A Venerable Grignolino – Age 51

I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to try it. This 1973 Cavalotto Grignolino, #4 of the special horde dubbed Tom’s Treasures, has been calling to me ever since I bought it.

Grignolino has become, in my mind, an archetypal, maybe the archetypal, Piedmontese wine. It’s a very ancient grape. Back in the 13th century, it was probably the most important grape in the whole Piedmont. Now it’s endangered and has almost disappeared, replaced largely by Barbera. But still, in the right place and the right hands, Grignolino is capable of yielding a lovely wine.

I have come to relish the variety, but I knew this was probably the riskiest of the bottles I chose. Grignolino is never a big wine, and it’s relatively low in alcohol, but it does have ample tannin and acidity, so there is a reasonable chance it could take some bottle age. As far as I knew, all the bottles I bought had been well cellared, and Cavalotto is a seriously good, traditionally minded winemaker. Who else would take the trouble these days to vinify Grignolino? So I had a fifty-fifty chance this 1973 would still be drinkable. Speriamo.

Well, I’m delighted to say that the wine was a complete winner from the moment I pulled the cork. A generous aroma floated out to greet me. A bit prune-y, to be sure, but definitely alive and welcoming, as its subsequent performance with our dinner amply showed.

The meal we were having that evening wasn’t designed to show off a Grignolino. The gaminess of the braised lamb shanks we were making wouldn’t really highlight its virtues. Grignolino is pale in color, light in body, and delicate and intriguing in flavor: not forceful, not a powerhouse. This one had only 12 degrees of alcohol and over 50 years of age, so no matter how alive it was, the lamb might overpower it. At least that’s what my last-minute jitters feared.

My worries were all unfounded. That ancient Grignolino more than held its own with the lamb shanks. It continued evolving and opening in the glass, as its initial pruneyness receded and surprisingly youthful fruit flavors came forward – cherry and currant and, very unexpectedly, strawberry.

We were bowled over by how much vitality this Grignolino showed, particularly when we tasted it with a cheese course. We had a young Manchego and a youngish Greyson, and the Grignolino showed its richest fruit with them. It never gave the slightest sign of fading or fatigue. From start to finish, it was a joy to drink.

I haven’t had much experience with mature Grignolino – very little, to be truthful – but this bottle taught me a lot. Biggest lesson: If I were several decades younger, I’d start cellaring Grignolino now.

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Grignolino Rising

Grignolino is the name of an uncommon indigenous Italian grape variety and the wine it makes. Both, obscure for many years, are starting to cause a bit of a stir in wine circles.

It’s an ancient variety, with solid documentation of its presence and importance back to the Middle Ages: In all probability, it’s much older than that. Native to the Monferrato zone in the Piedmont, it is now almost rare, though it was once one of the most widely grown varieties and most prestigious wines of that whole area of Italy – a zone that now includes the far more famous Barolo, Barbaresco, and Barbera. Indeed, many of the fields that now grow Barbera were once the home of Grignolino, which has been steadily ousted by that heartier and more prolifically bearing variety.

Grignolino grape clusters

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It’s a wonder to me that any Grignolino is cultivated at all. Everything I read about makes it sound like a horror of a grape to grow. In her Wine Grapes, Jancis Robinson, who shows almost no regard for the variety, notes that it ripens unevenly and is “susceptible to powdery mildew and especially to botrytis bunch rot and sour rot.”

Ian d’Agata, who likes Grignolino’s wines, gives more details about its problems in his Native Wine Grapes of Italy, saying:

• it needs very sunny sites, which puts it in direct competition with more profitable varieties like Nebbiolo, and “it also needs well-ventilated sites, to ward off the risk of rot due to its compact bunch;”
• it “has a huge amount of intravarietal variability;”
• “many of the older grapevines are also virus-affected, and the cultivars suffer from millerandage;”
• it “succumbs easily to common grapevine diseases and yields generally very little juice.”

Given all that, you might wonder why anyone goes to the trouble of growing it.

Yet many winemakers I’ve spoken to have a real fondness for the variety. Bartolo Mascarello and Pio Boffa, I remember, had an affection for the wine, and both made splendid examples of it. Boffa felt strongly that it formed an important element in Pio Cesare’s identity as an authentic and traditional Piedmontese winery.

Because of growers like Mascarello and Pio Cesare, small but significant pockets of Grignolino still survive, principally in the Monferrato zone, and there is now a small but significant revival of interest in the grape. That’s because the wine it makes is, at its best, distinctive and distinguished. A good majority of the wine lovers who get a chance to taste it love it.

Ian d’Agata, for instance, rhapsodizes about it. He calls it “a lovely variety, one of the prettiest in Italy” and says it exudes “a lovely aroma of fresh flowers, small red berries . . . and spices” and “it is blessed with high, refreshing acidity and crisp tannins that leave the palate feeling fresh and clean.”

That touches some of the important bases for Grignolino’s virtues, but to my mind it also leaves out some important considerations. It makes Grignolino seem too simply pretty, too frail. For sure, Grignolino is the very opposite of a powerhouse wine: grace and nuance are what it is about. But it doesn’t lack guts.

A bottle of Oreste Buzio’s 2020 Grignolino del Monferrato Casalese that I opened last week showed a lovely light strawberry-ish color and aroma. In the mouth, it was strawberry-ish too: light and refreshing, but still with evident depth and complexity. It made a delightful dinner companion to a grilled scamorza first course and was equally at home with a dish of pasta all’amatriciana.
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It would be easy to describe Grignolino as a perfect summer wine, but that would underestimate it severely: Its big acidity and equally big tannin make it adaptable to all sorts of food, as I found when opening another Grignolino, a bottle of La Casaccia’s Poggeto, also Grignolino del Monferrato Casalese, also 2020.

Visually, aromatically, and palatally, this was a perfect example of the breed. Though not an optimum companion to a rare steak, it dealt reasonably with the meat, and then bloomed with the cheese course. It almost made love to a delicious, runny Robiola. And it even matched comfortably with the plum cake that followed. This is a fine, versatile wine, not only at home with dishes of all sorts, but also completely enjoyable all by itself.
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You may happen on a bottle of Grignolino that is very dark, perhaps even with high alcohol, but that is an aberration. The classic Grignolino is light in color, just around 13 degrees of alcohol, and easy and refreshing on the palate, yet structured and substantial with all that acidity and tannin. It’s an odd red wine, an outlier, a maverick – maybe even a paradox. That’s all part of its considerable charm.

Despite the growing interest in Grignolino, there is still not a lot of it even in Italy, so it won’t be easy to find in the US. If you come across one, do try it. It’s very different from most of the red wines you’re used to – and we know what a great pleasure it is to find a new wine to add to our repertory.

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Enjoyable Everyday Wines II

I’m posting now about the inexpensive case of mixed, everyday red wines I put together as a complement to the dozen everyday white wines I talked about two posts back.

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We drink a lot of white wine at Casa Maresca, but we consume even more red. I’d guess that two out every three, maybe three out of four, dinners we make call for red wines – and since I care strongly about making the wine and food play happily together, it means I like to keep a good variety of red wines on hand. And that means, of course, reasonably priced wines, for all the obvious reasons.

Enough prologue: Here’s the list.

• Barale Barbera d’Alba 2017 Castlé
• Barale Dolcetto d’Alba 2017 Le Rose
• Bodegas Olarra Rioja Reserva 2010 Cerro Anon
• Cà Lustra di Zanovelli Marzemino 2017 Belvedere
• Centopassi Nero d’Avola 2016 Argille di Tagghia Via
• Château de Plaisance Anjou Rouge 2017 Entre Copains
• Cuvée des Galets (Côtes du Rhône) 2016
• Filipa Pato (Vinho Tinto Bairrada DOC) Baga 2017
• Oreste Buzio Freisa del Monferrato 2017
• Oreste Buzio, Grignolino del Monferrato 2017 Casalese
• Villa Sant’Anna Chianti Colli Senese 2015
• Viña Real Rioja Crianza 2015

In selecting this batch of wines, I was not trying to be experimental, to try new wines or kinds of wines I’m not familiar with. Food compatibility was the goal, and compatibility with the kinds of food we cook every day was the guiding principle of selection. Hence the preponderance of Italian wines on the list, and especially the large presence of Piedmontese wines, which I think are particularly food-friendly, and which – happily – are available in good variety in the New York area.

Barbera and Dolcetto I find are especially useful. Barbera’s medium body and high acidity make it compatible with an extraordinary range of foods, from – to choose a few random examples – asparagus frittata to tomato-based sauces to grilled sausages or even steaks, especially gamy cuts like skirt steak or hanger steak. Dolcetto is softer-bodied and far less acid, and it loves buttery sauces, mushrooms, more delicate meat – especially veal in any form.

Nero d’Avola is also medium-bodied, and on the palate feels and tastes Merlot-ish. Its strong suits are stews and brown-sauced casseroles – really any dish that isn’t aggressively sauced or spiced.

Even more useful – the utility infielder of red wines – is that perfectly named Anjou red, Entre Copains – “among pals,” which is how I envision large quantities of this wine must be drunk on its home turf. It’s 100% Cabernet franc, which is a Loire valley specialty, and this is one of most welcoming versions of it I’ve encountered. Its pleasing, soft, generic red fruit would match with anything from a good pizza on up the culinary scale to simple roasts and grilled meats. It’s practically the definition of an enjoyable everyday wine.

The Côtes du Rhône wasn’t quite that all-niches useful: By itself, it was a fairly light, high-acid Rhône, with cherryish fruit and a good finish, but it rounded nicely and gained some flesh with food, especially with cheese.

The Baga from Filipa Pato was also surprisingly soft on the palate and versatile with food. It stood up well, for instance, to mideastern spiced lamb meatballs and to Indian chutneys and pickles. Filipa is the daughter of Luis Pato, the acknowledged master of this grape in Portugal, and with this particular wine she has chosen a different path from that of her father’s formidable bottles.

The Grignolino and Freisa are more specialized wines that I couldn’t resist buying, since I don’t encounter them that often. Both are light-bodied, light-fruited reds ideal for warm weather quaffing, which is exactly what I’m saving them for. I should have done that too with the Colli Senese Chianti: These are always at-most-medium-bodied and fruity, with a touch of Sangiovese elegance, but this bottle was a tad too light for matching with cold weather dinners.

The Marzemino was another wine I selected simply because I don’t get many chances to taste it. This one turned out to be a big, not entirely balanced wine, black-plum fruited and a touch hot: It loved steak and mushrooms, but wasn’t too happy with anything else.

The two Riojas – Crianza and Reserva, at opposite ends of the aging spectrum – were both a bit disappointing. I love Rioja and find it very useful as a dinner wine, but of these two bottles the Reserva was too young of its kind and yet still too important for everyday utility, while the Crianza had been exposed to too much oak, which diminished its freshness and charm. I won’t give up on Rioja, however: I’ll just have to sample some others.

And there’s my necessary excuse to order some more wine. Diane, look away.

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