracker: some green apple, a whiff of almost-grapefruit, a hint of peach and of citrus, with a slight oiliness on the palate – that would be textbook Riesling, whether it’s grown in Germany or Alsace or Austria or the Sud Tirol. As I get older, I relish Riesling more and more: It’s a wine of endless nuances. As a younger person I wasn’t so much interested in nuance as in having a wine slap me in the face and yell “Listen Up!”; and while I can still appreciate an attention-grabber like that, I’m more and more intrigued by wines that whisper their greatness rather than shout it, wines just like this lovely Riesling.

Zemmer poured one final white wine for that lunch, his 2010 Cortinie bianco. This is his only blended wine, a mix of roughly 50% Chardonnay, 30% Pinot grigio, and 10% each of Sauvignon blanc and Gewurztraminer. The elegance that marks his entire line of wines shows here in the delicate balance of flavors – ripe white fruits, with hints of apricot and honey – and in the lovely roundness and acidity of the palatal feel. It suggests full body without being in the least heavy, and just cries out for an important dinner – chicken, turkey, veal, fresh ham, fricassees with creamy sauces.

For all its affinities with Austria and Germany and its now almost century-long attachment to Italy, Alto Adige remains a curious borderland. Grape varieties that elsewhere in Italy would be regarded as “international” and recent introductions are natives here, having been grown here for centuries – Pinot gris and Pinot blanc among them, as well as Riesling and Gewürztraminer. The latter, with the most Germanic name of all, and associated by most wine lovers with Alsace, actually originated here around the town of Termano, in German Tramin – thus, Gewürztraminer, the spicy grape from Tramin.

Alto Adige’s reputation in the world at large is built on white wines, and rightly, but there are red grapes here too. Some of the soils contain significant amounts of porphyry, which red grapes like for reasons that go beyond color. Alto Adige’s hearty, Austrian-inflected Alpine cuisine needs some red wines, and the growers, who are as fond of their canerdeli as any of their neighbors, are happy to provide. Zemmer doesn’t grow the most popular red grape of the zone, the workhorse Schiava – he says he just doesn’t have the right soils for it – but he does make the region’s other favorite, Lagrein, as well as some very interesting Pinot nero.

The latter, Pinot nero Rollhütt 2012, nicely accompanied a tasty rabbit risotto. It showed a restrained, elegant, style – all Zemmer’s wines are elegant – that revealed more and more fruit as it opened in the glass. The long, black-peppery finish particularly complemented the food and left an intriguing dry buzz in the mouth. All in all, a very sophisticated wine.

If the Pinot nero seemed a big-city sophisticate, the Lagrein – 2012 Lagrein Raut – proved to be a classic country gentleman: very composed and balanced, rich with dark fruits and a little underlying earthiness and brambliness. Seventy percent of the wine is aged for 12 months in large oak barrels, the rest in second-passage barriques before blending and bottling.

Neither red wine tasted obtrusively of wood, which would most certainly, if immoderately used, have blurred or obliterated their varietal character. Both red wines, while enjoyable now, give every indication that they will be even better in a few years.

I can only hope that’s true of me too.

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A Miscellany of White Wines

The shad have started running, one of the earliest signs that maybe this winter really will eventually end. And our neighborhood Citarella has been stocking beautifully fresh John Dory (Saint Pierre or San Pietro to those of you who speak Mediterranean, along the shores of which sea we first tasted it). It’s one of tastiest fish around, and between it and the shad, Diane and I have been hitting the white wines hard.

Both shad and John Dory are fish that are so rich and flavorful that we tend to cook them very simply, the former broiled because shad is very oily, the latter lightly floured and sautéed in butter or olive oil. With either fish, we want a wine to complement its intensity, not compete with it – so no big-bodied assertive wines, but rather medium- to light-bodied whites with plenty of minerality and acidity: ideally, a wine that could serve as aperitif or appetizer companion and segue gracefully into its place alongside the entrée.

Happily, there are many such, both French and Italian. Some of my French favorites I will treat in a later post. Right now, I want to focus on a handful of Italian producers whose wines have been giving us a lot of pleasure lately.

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Poggiobello

This is a large estate – it has grown to 90 hectares under vines – owned by Genagricola, which as the name implies is a corporate entity. There are several such that in Italy have entered the wine world, and – to the surprise of most of us who are suspicious of big corporations playing in what we think of as an artisan’s field – most of them do a very nice job. They have the deep pockets to acquire good sites and good people and to do the things necessary to attain quality.

In the case of Poggiobello, this involved not just the acquisition of land, though that was important: Poggiobello’s vineyards lie in and near Rosazzo in the Colli Orientali del Friuli, one of the best zones for Friulian wines. Beyond that, Genagricola invested heavily in terracing, canalization, and drainage – large expenditures and generally unaesthetic projects that make a huge difference to wine production.

Poggiobello makes the whole line of Friulian wines, including some, like Sauvignon and Merlot, that would elsewhere be classified as international varieties but that have been cultivated here for centuries. My favorites are the whites, especially Ribolla Gialla, a wine that doesn’t get enough attention and that pleases my palate immensely: It marries particularly well with firm-fleshed, distinctive fish like John Dory. My other favorites include Friulano, which used to be called Tocai – despite the changed name its pleasing, almondy character remains intact – and Pinot bianco, a variety that seems to make interesting wine wherever it’s planted.

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Peter Zemmer

This is a family-owned winery in the southernmost part of the province of Alto Adige, near the tiny, mostly German-speaking town of Cortina. This is a beautiful stretch of country, with fruit orchards lining the bottom lands alongside the Adige river and vineyards stretching up the slopes that frame the lush valley. Despite being so far north in Italy, the climate is more Mediterranean than continental, and a tremendous variety of grapes grow well here at different altitudes and on different soils. The latter differ quite sharply from one side of the river to the other and as you move up slope from the valley floor.

All that good fish my good wife has been preparing gave me an ideal chance to catch up with some of Zemmer’s latest vintages (I’ve written about his wine before, here). The new releases quite easily live up to the fine impression that earlier ones made. I particularly liked both the 2012 Pinot bianco, which showed excellent varietal character, and the very interesting blend called Cortinie Bianco (2010). The latter is composed of Chardonnay, Pinot grigio, Sauvignon, and Gewurztraminer. Two-thirds of the grapes are fermented in stainless steel, one-third in barriques, which conveyed no perceptible oak flavor to the wine but did give it a lovely roundness and some depth. Very pleasing wines, both.

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Cusumano

This winery, with vineyards in several parts of northwest Sicily, is quite a large and committedly Sicilian firm. It has a deep faith in the native Sicilian Insolia (white) and Nero d’Avola (red) grapes, but it also cultivates Chardonnay and Pinot Nero, which it vinifies as 100% varietal wines and also blends with indigenous Sicilian grapes.

Minor point: I’ve always seen the native white grape spelled with a Z – Inzolia – but Cusumano spells it with an S. Who am I to argue? The major point is that the 2012 Insolia that I drank with shad was lovely: nice varietal character – white fruits, a little peachy, with excellent minerality – and good medium body to match with but neither conquer nor surrender to the shad. Purist that I am, I prefer this 100% Insolia to Cusumano’s 2012 Angimbé, a 70/30 blend of Insolia and Chardonnay. This probably more because I am totally bored with non-Burgundian Chardonnay than because of anything wrong with the wine – which was emphatically not the case. Angimbé is a well-done blend, mixing the minerality of the Insolia and the tropical fruit character of warm-climate Chardonnay. I just preferred the distinctiveness of the native grape in purezza, as the telling Italian phrase has it.

So there you have it: a run of shad, a run of white wines, and the prospect of a few more of both as spring gradually (hurry, please!) moves north.

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