Wining in Rome

Rome has many charms, but an abundance of great wine is not one of them. Once upon a time – my brother and I first visited Rome in 1964, so this is history, not fable – your wine options in most trattorias were rosso or bianco, both vino sfuso – that is, drawn from a barrel or demijohn, not from a bottle. The red was usually some form of Chianti and the white was almost always brown (from rapid oxidation, then a serious problem for Italian white wine) and usually some form of Frascati.

Much has changed for the better since then. The white wine now really is white, and almost invariably young and fresh and charming. And although now-much-improved Frascati is still ubiquitous, most trattorias – and certainly anything calling itself a ristorante – will also offer several other options from other parts of Italy. Red wine lists seem to have grown even more, now providing good choices of many varieties from all over Italy – including, at long last, a growing representation of indigenous Lazio (Rome’s region) bottlings.

The selection at the Cul de Sac wine bar

Nevertheless, really deep wine lists are still few and far between, and the lover of older wines has to search pretty hard to find a mature bottle of almost anything. So when Diane and I went recently to Rome for a week of pure vacation – I promised no winery visits, no tasting sessions – we contented ourselves mostly with the kinds of wines that provide plenty of pleasure without needing long cellaring. Rome offered many of those.

We tried many young Frascatis, of course, and all were genuinely charming, with the light floral/mineral nose and palate characteristic of the breed. One of the most interesting, which we tasted at the Trimani wine bar, was in fact not a Frascati but an IGT Lazio wine from Casale Certosa. It was a 2014 (almost all the whites were 2014, a very few 2015) Alborea, a rich, lightly golden wine of greater than usual intensity. It was blended from Grecchetto and Malvasia Puntinata, the latter grape a Lazio specialty and usually an important component of Frascati. I don’t think this wine is imported to the US.  One of the advantages (and limitations, from a wine journalist’s point of view) of drinking in Rome is the opportunity to taste wines, both kinds and producers, that don’t always make it across the pond.

Other whites that we enjoyed included a lovely light, refreshing 2015 Pigato from Liguria (Pigato is the regional name for Vermentino), a characteristic Falanghina from Benevento by Vinicola del Sannio, and a 2015 Mastroberardino Fiano – the latter, of course, in a distinctly different weight and quality class from the lighter more apéritif style of the preceding wines.

BTW, we tasted a lot of these wines by the glass at two of our favorite places in Rome to get a light lunch: the wine bars Cul de Sac and Angolo Divino. Both offer a splendid array of cheeses and salume and light dishes, though at both you can order more substantially if you wish. Either way, you can taste glasses of as many wines as you have time and capacity for, from a well-chosen list, with many, many more wines available by the bottle, should you opt to make an afternoon of it.

Everywhere we dined in Rome, our choices for red wine seemed much richer than for whites. The red wine situation, it’s fair to say, is happily more complex than the white. We drank a number of familiar standbys, of course – a 2009 Mastroberardino Radici Taurasi, for instance, though that turned out to be infanticide: That bottle had years of development before it.

We also drank a 2007 Montevetrano, which was a lovely representative of this unusual (for Campania) blend of Cabernet, Merlot, and Aglianico. It was evolving beautifully, but it too had years of maturation to go. The slightly disappointing restaurant at which we drank it provided a wonderful instance of just how thin wine knowledge is even in seemingly better places. When I asked for a bottle of Montevetrano, our waiter didn’t recognize the name, and didn’t know it was on his wine list. I pointed it out and explained it was a Campanian wine. He  looked and said “No; this says it’s from Salerno.” – He didn’t even know Salerno is in Campania. After that he disappeared for a while and, apparently after consultation with someone more knowledgeable, returned bearing the bottle and self-importantly informed me that this was one of Italy’s greatest wines – which, of course, was why I had ordered it in the first place.

Most of the reds we enjoyed were younger than those two, however. One stand-out was a 2013 Villa Simone Cesanese – a native Lazio grape – that was soft, fresh, and fruity, with some real depth and excellent varietal character. We liked that so much we ordered a second bottle and made that dinner last. Another very distinctive regional wine, this one from the Amalfi coast, was 2012 Quattro Spine Costa d’Amalfi Rosso from Tenuta San Francesco. Again, I don’t know if this wine is available in the US, but it’s definitely worth seeking out, whether at home or abroad. It was an intriguing blend of Aglianico, Tintore, and Piedirosso, very dark, rich and deep, powerful and elegant. I’d love the chance to taste an older bottle.

The oldest bottles we had on this trip we enjoyed at Fortunato del Pantheon, and at Checchino dal 1887. At the former, our waiter walked me into the attached enoteca (a new development since we’d last dined there), where the sommelier unearthed a 2007 (not so old, but hey! we’re in Rome) bottle of Maurizio Zanella Rosso del Sebino. A blend of 50% Cabernet sauvignon, 25% Merlot, and 25% Cabernet franc, and almost inky dark, it was big, round, and soft, with very soft tannins, and tasted of mature black fruits. It proved an excellent companion to our dishes of tagliarini with white and black truffles.

By far the most interesting red wine of our trip was the sommelier’s suggestion at Checchino. This was no surprise, because it has one of the best wine lists in Rome, and when asked for a more mature wine, Francesco Mariani (one of the brothers who own Checchino) suggested a 1983 Colle Picchioni Rosso (as it turned out, the same wine he had served my friend and colleague Charles Scicolone just a week before ).

This is a Lazio wine, grown and vinified not many miles outside of Rome. It’s probably – firm data is hard to come by – a blend of the native Cesanese with Merlot and maybe Sangiovese, maybe Aglianico, maybe Cabernet; in 1983 things were still pretty loose in Lazio (Charles thinks it’s all international varieties; I’m not so sure). Francesco knows his stock: Whatever grapes are in it, this wine turned out to be perfect choice with our food, initially delicate but growing in strength as it opened. Pale garnet with an orange edge, it looked and smelled like a mature wine, the nose almost delicate. On the palate, very balanced, and even lively, with still fresh fruit suggesting dark berries that lingered into the elegant finish: a really lovely bottle of wine.

Diane has blogged about the meals we ate in Rome, so the palatally curious can see what kinds of food went with the wines I’ve been talking about by clicking here.

One final word: None of these wines was expensive, especially not by New York standards. The older wines cost far less than new vintages sell for at retail here, which gives you some sense of just how outrageous the price-gouging is in American restaurants. And in even the busiest, most touristed Roman restaurants, the sound levels were such that the two of us were able to speak in normal tones, which gives you some idea of what a deliberately manipulated environment most American restaurants are providing. As one of my old teachers used to say, verb. sap. sat. Save your money, and dine out in Europe.

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Convergence: Nostalgia and Preserving a Patrimony

I recently attended a seminar, sponsored by Banfi, on the subject of saving some Italian wines whose continued existence is threatened by a variety of modern phenomena, even including, in some cases, their own popularity. Such paradoxes aside, this is an important topic, and the Banfi presentation highlighted it with four wines that constituted a kind of nostalgia trip for me, a sort of where-are-the-snows-of-yesteryear experience with, for a change, a happy ending.

The wines were Albinea Canali FB (for Fermented in Bottle, which it is) Lambrusco di Sorbara, Luna Mater Frascati, Palari Faro, and Targa Riserva Marsala – four wines utterly different from each other but alike in how near they have come to slipping under the waves of fashion and disappearing into wine’s dead letter office – to thoroughly garble a metaphor. Language sometimes gets away from me, but I usually have a firm grasp on my glass.

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Albinea Canali FB Lambrusco di Sorbara

Many of my readers will remember clearly when Riunite Lambrusco was one of the largest selling wines in America. At its peak, tens of thousands of cases a month were being consumed. That wine was the sweet version of Lambrusco, and its amazing popularity effectually killed the American market for dry Lambrusco, the premier exponent of which was – and is – Lambrusco di Sorbara. A lot of sweet Lambrusco is still being purchased here, but the dry version has survived and is starting a comeback.

In contrast to the brashness of the sweet Lambrusco, Lambrusco di Sorbara is dry, delicate, and very elegant – a pleasing light wine to serve as an aperitif with any sort of hors d’oeuvre, or simply to sip as a cocktail. A niche wine, perhaps, but the niche is a big one, and the wine is pleasing enough to drink right through any light meal. The bottle of Canali FB that was poured at the seminar was pale salmon in color and, having undergone its final fermentation in the bottle, was unfiltered, fully dry, and with all its fresh fruit intact.

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Fontana Candida Luna Mater Frascati

The Fontana Candida Luna Mater was a 2011 bottle chosen to show just how well this wine can age. Really heavy nostalgia here: Frascati has always been the white wine of Rome, and in the days of yore it was one of the most popular white wines in America. Demand exceeded supply, and producers began overcropping or using any grapes they could lay their hands on. Consequently, many bottles of Frascati eventually devolved into lightly alcoholic water, and its American market disappeared.

But Fontana Candida soldiered on. The firm had been the first bottler of Frascati, and it now accounts for 40% of Frascati production. These days, it is fighting a war on two fronts: one to reclaim the reputation of properly vinified Frascati, the other to physically save the Frascati zone from Rome’s ever-encroaching urban sprawl. The only way to prevent small growers from selling their vineyards to developers is to make it more profitable for them to grow grapes, so Fontana Candida is working with growers both in terms of technical support and in the solid cash terms of paying premium prices for superior grapes.

Luna Mater is a key element in Fontana Candida’s campaign. Meticulously and painstakingly vinified by an intricate and lengthy process* from selected grapes, all from prime vineyards on the volcanic hills that surround Rome, Luna Mater evokes decades-old memories of charming, refreshing Frascatis, sipped on hot summer afternoons on cafe terraces in a quieter, far less touristed Rome than we will ever see again. Medium-bodied, aromatic, mineral on the palate, elegant and light, Luna Mater recalls not so much the snows of yesteryear as the bright sunshine of summers past.

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Palari Faro

Palari is the name of both the estate and the wine; Faro is the DOC. The name derives from the lighthouse (faro) of Messina, in whose zone the vineyards are located. When that DOC was on the verge of being swept off the books some 20 years ago, the great Italian wine journalist Luigi Veronelli challenged then-architect Salvatore Geraci to save it. Geraci had inherited his grandfather’s vineyards near Messina, and they needed heroic efforts to be brought back into production again. But the efforts were made, the DOC was preserved (the tiny Faro zone now has five working producers), and Geraci’s Palari started winning Tre Bicchieri awards almost from the get-go. Veronelli hailed Palari’s second vintage by comparing it to Clos de Vougeot. For me, it is probably the best red wine of Sicily (and I say this loving the red wines of Etna), however improbable its blend of obscure indigenous varieties from old, head-trained vines (Nerello Mascalese, Nerello Capucci, Nocera, Iacche, Acitana, Cor’e Palumba).

Signor Geraci tells me I was the first American journalist to visit Palari and the first in America to write about it: If so, I was amply repaid for my efforts by the taste of the 2009 he poured at the seminar. To call it fine is understatement: It was big, elegant, mineral, subtly fruited, and very long finishing, albeit still very young – a wine worthy of long cellaring, if you can keep your hands off it.

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Florio Targa Riserva Marsala

The Florio Marsala was a 2003 semidry specimen. Marsala, once as esteemed as Port or Madeira, fell victim to its identification with culinary uses and flavored bottlings. Outside of Italy it never developed the kind of cult following that saved Port from decline when taste turned against sweet, fortified wines. The Florio family, which was among the Italian founders of Marsala in the early 19^th Century, nevertheless persisted, becoming even better at their craft. They now make their Marsala only from the Grillo grape, which is vinified and aged with extreme care. The result, in the bottle poured at the seminar, was a beautifully Madeira-like wine – my first thought on tasting it was old Bual – sweet but balanced, with excellent acidity to keep it supple. I would love to serve it with some fine bloc foie gras, where I think it would work better than Sauternes.

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This was for me a very enjoyable session, not just for the quality of the wines served but also for the success of the mission each wine represented, for both of which Banfi should be congratulated. Italy is a treasure trove of fine wine varieties, and none of them should be allowed to fall out of use.

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* Handpicked grapes are divided into two lots. One is cooled before pressing to maintain aroma. The other is fermented on the skins in small oak barrels to preserve varietal character. A subsequent harvest, a few days later, adds hand de-stemmed whole grapes to the must to enhance aromas and flavors. (Source: Banfi website)

 

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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.

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Choosing Wine, Serving Wine, Mastering Wine

I visited the Museum of Modern Art a few days ago to view the new Magritte exhibition and look in on some old favorites. Among the latter I was struck in particular by a single Modigliani painting of a reclining nude.

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It was off in a corner, virtually unlooked-at by the hordes that were parading admiringly past the Picassos. As far as I’m concerned, that single painting was worth more than all the Picasso nudes – pink, blue, or cubist – in the rooms around it.

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For all the mannerism of Modigliani’s drawing and painting, that nude was real and alive and intensely human. She radiated sensuality, and by doing so redefined sensuality. Everything in the painting served her, presented her, celebrated her. All the Picasso nudes I looked at that morning also celebrated something, but what they celebrated was mastery – Picasso’s mastery, of his medium, his techniques, his subjects. The women in his paintings didn’t live, they served: They were Picasso’s subjects in every sense of the word. Still great paintings, mind you – but great in a way different from Modigliani’s. Many people will prefer them to Modigliani. I once might have myself, and I still respect them – but I love the Modigliani.

So, I realized, for me there are two whole different categories of esthetic response, and probably two different kinds of art that create them: admiration of the artifice itself, and a new or renewed understanding of what the artifact in a literal sense re-presents. (I’m sure the philosophers have beaten me to this apprehension: There is nothing new under the sun.)

Needless to say, it quickly occurred to me that that was true of wine too. (It’s been a long away around, but you knew I’d get there eventually, didn’t you?)

I realized that there are producers whose wines celebrate the grapes and their terroir, and there are producers whose wines celebrate the mastery of the winemaker. A few nights ago, Diane and I enjoyed a 1999 Bartolo Mascarello Barolo with some excellent broiled lamb chops, followed by a small plate of equally excellent cheeses. And a few nights later, we drank a lovely bottle of classic Frascati – Fontana Candida’s Terre dei Grifi – with some simple fried chicken, preceded by an even simpler shrimp cocktail. Both wines were absolutely lovely, and both perfect with the meals they accompanied; and both, on their different scales, were celebrations of the grapes they were made from.

Tasting them, I thought Langhe hills! and Roman campagna!, not who the winemaker was or what the cellar had done. That the winemaker and cellar, in both cases, must have done a lot – or refrained from doing a lot – was evident upon reflection, but it’s not what popped into my head with the first, or second, or third sip. A lot of Piedmont wine – and not much Frascati – is like that, whereas a lot of Tuscan wine seems to me to fall into the other category, where what strikes you first and foremost is what the winemaker has accomplished. Certainly some Chianti Classico is like that, and a lot of Brunello, and almost everything that comes from Bolgheri – not to mention 99% of classified-growth Bordeaux. This is not to say that these are lesser wines, but wines different in nature, and having a different impact, both on the palate and on the imagination.

All this caused me to realize that for years now I have been choosing wines for my dinners for two different reasons: one set of wines for the vivid presence of the grapes and where they came from, the other for the technical perfection of the winemaking. These are equally admirable but very different kinds of wine, and I saw too that I usually serve them in different circumstances: the first with deliberately simple foods of the best available prima materia, the second with more elaborately constructed dishes or more complex sauces. I choose the first combination because it showcases the wine without in any way detracting from the food, the second because the interplay of food and wine intensifies them both. This is not an ironclad rule, of course – I’m too much of an anarchist to believe in ironclad anything – but it has been for me a useful, if unconscious, rule of thumb.

So my little epiphany in front of Modigliani’s gloriously incarnated painting also made me aware of something I had been acting on for a long time without ever being fully conscious of it, and that realization in turn has given me a new handle on the wines I drink and serve. A long time ago I set out to tell people about Mastering Wine: clearly, I’m still in the process of doing so myself. I have no idea whether my current thinking is my final destination or just a way-station on the road, but it will be interesting to see what happens next.

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