Tales from the Crypt: A Cellar Story

My wine “cellar” is in fact a rented mini-storage unit in a big, thick-walled warehouse alongside the Hudson River, not too cold in winter and not too hot in summer. Most collectors would scream with horror at such an uncontrolled repository for their wines, but I’m not a collector and never have been.

(cover illustration © Mort Todd)

The wines I’ve stored over the years have been a hodge-podge: some bottles I wanted to give more maturity before drinking, and some samples – from back in the days when I was a more active wine journalist and samples came in over the transom – that I didn’t have time to taste at the moment but thought I might need for future articles. So if less-than-perfect storage conditions meant speeding up their maturation – in effect adding a few years to their calendrical age – that was and is no problem for me. In fact, it’s an advantage, since I have no plans to bequeath a cellar to my heirs and assigns, and I’d like to taste these wines while I still have functioning taste buds.

This is a long preamble to the fact that, now that I’m plodding my way through the Vale of Years, I’ve stopped adding wines to my hoard and started bringing home cases for tasting and drinking. Most of the time, these cases form a pretty mixed lot: My most recent one consisted mostly of 2007 and 2008 wines – some Burgundies and Chateauneufs and some Tuscan and Piedmontese bottles – all red, and all potentially pretty nice drinking, even if still a bit young by strict standards.

But this also furnished an opportunity to test just how quickly my less-than-perfect storage was aging these wines: Would I be able to taste properly maturing flavors, and would they be appropriate ones for 10- or 11-year-old wines?  Interesting questions, and just the kind to tempt an old wine-bibber to make a test.

So test I did, choosing 3 wines of the 2007 vintage from the case, a Chanson Clos des Fèves Beaune Premier Cru, a Selvapiana Bucerchiale, and a Cogno Barolo Ravera. I opted for those three wines because I know them well and am familiar with the pattern of their development. And I picked 2007 because it was a good, solid vintage in all three zones and because, at 10-11 years old, these wines ought to be on the cusp, passing from youth to maturity. So for my test purposes, these wines would be perfect subjects, able to answer the questions I’m asking.

.
I allowed all the wines three hours breathing in bottle, not decanted. First wine up was the Chanson Clos des Fèves, which showed clear garnet with a definite orange edge – in a French wine, a definite sign of aging. It had a good nose of dark berries and dried fruit, with underbrush notes and a slight hint of wood. On the palate, the taste confirmed the aroma: dried cherry, medium body, fine balance, graceful and elegant, with a long, dry, fruit-and-leather finish. A little less substantial than I would have hoped, and a little further along its evolutionary path than I expected, but still not fully mature. In an ideal cellar, I would expect this wine to peak at about 20 years old or a little bit more. This bottle I would think would have needed only two or three more years to develop fully: to put on a little more flesh and open more forceful mature aromas.

Next came the Selvapiana Bucerchiale, a slightly darker wine with a bit more orange at the edge, which is quite characteristic of many Italian wines and not necessarily a sign of aging. It had a biggish aroma of dried fruits – a suggestion of prune – and earth notes. In the mouth, it was big and soft, with dark flavors – dried berries and a little tobacco – with fine balance and persistence. Not a huge wine, but mouth-filling. Though it showed no fresh fruit tastes, it still seemed some years from full maturity. I’d say that it’s on a proper path of maturing though a bit accelerated: From what I know of Bucerchiale, I would expect it to peak at about 25 years old in an ideal cellar; in mine, I think it will top off at about 20, which can’t come soon enough for me.

Then I tasted the Cogno Barolo Ravera, which showed the most orange of all the wines, and which I regard as perfectly normal for developing Nebbiolo-based wine. The nose offered a whole mélange of elements – dried cherry/berry, wet stones, mushroom, with similar notes in the mouth, where it showed as big and slightly tannic. On the palate this wine displayed no fresh fruit, but not all the mature Nebbiolo flavors that I look for were yet in place. So it is still evolving, and still needs some years before it will be fully mature. In a good cellar, this wine will go for 30 or 40 years: good Nebbiolo wines do that. In my storage, I expect it to be drinking best at 20 to 25 years old – which is a lot better for those of us not building heritage collections, but for a person of my age is still seriously pushing the envelope.

My Tasting Workshop

.
This for me was a really interesting experiment, and it confirmed a lot of what I’ve thought about “cellaring” wines – principally that a lot of what have been thought to be absolutes about how wine is to be stored are far from absolute. Rather, they’re based ultimately on the evolution of wines in their makers’ caves or in the cellars of 19th century English great houses, cellars that are meant to be steadily drawn on and augmented over a lifetime and left as an inheritance for one’s heirs.

That doesn’t speak to the needs of people of more limited means and lacking anything approaching a great house, who want mature wine to enjoy in their lifetime. So as regards the “rules” of wine storage, I’d borrow a phrase from Martin Luther: Sin bravely. Just think about what you want from your wine and how to get it, then go and do it.

Castello di Volpaia: A Tuscan Classic

Everyone knows that there are many fine Chianti Classico producers who, vintage after vintage, offer well-made wines redolent of lovely Sangiovese fruit and undertones of their various soils, wines that show what Italians call, most honorifically, tipicità. “Typicity,” in English, doesn’t quite capture it: Authenticity might be closer. One of the best of these lovely Chiantis, one of the most authentic and typical and, at the same time, most distinctive, is Castello di Volpaia.

If I had to choose just one place in the Chianti Classico to show a visitor what Tuscany once looked like, and what its enduring charm is, that place would be Castello di Volpaia. Its beauty, its serenity, immediately captures the imagination. It certainly holds a very special place in my heart as a quintessence of Tuscany. It’s not a castle in the same way Brolio is. Rather, it was in the Middle Ages a fortified village, a small walled town perched on a ridge in the commune of Radda, a bastion of Florence against its eternal enemy Siena.
.

.
Its serenity and tranquility came centuries later, as local warfare died down and peace and prosperity grew in the countryside. Over the years, portions of its walls and battlements were removed (a few remain), more houses were built, and the vineyards extended.

Since taking possession of the village in 1972, Giovanella Stianti and her architect husband Carlo Mascheroni have devoted their best efforts to preserving it and steadily improving the vineyards.  Signora Stianti’s father had acquired the property in the mid-60s and gave it to the couple as a wedding present. It has become their life-long passion.

Of the village, more later: Let’s speak now of the vineyards.

They were in pretty good shape to start with, since for some centuries the wine of Volpaia had been prized, but the family has systematically experimented with clones and root stocks and training systems to bring them among the best cultivated in the Classico zone, and they are what form the heart of Volpaia’s distinctiveness. First of all, they are high for this part of Tuscany, probably in fact the highest in the Classico zone, ranging from a low of about 450 meters to a high of about 650. That makes for a very long growing season, with big day-to-night temperature differentials, which in turn produces great aromatics in the wine.

.

.

Additionally, the soils in Volpaia’s vineyards contain much less clay and more sand than most other parts of the Classico. These contribute a distinctive set of trace elements to the wine. So the characteristic Volpaia wine is less full-bodied and forceful than many other Chiantis, but it is also and always more elegant, more nuanced, and – according to my experience – even in merely middling vintages more structured and capable of graceful bottle aging.

You can see why I love it: I’ll opt for elegance over power every time. Power impresses on the first taste, but over the course of a bottle it wears you out: It’s the same with every swallow. Elegance impresses on every taste. Over the course of a meal it adapts to and changes with each dish, becoming slightly different with each. For me, that’s fascinating, and that’s what Volpaia consistently delivers.

The estate produces several wines of note: Chianti Classico and Classico Riserva, of course, and several crus – notably Coltassala and Balefico. Balefico is Volpaia’s supertuscan, blending roughly one-third Cabernet and Merlot with its lovely Sangiovese. The other wines are all 90 to 100 percent Sangiovese, with, depending on the harvest, a small amount of Mammolo or Merlot blended in. (Riccardo Cottarella is the consulting enologist, well known for his passion for Merlot, which – I guess –is how it arrived on this proudly traditional property.)

.

.

For me and many other Tuscan wine fans, the Coltassala and the Chianti Classico Riserva are the superstars, wines of depth and nuance and, always, elegance. Over the past month, I’ve been drinking bottles of those two from several vintages – 2000, 2001, 2004, 2006 – and they have been without exception beautiful examples of what Sangiovese and great Tuscan winemaking are all about. They are all perfectly alive and vigorous, with years of bottle life before them – but about 15 years of age is when I like to drink them. It’s a sweet spot, where fresh fruit subsists beside the beginnings of more mature flavors and neither dominates. For me, that is pure pleasure.

Now the village of Volpaia. Signora Stianti and her husband built Volpaia’s modern winery, sheltering its components within existing medieval buildings and structures of the ancient town. Since this is a protected historic site, that meant that when, for instance, the piping for the winery was laid beneath the streets of Volpaia, every single cobble of each street had to be removed, numbered, and replaced in its exact location. The same care was exercised on the facades of every single building in the town, and the original appearance of the ancient streets was scrupulously preserved in its entirety. That is what has made Volpaia one of the most evocative spots in an area filled with fragments of ancient towns and castles.
.

Castello di Radda Chianti Classico

To indulge in my favorite sort of overgeneralization: In California, it seems, dentists and proctologists buy boutique vineyards; in Italy, insurance companies and machinery manufacturers set up whole agricultural divisions. So the Beretta company, for instance (manufacturers of, among many other things, James Bond’s favorite tool), has an agricultural arm, Agricole Gussalli Beretta, which owns and operates vineyards in several parts of Italy – Franciacorta, Piemonte, Alto Adige, Abruzzo. In Tuscany, its holding is Castello di Radda, a Chianti Classico estate in the heart of the traditional zone.
.

.
The idea of corporate ownership of vineyards may cause a reflexive shudder or two, but it is not necessarily the character-eviscerating phenomenon you may suppose: Everything depends on the choices and aims of the owners. To use an example close to home: Corporate ownership of Ridge Vineyards has in no way compromised the character of its wines. So too in Italy, many corporately owned vineyards produce wines of high quality and solid reputation, and Castello di Radda is certainly one of these, with two Tre Bicchieri awards already in its young history. Besides – let’s get real about this – what is Antinori, or Frescobaldi, or for that matter Mouton Rothschild, but a corporation, and a sizable one at that?

The Beretta family – yes, it’s a family, just like Antinori, Frescobaldi, and Rothschild – started Castello di Radda in 2003, working literally from the ground up, with vineyard choices and a largely subterranean winemaking facility, an anything but old-fashioned cellar. The great Tuscan master Maurizio Castelli has served as the guiding spirit and chief enologist for some years now. The man and the location – Radda is about as central to traditional Chianti as one can get – are clearly spot on.

So are the wines. The estate specializes in 100% Sangiovese Chianti Classico. Its Chianti Classico Riserva has twice won Tre Bicchieri, and its other wines, especially its Gran Selezione, are beginning to attract critical attention. In 2017, Castello di Radda began converting all its vineyards to 100% organic production. This is certainly an estate to watch: As its new vineyard practices settle in, and as its vines mature, Castello di Radda seems poised to move into the upper echelon of Chianti estates.

Courtesy of the Wellcom Agency of Alba, I last week tasted a selection of Castello di Radda’s wines.  Here they are:
.

.
2014 Chianti Classico
Dry earth and dried berry aroma. Lightish palate, with lots of bright acidity, very typical of the Radda area. Good tannins and light cherry/berry fruit. Long leather/dried cherry finish. Very pleasing drinking.

2013 Chianti Classico Riserva
Biggish berry and tobacco nose. Fresher fruit than the 2014 vintage (this is the wine that was recently awarded Tre Bicchieri). Good balance. Some complexity already beginning to show. Very long finish. A distinct step up from the 2014, which is the proper relation of a Riserva to the normal bottling.

2012 Chianti Classico Gran Selezione
Dried berry, tobacco, and earth scents. Fuller body and darker fruit than the preceding two wines. Fine acid/tannin balance sustaining complex fruit flavors. Very persistent finish. Again, another notch up, as it should be.

2006 Chianti Classico Riserva Poggio Selvale
Similar aroma to the Gran Selezione. A touch mute on the palate. Subdued (just coming out of mute phase?). Elegant and round, but not very forthcoming. This single-vineyard wine dates from the estate’s earliest days, so at first I didn’t know whether its reticence showed some tentativeness in the winemaking or just a stage in the wine’s evolution. Later, after it had time to breathe, the wine showed much more flavor and structure.

The key thing for me was that the three wines from the 20-teens provided plenty of interest now and point a good way for the future of Castello di Radda.

 

A Princely Wine: Corsini’s Don Tommaso

In the Tuscan wine world, barons and marquises – scions of old land-owning families – abound, but among all those titles there are very few princes or princesses. Principessa Coralia Pignatelli produces Castell’in Villa, an almost cult wine among Sangiovese admirers, but the only other of princely rank I am aware of is Duccio Corsini, the Principe Corsini of the Le Corti estate. That lofty title, however, is far from the winery’s only distinction, as I and a few other journalists had the opportunity to discover over a recent dinner at the restaurant Babbo. Duccio Corsini wears his distinguished heritage lightly, and he speaks with genuine passion of the wines his distinctive Tuscan terroir yields.

Le Corti lies in San Casciano in the Val di Pesa, about halfway between Florence and Greve, so in the northwest of the Chianti Classico zone. Its soils consist of much less of the marl and clay that mark most of the Classico zone, but are largely alluvial, filled with what Duccio refers to as “river pebbles,” many much closer in size to what we would call cobblestones. If my memory of a long-ago visit serves, several of the vineyards resemble hilly versions of Châteauneuf du Pape, with more stone showing than soil. That terroir yields wines that show real differences from many Chianti Classicos.
.

.
That evening at Babbo we tasted through a six-vintage vertical of the estate’s flagship wine, Don Tommaso Chianti Classico Riserva DOCG (now Gran Selezione): 1998, 1999, 2000, 2007, 2010, and 2013. Over those years, the composition of the wine gradually evolved from 95% Sangiovese and 5% Merlot to 80% Sangiovese and 20% Merlot, which it has been for about 10 years now. It used to age for 15 months in new oak barriques, now it rests in tonneaux (70% new, 30% used) for 18 months, plus at least a year in bottle before release.
.

.
This was a striking tasting. Don Tommaso’s consistency in style from vintage to vintage was admirable: All the wines were of medium weight, all were elegant, balanced, and complete. None smelled or tasted at all of new wood. On the palate, they were squeaky clean, with wonderful Sangiovese black-cherry flavors and acidity, undergirded by an intriguing set of earth tones – not quite what we usually call minerality, but not clay, or mushrooms, or anything underbrushy either. Quite fascinating, and quite impressive: These are top-flight Chianti Classicos, with tremendous aging potential. The three oldest wines were still fresh and vital: In fact, the ’99 was my favorite wine of the evening, and I suspect it probably has a good 10 years at this plateau of quality in front of it. As enjoyable as they all were to taste – even the very young 2013 – these were very clearly dinner wines that would grow in dimensions and pleasure with food.

With dinner, we happy few tasted a different selection of wines. After a glass of a sparkling rosé made from 100% Sangiovese that served brilliantly as a palate cleanser and apéritif, we sat to an abundance of far-too-tasty-for-anyone’s-good antipasti and pastas, accompanied first by Le Corti Chianti Classico 2014 and then by Cortevecchia Chianti Classico Riserva 2014.

The Chiantis were both thoroughly enjoyable, classically Tuscan wines, sapid and juicy – the kind of wines whose appeal is so clear and direct that even non-winedrinkers would instantly realize that what was in their glass was something special. Both wines were vinified from 95% Sangiovese and 5% Colorino, the latter an ancient Tuscan variety. The main difference between them stemmed from their aging: The Classico spent 12 months in either cement or large wooden casks, while the Riserva aged for 20 months, partly in big oak casks and partly in tonneaux. The Riserva of course showed more depth and complexity, but neither wine tasted of anything other than the purest Sangiovese flavors – cherry and a hint of tar, that intriguing, un-namable goût de terroir, and a long aftertaste of drying fruit and – just maybe – a little leather.

With the main course, we were offered a very special wine called Fico, which Corsini believes represents the shape of the future for the Le Corti estate and perhaps for all of Tuscan wine. This project was initiated by his son, who died last fall in a tragic accident. The wine is 100% organically grown and organically vinified Sangiovese. We tasted the 2015 pilot vintage, of which only 280 bottles were made, so this was a rare privilege. Even beyond its rarity, it was one of the most striking Tuscan wines I have ever tasted. Every one of us journalists had the same reaction to our first sip: Pinot noir! Excellent Pinot noir!  And yet it was all unmanipulated Sangiovese. That was the front and middle of the mouth. The back of the mouth and the finish were pure Sangiovese, but that opening taste – and this persisted as we drank our way through the bottle – showed us all a dimension of Sangiovese that we had not known existed. I’m sorry to get so geeky about where-on-my-palate-I-tasted-what, but something like this doesn’t happen every day, and I found it pretty exciting. It is going to be very interesting indeed to see where Principe Corsini goes with this.

Dinner concluded more conventionally (for Tuscany) – but no less deliciously – with an over-abundance of desserts and very welcome glasses of Sant’Andrea Corsini 2004, a Vin Santo made from Malvasia and Trebbiano. In Tuscany, an elegant Vin Santo like this one would be served to a guest as a welcoming toast. Outside Tuscany Vin Santo is most often used as a dessert wine or digestive, which role it on this occasion played admirably, sending us all off into the chilly, slushy New York night warm and content.

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.

.

 

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

.

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.)

.
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

.

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 . . .

 

 

Terminal Toscanità

Like Michael Corleone, just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. In my case, I keep trying to break away from Tuscan wine for a while – after all, I love lots of Italian wines, and even French, Spanish, and German wines too – but I keep discovering important items about Tuscany that I really ought to comment on right now, while they’re timely.

Case in point: I’ve done some articles for QRW.com about recent releases of Brunello and Chianti Classico, but I haven’t said a word about them here. That’s a bad oversight, omitting a lot of important wines, and it needs fixing. So here goes.

.

Brunello di Montalcino

The 2011 Brunello di Montalcino is now being released. Some of the earliest bottles are already here, and more will be arriving by fall. This is an iffy vintage: The weather was, to put it very mildly, not great, and a lot of not-great wine was made. But some of the best producers in this prestigious zone more than justified their reputations by making some very fine wines – not big, tough, wait-ten-years-to-drink’em Brunellos, but atypically accessible and charming wines that are a joy to drink now, have lovely Sangiovese character, partner well with all sorts of food, and should last nicely for five to (at the outside) ten years. In short, delightful wines, typically Tuscan in taste and style, available for enjoying while you’re waiting for Brunello’s 2010s and (probably) 2012s to soften up and become drinkable.

I didn’t get to taste all the key producers, but of the ones I did taste, these are my top baker’s dozen:

• Altesino Montosoli. Delicate and elegant, with charming fruit. A little licorice in the finish.
• Canalicchio di Sopra. Fresh and very structured, with dark, woodsy fruit. Intensity without heaviness. May age well.
• Ciacci Piccolomini d’Aragona. Lovely cherry/berry fruit, lively acidity, great poise; an excellent wine already.
• Col d’Orcia. Slighter fuller and bigger than the preceding wine, but every bit as fresh and charming.
• Costanti. One of the biggest wines of this batch, but still fresh, fruity, and vivid. A long fruit salad of a finish.
• Donatella Cinelli Colombini. Slightly smaller scale than the Costanti wine, but still excellent.
• Donatelli Cinelli Colombini Prime Donne. Very balanced, very elegant. Its fresh woodsy fruit hides its substantial muscularity. Quite fine.
• Fuligni. Its balance and structure strike you first, then its already-mellowing fruit and acidity. May age very well.
• Lisini. Beautiful fruit, all cherry and sotto bosco. Medium body, nice balance.
• Padeletti. Very similar to the Lisini, with a long licorice and cherry finish. Nice.
• Poggio di Sotto. Very fine. Live and fresh. Good fruit, fine balance. Very composed and welcoming.
• Le Potazzine. A good wine with some heft; nice dark fruit, very persistent.
• Talenti. A biggish wine with a lot of evident structure; may age very well.

 

Chianti Classico

In Chianti Classico, the situation is much more complicated, because the zone is much more varied than Montalcino’s and producers often hold their wines before release for longer than the minimum aging requirement, so that several different vintages from different producers can appear on the market at the same time. Consequently I tasted a very mixed bag of vintages and producers, which makes it hard to offer any useful generalizations – mostly, I can just tell you what I liked.

I tasted a lot of just-bottled 2014 basic Chianti Classicos  (even some barrel samples) and almost as many 2013s – the “simple” Chianti Classico DOCG designation.

The Consorzio tactfully calls ’14 “a quite unusual year.”  It was a very wet year that made all sorts of problems in the vineyards. Only late-arriving decent weather – mid-September into October – enabled growers who had had patience and fortitude to salvage a crop. I don’t think these are wines for keeping but for drinking in the near term. The ones I most enjoyed are:

• Badia a Coltibuono RS
• Bibbiano
• Castellare
• Terre di Prenzano
• Vignamaggio
• Villa Cerna
• Volpaia

The Castellare particularly was elegant, round, and long-finishing, already composed for so young a wine. The other wine that tied for my top spot in this vintage was Volpaia, which opened with a beautiful light woodsy/cherry nose, and a palate that followed suit – a fresh and charming wine with rich, satisfying fruit.

The 2013 weather was drier and warmer, with a perfect September. It gave wines with much greater balance and charm and a lot of true Sangiovese character. They can be drunk with pleasure now and will hold nicely for at least five years, perhaps more. In this group, my top wines were Borgo Scopeto, nice and soft and relatively full-bodied; Carobbio, with nice cherry-mulberry-chocolate nuances; the nicely balanced San Giusto a Rentennano; and Poggiopiano, the best wine of the group, which was rich with lovely Sangiovese fruit and perfectly balanced.

2012 reversed the weather pattern of ’14: Dry with blazing heat all summer long, it broke in late August and early September with cooler temperatures, much-needed rainfall, and perfect day-night temperature variations, resulting in a small crop of really fine Sangiovese. The great majority of the wines of this vintage that I tasted were fine examples of their breed. The ones I liked best were Castello di Meleto and Castello Monterinaldi, both finely fruited and well balanced; the always elegant Castello di Volpaia; Clemente VII, from the exceptionally good co-op Castelli de Grevepesa, Lamole di Lamole, from vineyards on mineral-rich soils near Greve, and the outstanding Fontodi, from Giovanni Manetti’s meticulously maintained vineyards in the Conca d’Oro of Panzano.

I tasted only two 2011s, one, Peppoli, from Antinori, which was quite satisfying on the palate but with a (for me) slightly annoying woody nose, and the other from Castello di Cacchiano, which has become a cult wine in Italy, at least in part because it holds its wines so long before release. This was truly lovely, with an enchanting Sangiovese nose and wonderful fruit and elegance.

And from 2010, I tasted only Poggiopiano’s La Tradizione, which was also wonderful – still young and live, with beautiful Sangiovese fruit and excellent acid/tannin balance. This is not a cru, but a selection of the best grapes from several vineyards, and it is a wine to look for in any vintage.

And then there are a few wines from Chianti Classico’s new Gran Selezione designation. The best of the 2012s I tasted was clearly Fontodi’s Vigna del Sorbo — probably my favorite wine of the whole tasting. It will improve for several years yet, and should last many years beyond that.

Among a handful of 2011s, the standout was Bibbiano’s Capennina, very structured and very elegant, a very fine wine at a very reasonable price point. Also impressive was Lamole di Lamole’s Vigneto di Campolungo. In 2010, Castello di Volpaia’s Il Puro, a 100% Sangiovese, really impressed me with its heft and structure: It seems built to last decades. The sole 2009 example I tasted was Castello di Cacchiano’s Millennio, and it was just lovely: soft fruit, fine balance, great mouth feel. These are all the kind of wine that make me hope this new Chianti Classico category may truly be a triumph.

A Name to Remember: Bibbiano Chianti Classico

To use a cliché no wine journalist can resist, Tuscany is always in ferment – which is partly why I’ve given Tuscan wines so much attention recently. But also, many of the wines are just plain good, and, while many of those are already well known, others deserve more attention than they’ve been getting. A case that fits all those points is Bibbiano, a 150-year-old, family-owned estate that is making excellent Chianti Classico and conducting some very interesting experiments, as well.

I recently had lunch with Tommaso Marzi, the just-turned-50 proprietor (with his younger brother Federico) of Bibbiano and its very peripatetic face in the world. He is an enthusiast, which in my book is the prime quality needed in anyone working in any capacity in the wine world, and he is very knowledgeable about his vineyards and their qualities. Bibbiano’s fields lie in the western reach of the Chianti Classico zone’s fabled Conca d’Oro, a ridge of splendid soils and exposures that arcs west from Castellina in Chianti toward Val d’Elsa. The Bibbiano estate contains two large swatches of vineyards, Montornello in the northeast and Capannino in the southwest. These are often bottled as separate crus, and Capannino provides the source of Bibbiano’s Gran Selezione.

Foreground, Tommaso Marzi; background, Capannino vineyard

For many years, Bibbiano’s vineyards and cellar were under the care of Tuscan doyen Giulio Gambelli, for decades the most respected nose and palate in the whole region. He is credited with keeping Bibbiano in the forefront of traditional Chianti winemaking, and in particular with planting in its field clones of Sangiovese grosso ultimately derived from his days of working with Tancredi Biondi Santi.

Over a light lunch at Il Buco Alimentaria, we tasted an astutely chosen array of Bibbiano’s bottles, which showed both the charms of the young wines and what their older siblings are capable of.

First, Chianti Classico 2014. This was a very pretty wine, blended from all the estate’s vineyards and totally untouched by wood. Fermentation on the skins started in stainless steel and finished in cement vats. All native grapes: 97% Sangiovese, 3% Colorino. Nicely balanced, fresh and lively (excellent acidity), with gentle plum flavors emerging as it opened in the glass. And a good buy, at a suggested retail price of $22.

Chianti Classico Riserva Montornello 2013 was next. That emerging plum flavor in the basic Chianti was much more pronounced in this wine, which also shared the fine balance of the first. This was vinified entirely from Sangiovese from the 13-hectare northeast vineyards and aged in barriques and tonneaux for 18 months. I didn’t inquire, but I’d guess they were well-used barrels, because I detected no wood or vanilla or espresso – just fine fruit and underbrush scents and flavors in this substantial, very young wine. Also nicely priced: SRP $27.

Then we tasted Chianti Classico Riserva Montornello 2000, just to see how these wines develop. The answer is, beautifully. 2000 was a very warm year, and the wine, though very much alive, did show signs of the heat in its slightly elevated alcohol. But the key fact is that the wine was live and lithe and enjoyable, which a lot of 2000s aren’t, and it grew more pleasing as it opened in the glass. It loved Il Buco’s fried rabbit, a dish whose paradoxical delicacy and strength could challenge many another wine.

.

Next up was Chianti Classico Gran Selezione Vigna del Capannino 2011. Made entirely from Sangiovese grosso grapes, this wine originates on a soil rich in limestone in the vineyard that Signor Marzi regards as having the best exposure and microclimate on the estate. Harvested in the second week of October; 25-day maceration and fermentation on the skins; partly aged in French tonneaux and partly in Slavonian oak barrels. This wine seemed very young but already strikingly elegant. An excellent wine, with classic Sangiovese flavors, it has great structure: It needs and will take lots of time. At an SRP of $40, I think it’s a bargain for a wine of this degree of cellar-worthiness. It was probably the wine of the day for me.

Chianti Classico Gran Selezione Vigna del Capannino 1995 followed, to make clear just what the potential of this vineyard is. I’ve been lucky enough over recent months to have drunk a lot of 1995 Chianti Classico Riservas (which is technically what this wine is, the Gran Selezione category not having been in existence in 1995), and they have been uniformly wonderful: It was a great vintage, and it is maturing beautifully.This wine was easily one of the best I’ve tasted: a gorgeous tobacco/funghi/cherry nose, lively on the palate, with a similar medley of flavors supported by great acidity – no sign of tiredness at all. Simply a very, very fine Chianti Classico, showing, at 21 years of age, just what a choice vineyard can do.

 

The final red wine of the day was Bibbianaccio 2011. This is an experimental blend, vinified from grapes drawn from all over the estate: 50% Sangiovese, 44% Colorino, and 6% Trebbiano and Malvasia. That’s correct: there are some white grapes in there, alongside that huge amount of Colorino. Fermentation took place in open barrels and included some of the woody stalks. After that, malolactic fermentation and 12 months’ aging in French oak tonneaux, then another 12 months in Slavonian oak botti, and finally 6 months in bottles before release.

I found this wine intriguing: Its fruit was complex, on both the nose and the palate – an improbable combination of berries and apples, tobacco and mushrooms, finishing long and leathery. It had perfect acidity to lighten the weight of all that Colorino. An interesting and different wine, which was all the more haunting because it was also familiar. Here Bibbanaccio is returning in several respects to what Chianti Classico used to be, when the old formula based on the 19th century Baron Ricasoli’s researches was the norm. That formula mandated some white grapes in the blend. Now they are forbidden, and wine using them cannot label itself Chianti Classico: How the world changes! But anyone nostalgic for what Chianti Classico at its best used to taste like will love this wine. I know I did.

 

 

Birthday and Burgundy

D-Day has saved me from many domestic embarrassments, because the day before it is Diane’s birthday and the day after it our anniversary, and because of it I’ve never been able to forget either. This year, even though none of that trio amounted to an intrinsically important number, we decided to make a big deal of our family occasions, with Diane cooking some special dishes and me digging out some special wines. And since we’d been lately on a pretty steady diet of Italian – indeed, mostly Tuscan – wines, I opted for something completely different, to switch countries and styles entirely: ergo, France, specifically Burgundy.

You can read about the meals in Diane’s blog: I’ll just say we ate very well indeed, and probably a bit too copiously, but it was an unmitigated pleasure. I want to talk about the wines, which matched wonderfully with Diane’s dishes and were wonderful in their own right. This is what we drank.

.

Bollinger Champagne 2004

We drank this on both birthday and anniversary, as apéritif with some tiny gougère puffs. That may show a lack of imagination, but those airy little cheese clouds tasted marvelous with that big, full-bodied, austere and elegant Champagne, so – especially since we knew there was much more wine ahead and didn’t want to finish the whole bottle of Bolly the first night – we just reprised the combination 48 hours later on our anniversary. I assure you, nothing hurt. This was a great vintage, and a perfect example of Bollinger’s reliable linking of power and grace.

.

Drouhin Beaune Clos des Mouches 2004

This accompanied sea scallops nantaise, a surprisingly rich dish that needed to be partnered with a white wine of the authority of Clos des Mouches. Drouhin’s Clos des Mouches has for decades been one of my favorite white Burgundies, and I think that even with all the respect it customarily receives, it is still underestimated. I would rank it right up in the top tier of white Burgundies, and this 12-year-old showed its breed beautifully with those succulent scallops. It was big, and smooth, and deep, round and complex, with layers of flavor showing themselves in successive waves of nuttiness and butteriness and dried pear. Once upon a time, I could afford to buy this wine by the case: Those days, alas, are long gone, but I have some glorious memories of them. We deliberately stopped ourselves from finishing the bottle, thinking ahead to the rest of this meal and to what Diane had planned for our anniversary dinner.

.

Bouchard Beaune Clos des Mousses 1998

Bouchard has a monopole of this vineyard, the red-wine twin of Drouhin’s white. We matched it with a pheasant stewed with morels. This was just a glorious combination, cemented by the morels, which mediated between the earthy flavors of the wine and the near-gaminess of the pheasant. This is classic red Burgundy, just mature at 18 years, and showing all the complexity that Pinot noir at its best is capable of. This bottle we finished, with no trouble at all.

.

San Felice Vinsanto del Chianti Classico 2006

As a small concession to Italy, and also because we didn’t want anything as sweet as Sauternes with the rustic apricot tart Diane had made for dessert, we finished with this lovely not-quite-sweet-not-fully-dry Vin Santo. Vin Santo may be an acquired taste, because it doesn’t fall neatly into the dessert-wine category, but it served ideally here as a refreshing yet far from simple conclusion to our dinner.

———*

For our anniversary dinner, we repeated the Bollinger and gougère puffs as apéritif, and drank again the Drouhin Clos des Mouches, this time with plates of Bosole oysters on the half shell. Once again, the match was perfect, the mature white Burgundy playing beautifully off the briny sweetness of those small oysters – two of my favorite things. With our entrée, a handsome rib of beef, we drank this lovely red.

Drouhin Chambolle Musigny Premier Cru 2004

For me, Musigny is the sweet spot of the whole Côte d’Or, where Pinot noir shows its greatest elegance and nuance. These are rarely big wines, but they are always fascinating, and this one was no exception. We finished it with a little goat cheese and a bit of Brie, and we were very happy that we had long ago committed matrimony.

Chianti Classico’s Gran Selezione

Almost three years ago, the Chianti Classico growers and producers created a new top classification for their wines. It’s called Gran Selezione, and until now I have maintained a studied silence about it. Some recent tastings that I’ve been doing, however, have persuaded me that I do have something to say about Gran Selezione, and, while it will hardly be news, I think it may be useful for Chianti fans and general consumers to read.

I have long been a partisan of Chianti Classico, extolling its many pleasures, sympathizing with its unending skirmishes with the satellite Chianti denominations that so often ride on its coattails, and appreciating the public relations campaigns that its producers have had to wage for decades as its regulations have time and again been revised. The road of Chianti Classico has not been smooth: Its evolution has been marked by successive waves of seeming modernizations, as the 19th century formula for the wine’s blend, devised by Baron Bettino Ricasoli, was gradually and repeatedly modified.

First came the reduction, then the elimination, of white grapes from the official DOC blend. Later, growers were given permission to make a Chianti Classico of nothing but Sangiovese, and still later, permission to use – at different times, different percentages of – “international varieties.” Somewhere in there the DOCG happened, as well as the introduction of regulations about Riserva status that were supposed to guarantee not only quality but also a certain consumer-reassuring consistency. Unfortunately, they didn’t, and Riserva became a very iffy category – at its best, splendid, but too often just the basic wine aged for an extra year. Now, on top of Riserva, we have Gran Selezione.

Chianti Classico’s heart is Sangiovese, and I love Sangiovese. I think it is one of Italy’s noblest red grapes. When Sangiovese vines are properly cared for on one of the Classico zone’s distinguished terroirs, I think they are capable of enological greatness. I just wish the Tuscans could stop tinkering with Sangiovese and let it be itself, without the intrusion of French grapes or French oak or “international” styling. For the uninitiated, in this context “international” style means a wine designed for what many Tuscans still wrongly perceive as “the American market.” This phantom they understand to be a single entity, thirsty for fruit bombs and with lots of oak sweetness disfiguring them even further. What damage such emphases have done to a wine as elegant in its nature as Chianti Classico I leave to your judgment, but you can easily guess that the “international style” wines are not the Chianti Classicos I love.

When I first heard about Gran Selezione, my initial reaction was “Oh no! Not again! Not another classification change that really won’t change anything but will leave consumers – American consumers, at least – further confused about what is in the bottle they might be interested in buying if they could figure out what it is.” Remember, I love the wine, I’ve been following it for years, I have great admiration for many Chianti Classico producers and nothing but good will for all of them – but my fear was this just might be the last straw for many consumers. So I decided to keep my mouth shut and wait and see.

I’m happy to say that what I have seen lately is encouraging. In the past, many of Chianti Classico’s most distinguished wines were cru wines. Even though that is not an official category, Chianti Classico labels often sport a cru designation – Fontodi’s Vigna del Sorbo, or Felsina’s Colonia, or Castello di Volpaia’s Coltassala, for example. When such truly top crus were vinified as Riservas they made extraordinary wines, deep and complex and capable of long aging, all the while preserving Chianti Classico’s characteristic elegance.

What I am seeing now is that wines like these are migrating to the Gran Selezione category, whose requirements go far beyond simple extra aging and include quality and typicity tests, as well as strict control of things like acidity and extract. This is right and just, and it is where top-flight wines like these belong.

If the producers and the consorzio can maintain the quality level they have thus far established, Gran Selezione may finally give consumers the kind of confidence in the name Chianti Classico that they have until now hoped for. If they do that, Gran Selezione could be the most important of all the changes Chianti Classico has undergone. If, however, the producers and the Consorzio fail to maintain that level of quality, if Gran Selezione is allowed to become a promiscuous designation, then it could be the final nail in the coffin of consumer confidence in the Chianti Classico name.

Chianti Rufina … Villa Selvapiana … Riserva Bucerchiale … Glorious!

About a week back, I opened a bottle of a ten-year-old red wine, and I was immediately overwhelmed by how wonderful it smelled and tasted. You might not think that unusual, but for reasons I’ll explain below, my wine-and-food intake has been drastically curtailed through most of December and January, my palate hasn’t been all that stellar, and we’ve consequently been dining on­ — and drinking ­– fairly simple stuff. So this was for me a truly grand moment, an Aha! There Is Life After All! experience.

The wine was of a kind and producer I’ve not paid enough attention to in this blog, a Chianti Rufina from the zone’s premier producer, Villa Selvapiana: its Riserva Bucerchiale 2006 (boo chair k’YAH lay), to be precise. From the first swirl of my glass, the scent enticed me: rich cherry-based fruits, with woodsy, underbrushy overtones that cut right through my pain-pill-and-antibiotic fog. And the taste! Pure velvet on the palate, with a whole congeries of black cherry/frutta del bosco/funghi porcini flavors, all supported by an elegant earthiness – not minerality, mind you, but real earthiness. It was just lovely. It was attention-grabbing. It was a wine for even me, in my debilitated state, to pay serious attention to.

All that is exactly what I had expected, why I had chosen the wine in the first place. I needed to be reminded of some of the joys of living, and I knew Bucerchiale – a wine reliable in its greatness – could do that.

Let’s get down to basics. Chianti Rufina is the smallest (750 hectares in vines) of all the Chianti denominations, and by far the most different from the others – so different that many people think it should simply be called Rufina and not linked to Chianti at all. I’ve visited the zone, and I can tell you it’s a very different world from the zones of the Classico and the other Chiantis. It lies northeast of Florence, not really contiguous with any part of the Classico, and it has a totally different geology and therefore a distinctive wine terroir.

No cypresses and bay bushes here: It’s higher, hillier, wilder, more rugged, with pine trees and mountain laurel as its characteristic vegetation. It’s very easy to get lost here (I speak from experience) as what you thought was a highway dwindles to a road to a track to an end. There are castles here, to be sure – this is still Tuscany – but they look a lot more businesslike than any in the Classico, as if they might not too long ago have been working propositions. The whole feel of Rufina is of another age.

What Rufina does share with the Chiantis, and with most of the rest of Tuscany, is Sangiovese, but Rufina’s Sangiovese differs widely from the Tuscan norm. It has an underlying base of earth and clay that grounds the wine foursquare, so that, as beautifully soprano as the fruit may get in its best vintages, it never lacks a complementary bass to round it. In my mind, this is a great, great terroir whose potential has not yet been fully exploited, save by a few producers, most notably the Frescobaldi, whose Castello di Nippozano is probably their best wine, and Villa Selvapiana.

Villa Selvapiana is an ancient property that has been in the hands of the Giuntini family since 1827. There are 58 hectares of vines, and many more of carefully tended olive trees, as well as a large tract of forest. The cru riserva Bucerchiale was born in 1979, under the watchful eye of consulting enologist Franco Bernabei, then a young man and now one of Tuscany’s pre-eminent consulting enologists, who still oversees the production of Villa Selvapiana’s wines.

I’ve visited Selvapiana a few times, and Bernabei has given me several verticals of Bucerchiale, so I can honestly say I know this wine well. It has vintage variations, to be sure – some years are lighter, some heavier, some with bigger fruit, others more earthy – but part of the greatness of Bucerchiale is its consistency, its recognizability from year to year, even as it ages and evolves. It starts out drinkable and just gets better and better, more and more interesting. I truly think it one of Italy’s finest red wines. I know I’m heaping on a lot of praise here, but for all the years I’ve loved this wine, to me it feels as if I am finally paying a debt I’ve owed for a long, long time.

*   *   *

Now for something completely different. I’ve been essentially out of commission for most of December and January because of a hip replacement that ran into some nasty complications, requiring a second surgery, hospital time, and a battery of painkillers and antibiotics that I seriously think could paralyze an ox. (Perhaps I flatter myself.) Anyhow, I am only now slowly returning to normal human functioning, and for some time yet I’m not going to be up to attending the wine events where I make many of the new discoveries that I tell you about here. Consequently, there will be longer than usual intervals between new posts on this blog, and I may have to outright take a few weeks off for R&R. So bear with me please: I promise you my usual irascible self will be back as soon as possible.