A Tasting of Col d’Orcia Brunello

A few weeks ago, I was invited to a tasting of Col d’Orcia Brunello di Montalcino vintages, sponsored by the importer, Taub Family Selections. I was quick to accept: I admire Col d’Orcia’s wines, and it was a chance to meet the newest member of the Marone Cinzano family to join the winery’s team.

This is Santiago, son of Count Francesco Marone Cinzano, who is an old friend, a true gentleman, a canny winemaker, and a passionate guardian of the environment. Under Francesco’s guidance, the entire Col d’Orcia estate has been certified biodynamic – so, not only does it rank as the third largest acreage of vines in Montalcino but also stands as the largest fully biodynamic estate in Tuscany.

Santiago is a forceful spokesperson for all that: He is a knowledgeable winemaker, completely informed about the workings of the vineyards and winery, and in complete control of the ways Tuscany’s now constantly changing weather has affected all the vintages he presented. It was an illuminating and enjoyable morning that I and a handful of other wine professionals spent with Santiago and six fine examples of Col d’Orcia’s craft.

Here are the wines, with details of vineyard and vintage. I’ll keep the tasting notes to a minimum to avoid repetitiveness: These were all very fine examples of elegantly styled Brunello from one of the best sites in Montalcino: the southwestern slope, almost in the shadow of Mount Amiata and leaning toward Grosseto and the sea.

The first wine tasted was Col d’Orcia’s current release, the 2018 Brunello. Santiago described 2018 as a moist, mildewy year, presenting many difficulties that required careful vineyard management and great care at harvest. I found this a beautifully balanced young Brunello, with great freshness.

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The next wine, also in current release, was Col d’Orcia’s single-vineyard Brunello Nastagio 2018. Produced from a clay-rich five-hectare site of specially selected clones of Sangiovese, after fermentation Nastagio spends two years in botti, then one year in tonneaux, and finally one more year in bottle before being released. This treatment is designed to yield a wine of more immediate accessibility than most young Brunellos. It’s meant to be what most people in the trade would call a restaurant wine – not for long keeping but for current enjoyment. I found it similar in style to the first wine, perhaps a bit more intense or concentrated and definitely more forward – quite nice and very drinkable, but perhaps not as finely structured as Col d’Orcia’s classic Brunello.

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Santiago then offered us a preview: the not-yet-released 2016 Brunello Riserva Poggio al Vento. This wine comes from a vineyard planted in 1974, marked by sandy soil and limestone. Planting there was a brave choice then,  because seemingly everyone else was aiming for powerhouse wines, and Poggio al Vento’s soil and site give elegance rather than power. The cellar treatment reinforces this – long maceration, malolactic fermentation in neutral vessels, three years’ aging in large oak (Slavonian and Allier) and then three years in bottle. I thought this was a lovely wine, with beautiful, maturing aromas, deep cherry and sotto bosco flavors, and an amazing finish. Santiago thought this might be the best vintage of Poggio al Vento in Col d’Orcia’s history, which is saying something indeed.
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The fourth wine was the current release of Poggio al Vento, the 2015. In a blind tasting, you would spot this as a Brunello di Montalcino by its big earth-and-black cherry aroma. This was a fine wine, though it suffered a bit by following that exquisite 2016: A presenter more oriented toward garnering sales than providing information would have shown it first. As it was, it showed soft and round, with a little tingle from some still firm tannins and slightly less acidity than the ’16.
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The wine I had been waiting for came next: Brunello Riserva Poggio al Vento 2004. ’04 was a very great year in Piedmont and scarcely less so in Tuscany; and this example did not disappoint. A beautiful mature Sangiovese nose preceded a wine big but elegant: dark cherry flavors, with great acid/tannin/alcohol balance. All the component flavors were still fresh, but deep, and very long-finishing. I thought the cork should have been pulled hours before, because the wine still wasn’t fully open. This extremely fine wine still has years – maybe decades – of life before it.

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The final wine was the classic 1995 Brunello – classic in every sense of the word. Santiago said it was Col d’Orcia’s last old-style harvest: It began on October 9. Harvest is now a whole month earlier. The wine’s aroma announced its maturity: earth and mushroom and undergrowth predominated. In the mouth, it was round and soft, positively velvety, with wonderful porcini and sottobosco notes. It finished long, still showing black cherry and more underbrush, and still fresh and live – seemingly having years yet to go.

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These were great wines from great winemakers, and it was for me a great treat to be there to enjoy them, courtesy of a great friend, Bethany Burke, PR director of the Taub firm. Thank you, Santiago, and thank you, Bethany.

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A Miscellany of Mature Red and White Wines

Diane and I are in the process of bringing home the wines that we have stored off-premises for many years. Just having those goodies nearby has prompted me to – shall we say? — look into them, just to see how they’re doing. So far I have been very happy with the results, so here is a kind of interim report on some of the cellar gems whose corks I’ve pulled recently.
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Luis Pato Quinto do Moinho 2000
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This is a big, big, big wine! Coffee and currants in the aroma were followed by a rush of semi-soft tannins, black currants, berries, and coffee in the mouth. This single-vineyard Baga feels strikingly larger than its modest 12.5% alcohol would indicate. It’s not hot, but mouth-filling and complex, with a lingering coffee/berry finish – in all, a fine, distinctive wine. It went nicely with a risotto of mushrooms, onions, and Spanish chorizo. The cheese course (Pont l’Eveque and Taleggio) brought up all the wine’s sweet fruit.

Vinified from 100% Baga, an indigenous Portuguese grape, and by one of Portugal’s most renowned winemakers, Luis Pato, it seems to have decades yet in front of it. It strikes me as a great wine in all respects, and markedly different in flavor and accent from Spanish, French, or Italian reds: A strong reminder that I must pay more attention to the wines of Portugal.
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Col d’Orcia Brunello di Montalcino 2006
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As its name implies, Col d’Orcia sits above the Orcia river, in the extreme southwest corner of the Brunello zone. Its 108 hectares of Sangiovese grosso vines consistently yield one of the best Brunellos of the zone, and this one is no exception. It opened with a rich, vinous, cherry-and-earth nose. On the palate it felt big but soft and tasted of black cherry and tar/tobacco, very deep, with a long finish.

This was an excellent wine, very elegant and balanced, as I’ve come to expect from Col d’Orcia. Its fruit was very rich, almost sweet, combining youthful zest with mature depth. Clearly, a wine to enjoy now and for at least the next ten years: Col d’Orcia just seems to go from strength to strength.
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Sartori Amarone Corte Bra 2004
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Sartori is a third-generation, family-run winery. Its vineyards are in the heart of the Valpolicella zone, and it handles its vines and grapes in a very traditional manner, resulting in Amarones of great character. This one had an almost-Port-like aroma, big with dried fruits. On the palate, it showed soft and velvety, with fully mature and deep fruit flavors. Concentrated black plums predominated, but different layers showed as it opened in the glass or followed a bite of braised duck or vegetable.

True to Amarone style, this was a huge wine, but well-mannered. As it grew and grew in the glass, I found my wine-speak failing me, and all I could think of to say was “What an incredibly winey wine!”  When I lose language, you know the wine is amazing.
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Three great red wines. Now, I realize that August isn’t the ideal time to be writing about serious red wines. But as a concession to the season, I also opened some older bottles of white wine – including one you probably wouldn’t expect.
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Fontana Candida Frascati Luna Mater 2012
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This was lovely, fully live and fully mature: no primary fruit flavors, but plenty of mature ones — guava, spiced pear, mace, and more. It showed wonderful balance and smooth, mouth-filling flavor, plus a long, sapid, refreshingly acid finish of dried white fruits. As fine a mature white wine as one can imagine, it was delightful with olive bread and big cheeses.

Who knew Frascati was capable of this?  I at least should have: I’ve been preaching the gospel of the quality and longevity of Italian white wines for a long time, and I should have realized that the grapes that go into Frascati – Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasia – undistinguished as those may seem to be, are just as capable of yielding top-flight, long-lived wines as any other Italian white grape, when they are selected and treated with respect and care. A bottle like this one is certainly proof of that.
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Paumanok Minimalist Chenin Blanc 2014
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I had wrongly listed this wine in my storage sheets as Paumanok’s basic Chenin Blanc 2019, and so, without looking very closely at the bottle, I chilled it and served it with a very simple meal – which it totally blew away. I hope this was just my ordinary befuddlement and not the first sign of senile dementia.

On behalf of the soundness of my senses, I can say that from the first sip I realized this was a special wine – as, at last, an attentive look at the label quickly confirmed. Paumanok Vineyard’s Minimalist wines are vinified from specially selected lots of grapes, often left a little longer on the vines to attain complete ripeness, and then handled minimally in the cellar so that in the bottle they show the grapes and the soil, not the winemaking.

This bottle was maturing beautifully but still quite fresh, with classic Chenin fruit, dry and chalky yet still floral and hinting variously of apple and especially pear: a wonderful wine from Long Island’s North Fork, which perfectly captures the essence of Chenin Blanc. I’d guess it has years of life still before it. In my opinion, with Chenin Blanc, Paumanok does as well as or better than any American winery on either coast. My erroneous listing betrayed me into an unexpected treat. Would that all my mistakes were so lucky.
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Benanti Etna Bianco Superiore Pietra Marina 2012
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Benanti is a leader in fine Etna wines. The family firm has been totally committed to quality production on Etna for decades now, from long before Etna became celebrated and fashionable. For many of those years, Benanti’s winemaker was the now universally acclaimed Salvo Foti, and he consistently drew the best from the fine properties that Benanti farmed.

Pietra Marina is one of the most important of those. 800 meters up the eastern slope of Etna, planted entirely to Carricante, the indigenous white grape of the volcanic zone, Pietra Marina’s grapes yield juice of delicious concentration, capable of long life and steady maturation. This exemplary bottle was just plain lovely, mineral and fresh and bracing. It started with a beautiful aroma of dried pears and little hints of apricot. That followed through on the palate with some apple joining the fruit chorus, all buttressed by a tingling minerality, and all held in a wonderful balance of fruit and acid. For all the richness of its flavors, it was a restrained wine, not at all aggressive or assertive, but completely welcoming. I kept thinking as I drank it that I would really like to taste it alongside a grilled fresh porcini cap – hard to find here in New York, but maybe worth the flight to Sicily for.

Just for the record: Pietra Marina is capable of much greater aging than this 11-year-old. I’ve been lucky enough, during several visits to Benanti, to taste 20- and 23-year-olds that were totally fresh and live and as lovely as this bottle. Great terroir, great variety, great care, and great talent: it all makes a very great wine.

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In Praise of Wine Co-ops

The above is a title I once thought I would only ever use ironically. Back when I began as a wine journalist, when the Italian wine world was just beginning to awaken from its long slumber, an invitation to taste the produce of a regional cooperative was usually something I would firmly decline. Back then, most co-ops were turning out the least common denominator wine of their region – lots of it, designed to sell cheaply, to supply a supposed mass taste for nondescript plonk.

Well, the Italian wine world has transformed itself completely since then, and now co-ops are striving for quality production, and in most cases achieving it. Now, some of the most interesting tastings a wine maven can attend are those of cooperatives.

To understand how this came about, you need to know a little of the history of the co-op movement in Italy. For centuries, wine in Italy was a largely local affair, with growers – from the smallest sharecropper to the largest baronial estate – making wine mostly for personal and local consumption. A few of the larger growers bottled and commercialized their wine, but the market had nothing of its present-day dimensions. With a very few exceptions, Italian wine was very localized.

When Italy’s feudal sharecropping system, the mezzadria, finally ended (in the middle of the twentieth century!), small farmers fled the land for jobs in the cities, fields stood idle, and vineyards were neglected. A few producers with the resources bought up the land, consolidated the vineyards, and started commercializing their wines. The remaining smallholders, almost none of whom could afford to bottle their own wine, had little choice but to sell it to the big operations, usually – as you can imagine the market pressures – at a price more pleasing to the buyers than the sellers.

Enter the cooperatives. A few had been around for decades, mostly in the relatively few well-known northern appellations, where small growers had been able to merge their efforts and produce enough wine to be of interest to markets or distributors beyond their home region. Some of these are still active and very fine, especially in Alto Adige.

In Piedmont, one of the earliest and most successful cooperatives was Produttori del Barbaresco, which brought together small growers from all over the Barbaresco zone. It benefited from two key factors: a bevy of growers who worked many small but prized vineyards in prestigious parts of an important zone, and – maybe even more significant – enlightened leadership that from the beginning emphasized quality over quantity. Even now, in these days of superstar winemakers and much-hyped single-vineyard wines, the wines of the Produttori, whether basic Barbaresco, or Riserva, or any of the zone’s esteemed crus, stand in the front ranks of Barbaresco – which is to say, in the top echelon of Italian wine production.
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Produttori del Barbaresco can be regarded as the pacesetter, but other co-ops in regions famous and regions scarcely known caught on quickly. Co-ops offer many advantages for their members, far from all of whom are specialized in growing vines or making wine. Many are old farming families who love living on their land and working it. They still practice mixed agriculture. They may have only a few hectares, but some of it will be in grapes, some in wheat or vegetables, some in olive trees. Co-ops help them make a reasonable living, and they may belong to several, one for their grapes, one for their olives, one perhaps for their cheeses. Nobody gets rich, but they can all make a living and continue to enjoy the kind of life their families have followed for who knows how long.

Nowadays you can find cooperatives all through Italy, in zones both famous and not-so. Over half of Italy’s wine production comes from co-ops: I think that there are over 500 of them. Some may be quite specialized, but usually they produce the whole range of their area’s wines, and usually these days at quite a respectable level of quality.

A good example can be found almost anywhere. Tuscany, for instance, which is in all respects a quirky region of hyper-individualists, now hosts several fine co-ops in some of its most important zones. One whose wines I’ve been drinking lately is one of the smallest: Castelli del Grevepesa, in the Chianti Classico region, comprises only 18 growers. Not surprisingly, with most of them located in Panzano, Lamole, and Greve, they work mostly with Sangiovese.

Following the typical cooperative pattern, their newly harvested grapes are transferred immediately to the co-op winery where they are fermented, aged, and bottled by the co-op team – a general manager, an agronomist, and an oenologist. From those grapes they make Chianti Classico, Chianti Classico Riserva, and Gran Selezione wines. As a further economic boost for the co-op members, Castelli di Grevepesa also produces grappa and extra-virgin olive oil.
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Lately, I’ve been enjoying a lot of this co-op’s Clemente VII Chianti Classico Riserva 2018, a nicely balanced wine with lots of Sangiovese character and the kind of lively acidity that makes it a fine companion with all sorts of everyday lunches or dinners. And it has the added virtue of being quite inexpensive: It’s usually available for around $20, sometimes even less. To get a good reliable wine at that price, one I can enjoy with everything from hamburgers or steaks to, say, chicken pizzaiola: that makes me a very happy camper. You can see why I’m singing the praises of co-ops.

 

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Castello di Querceto

Tuscany is filled with superstar wines and winemakers, but it’s also filled – particularly the Chianti Classico zone – with superstars that haven’t yet been acclaimed. I’d nominate Castello di Querceto as one.

The site is quite a historic one. For many centuries in the Middle Ages, it really was a castle, a major fortification guarding key roadways, much fought over in the nearly endless small wars of the period. It was finally razed almost to the ground by the Aragonese at the beginning of the 16th century. Only vestiges of the castle remain, now incorporated into the residence of the owners. More than vestiges remain of the oak (quercia) forest that gave the site its name.
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The owners are the François family, of which Alessandro François is the patriarch. As the name indicates, the family is of French origin, now Tuscan and established at Castello di Querceto since the 19th century. The family has been actively engaged in wine production from its earliest days at the Castello, and it now produces a full range of Tuscan wines, from the most traditional Chianti Classico to a handful of Supertuscans (though, if I am remembering accurately, Alessandro hates that phrase, so maybe I should just refer to them as IGT wines).

I am a long-time fan of his Chianti Classico and Chianti Classico Riserva, which tend to fall into the well-structured, somewhat burly style of Chianti. These are archetypal bistecca Fiorentina wines, with the kind of muscularity and depth of flavor a big piece of beef like bistecca demands. They taste like the kind of wines that Querceto’s high-altitude, hilly, shaggily wooded site leads you to expect.
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The whole line of Querceto’s wines exudes toscanità. There are two Gran Selezione Chiantis, Il Picchio and La Corte, drawn from two distinctive vineyards. In addition, Querceto makes a very traditional Vin Santo, as well as a young and an aged grappa – neither of which I have been lucky enough to taste in recent years but the younger of which I remember very fondly for its heady aroma and warmth.

More of a surprise are some of Querceto’s IGT wines. Those I enjoy most are Cignale, a 90/10 blend of Cabernet sauvignon and Merlot, and the 100% Cabernet Sole di Alessandro. Both are big wines and want – and deserve – aging. Cignale is markedly robust, Sole – surprisingly for a 100% Tuscan Cabernet – the more polished of the two.

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It’s also the more adaptable. Recently we poured a 21-year-old bottle of Sole to accompany a fairly complex dinner, and it shone with every dish. Those ran from a starter of warm cauliflower salad, followed by a subtle braise of veal and oyster mushrooms in a rich, creamy sauce. It concluded simply with toasted hazelnuts, and the Cabernet played up perfectly to them all.

I had expected the wine to stand up well to each, but this performance went beyond that. Clearly, Tuscan acidity had a lot to do with the Cabernet’s ability to interact successfully with so many different flavors. Like the François family, Cabernet has adapted well to life at Castello di Querceto.

 

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2011 Brunello: a Chorus Girl or a Star?

When I was a kid, I was the sole Dodgers fan – Brooklyn Dodgers, as they were then – in a large family of Yankee fans. It scarred me for life and gave me a lifelong, unreasoning fondness for underdogs. Besides that, in wines I’ve also often been attracted to vintages that have been overshadowed by harvests more highly reputed or more vigorously hyped immediately before or after them.
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This penchant started way back when the 1966 vintage in Bordeaux and Burgundy was so ballyhooed that the next few vintages of both were barely able to find a market. I was just beginning to learn my way in wine back then, and those ‘66s, especially in Bordeaux, priced themselves clear out of my league – so I bought and drank the much less esteemed 1967s. And I continued to do so, very happily, for many years.

Those ‘67s were lovely wines, no matter which bank of the Gironde or what commune they came from. They were medium-bodied, balanced, and elegant, with wonderful typicity – pitch-perfect fidelity to their soils and grapes. Eventually, I caught up with a few of those much-ballyhooed ‘66s, and they were indeed wonderful wines. But they were wonderful in the way of very special vintages: the particular character of that great harvest dominated every other aspect of the wines.

So the ‘67s were perfect for me at that stage of my wine appreciation: Not only were they pleasurably drinkable and much more adaptable to more dining circumstances, but because of their typicity, they were much more educational. I learned more about the wines of Bordeaux from them than I ever could have from a whole suite of those exceptional ‘66s, and at far less expense.

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And by this commodious vicus of recirculation, I arrive at Brunello 2011. Poor-relation 2011 Brunello is bracketed by two greater vintages, 2010 and 2012. The Brunello Consorzio awarded both those vintages five stars, its highest ranking, while it gave 2011 only four, thereby disproving my private theory that the Consorzio always gave every vintage five stars, and immediately arousing the suspicion of every cynical wine journalist that 2011 must be pretty poor indeed, if even the Consorzio wouldn’t give it five stars.

My ingrained underdog sympathy quickly kicked in, however, and I tasted a few bottles of 2011, and guess what?  They were pretty good, and considerably less expensive than either 2010 or 2012 – so I bought a few bottles of several different estates, and put them away to let them rest and mature. Now, ten years on, seemed a very good time to see how they’re doing. They should certainly be past their dumb phase, and – if they are as good as I hoped – just starting to display some mature flavors.
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The first bottle I tried was from Ciacci Piccolomini d’Aragona, which is about as aristocratic a name as one can encounter in Montalcino. For many years, the property belonged to descendants of Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini – Pope Pius II – a Renaissance pontiff who was, among other things, responsible for creating the harmonious central piazza of the nearby town of Pienza (his birthplace). A few decades ago, the last survivor of the family willed the Montalcino property to its long-time winemaker, in whose family it has been ever since. With that much history in every bottle, I hoped for much from my theoretically lowly 2011.

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Not to prolong suspense, let me just say the results were mixed. The wine was good, maybe even very good, but not brilliant. My hopes were probably unreasonable. The wine showed some very characteristic Brunello features: a good nose of berries and underbrush; an initial rush of almost-bitter dark cherry flavors, younger than I had expected, round, balanced, and smooth in the mouth – but definitely rustic rather than in any way elegant. Sangiovese grosso indeed, I thought as I drank it.
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Mildly disappointed but undeterred, at the following night’s dinner I tried another bottle, this time from Col d’Orcia. This is another historic Montalcino property, now directed by Count Francesco Marone Cinzano, a man I knew to be equally passionately committed to his wines and to preserving the environment. The estate has been completely organic since 2010.

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This 2011 bottle was wonderful from the get-go: bright, fragrant, and fresh, with mixed dark berries on the nose and big, round, black cherry flavors in the mouth; structured beautifully with good acidity and soft tannins, mouth-filling but not at all heavy. This was a classic Brunello, as good as one can hope for, no matter how many stars the vintage was given.
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Now seriously encouraged, I thought to try one more example of 2011, so a few nights later I opened a bottle of Lisini. Lisini is for some Brunello lovers almost a cult wine. Made by a family with five centuries of roots in Montalcino and Chianti, and crafted in the most traditional manner, Lisini’s wines are for many experts the epitome of Brunello, the model of what Montalcino’s wines should be. This, I hoped, would be a real treat.

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Well, it was, but it wasn’t the perfect wine that its most ardent fans would expect.

It started with an intriguing, slightly tarry note in its aroma. A lovely dark cherry palate followed, smooth and round, with soft tannins and a long finish – unquestionably fine drinking. I’d call it a country gentleman of a wine. Italians would probably describe it as rustico-elegante, which is a useful phrase that I wish had a good English equivalent.

Many Brunello fans would argue that that is exactly what Brunello should be, and that is an opinion I respect but do not share. I prefer the greater elegance shown by the Col d’Orcia bottle, which I hope is an opinion that Lisini fans will respect even if they don’t share. When we are judging wines of this caliber, personal preferences loom large – even when we’re dealing with a supposedly “lesser” vintage like 2011. I’m very pleased with the way all three of these wines showed, and I’m glad I’ve got a few more 2011s squirreled away to comfort my (already upon me) old age.
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And a final word to the wise: While not all underdogs reward our support, enough “lesser vintages” do to make it a good policy to try them for yourself. Remember: You only taste with your own mouth – not mine or any other wine writer’s.

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Rocca delle Macìe: Chianti for Grown-ups

The Chianti Classico zone grows titles of nobility as profusely as it does vines, and the two are nowadays closely linked. Hundreds of years ago, marchesi, baroni, even principi may have earned their rank by successful careers as Florentine merchants or Lombard warlords, but nowadays they’re all winemakers, and most of them quite famous and accomplished as such. Which makes it all the more surprising and noteworthy to find that one of the now most prestigious and forward of Chianti Classico wineries is, by the standards of this historic zone, a rank newcomer, founded by an untitled “foreigner” – i.e., a non-Tuscan.

I am referring to Rocca delle Macìe, whose wines I suspect most of my readers have tasted and enjoyed. Founded in 1973 by Italo Zingarelli, a very successful Roman movie producer who had a lifelong dream of vines and wines, Rocca delle Macìe started with 93 run-down hectares, only two of which were in vines. From this less-than-inspiring beginning, the Zingarelli family has built up an estate that now covers over 200 hectares of vines and 54 more of olives spread over six locales, plus an elegant relais hotel.

Italo’s son Sergio, who has just finished a term as president of the Chianti Classico Consorzio, is now running the family business, and Rocca delle Macìe has become a fixture of the Chianti Classico landscape.

A little over 20 years ago, the family undertook a major renovation of the vineyards, seeking better microclimate/soil/Sangiovese clone matches for maximum quality in their wines. One result was the designation of the Le Terrazze vineyard in Castellina, which they consider their finest vineyard, as the source of their Chianti Classico Gran Selezione Sergio Zingarelli. Just recently, I was able to taste nine vintages of that wine, courtesy of Rocca delle Macìe’s American importer Palm Bay.

This was a very illuminating as well as enjoyable experience. The wines shown started with the 2010 vintage, followed by 2011, ‘12, ‘13, ‘14, ‘15, ‘16, ‘17, and ’18 – no cherry-picking of only fine vintages, but an honest display of nearly a decade of Gran Selezione wines. That line-up allowed us tasters to trace the evolution of Sangiovese from year to year, as well as to experience the continuity of the vineyard’s and the family’s style. The latter is quite classic. These wines, even in the lesser vintages, all showed beautiful Sangiovese character, with great restraint – no fruit bombs here – and balance. My thought at the time was that these are Chiantis for grown-ups, and I’ll stand by that.

Here are some brief notes on the wines, all Sergio Zingarelli Chianti Classico Gran Selezione DOCG, in the order we tasted them.

2010: Lovely wild cherry aroma; fine, elegant palate. Very nice Sangiovese acidity under-strapped by soft wood tannins. Long finish. A great vintage and a harmonious wine.

2011: A difficult hot, dry summer grudgingly yielded a good but not excellent wine, smooth and round in the mouth, but with a slightly cellar-y aroma. This vintage demanded much care and effort in the field and in the cellar.

2012:  Similar to the 2011, but slightly smoother and softer on the palate. Not great, but good.

2013: A step up from the preceding two vintages. Rounder and fresher both in the nose and on the palate. More pleasing and immediately enjoyable.

2014: Darker and more concentrated than the ’13, with its tannins nicely softened. Enjoyable now, with a good fruity finish. All the preceding vintages had been 90% Sangiovese blended with 10% Colorino; starting with 2014, this Gran Selezione became 100% Sangiovese.

2015: A good growing season makes a good vintage. This wine is very pretty, well-balanced and lively. You could almost call it perky.

2016: Not quite as fine as ’15, but still a lovely Chianti, with fine Sangiovese flavors and character. Opens beautifully in the glass.

2017: Very fresh smelling, with the palate equally fresh – dark cherry-ish flavors. A very young and pretty wine, from a growing season hot and dry, like ’11 and ’12. The vineyard team has clearly learned how to deal with that.

2018:  Smells more tannic, even though you’re not supposed to be able to smell tannin. Must be the new barrels. Big and soft, but still closed. It needs time, but it should be fine. Sergio called it “a classic vintage for Sangiovese.”

All these wines showed well, though 2010, 2015, 2016, and 2018 stood out. It was almost a shame to have started with the 2010, since it was the only one of these vintages that was, for this lover of mature wines, truly ready to drink. But that’s why cellars were invented.

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Color Me Surprised and Pleased: Selvapiana Fornace 2004

Indeed, surprised and pleased were exactly what I felt from my first taste of this relatively obscure bottle from Selvapiana.
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Selvapiana is a fine Chianti estate, probably the finest not in the Classico zone. It lies within the Rufina zone, northeast of Florence, and that area is totally different, climatically and geographically, from the Classico. It is hillier, and its hills are steeper and rougher than the long-domesticated ones that lie between Florence and Siena, the historical Chianti Classico zone.
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The Rufina zone is more heavily forested, and its forests are pines, not the decorous cypresses of Tuscan postcards. What grow beneath those pines are mountain laurels, clearly indicating a more acidic soil and a very different climate from that of the Classico zone. Needless to say, the wines that Sangiovese produces here are also different from the Classicos: they are bigger, fuller, with darker-toned fruit. Some call them rustic, but the best of them show no rusticity. Rather, they are graceful country folk, with all the strength and natural elegance that implies.
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For obvious reasons, I’ve always admired Selvapiana’s Chiantis. The estate’s decades-long relationship with consulting enologist Franco Bernabei, one of the acknowledged masters of Tuscan wine, has always coaxed the best from its Sangiovese. The wine Selvapiana calls Fornace (from the vineyard where it originates) has always been for me another matter, however.

Fornace is Selvapiana’s Supertuscan, a blend of non-Italian grape varieties that was originally concocted back when Supertuscan was a hot category and every serious wine estate had to make one to show that it was au courant. I acquired my bottle long ago, when I was preparing an article about Selvapiana and the Rufina zone for some magazine or other. I’ve never really approved of the Supertuscans – I hated the name – so for the article I focused on the zone’s Italian varieties, put my bottle of Fornace away, and completely forgot about it. Until, just recently, Diane was making a recipe that originated at Selvapiana, and I wanted to serve a Selvapiana wine with it. Imagine my distress when I discovered I had none of the wonderful Chiantis on hand, and just this dusty bottle of a wine I distrusted. Arrgh!

Well, no choice: I wanted a Selvapiana wine and this was what I had, so off went its dust and out came its cork. Two hours of breathing, and then into the glass alongside Diane’s delightful pasta dish. As I said before, color me surprised and pleased: It was a wonderful wine. Vinified entirely from French varieties – 40% Cabernet sauvignon, 40% Merlot, and 20% Petit verdot, I believe – though I could swear I tasted a little Syrah pepper in it. No matter. At 18 years old it was a complete wine, big, round, harmonious, and deep. It didn’t taste typically Tuscan, but it didn’t taste Bordelaise either: It was a third thing, entirely its own category, and completely enjoyable. It has given me something to think about, in terms of my distaste for French varieties in Italy – and it has certainly deepened my already immense respect for Selvapiana.
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Back to the Future: Burton Anderson’s Vino II

Burton Anderson has a new independently published anthology/memoir, Vino II. It is available on Amazon, and if you love Italian wine, you should get it, read it, and prepare for the exam: It will certainly be on any test I administer.

Sorry: that’s just the old teacher in me asserting himself.

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Vino II is a time trip back to what I more and more think of as the heroic age of Italian winemaking, when the sleeping giant finally awakened and shrugged off the rust and dust of centuries. Back in the 1960s, names like Sassicaia and Tignanello were scarcely known in Italy outside of Tuscany, and you could search for days in the best wine shops to find a Barolo or Barbaresco with a vineyard name on the label. All such stuff was in the future, and that future is what Anderson’s book is all about.

Anderson was not only an eyewitness but also, if you will, a catalytic figure, who by his interactions with winemakers and by his publications helped shape that future. The original Vino, published in 1980, was brilliant, nearly prophetic, in its selection of makers and wines and regions to present and explain. For most readers, it opened a whole new view of an Italian wine world that stretched far beyond Chianti in a straw flask and Verdicchio in a fish-shaped bottle.
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Vino II chronicles the great renaissance of Italian wine that followed. Anderson and I are just about the same age, but there is no question that, for English-speaking persons who love Italian wine, he is the father of us all.

How to talk about Vino II? It’s in part an anthology of articles that Anderson has written over the decades, all of them timely at the moment of writing and almost all of them just as relevant and telling today. These are woven into a chronological account of the revival of Italian wine and Anderson’s engagement with and too-often unrequited love for it. No: scratch that. Italian wine rarely let Anderson down; it was the commercial world of wine publishing that often did.

Anderson as a young man took tremendous financial risks to follow his love of the wines and the people who make them. You would think the importance of his work – the original Vino was and is a landmark book is the history of Italian wine – would have assured him a comfortable income from which to carry on, but that was never the case. Even the “raters” – the 100-point-score wine writers whom he despises — probably are better known today than he is; and he – who writes only in English – is probably better known in Italy than in either the US or the UK. Anderson is mordantly aware of the ironies here. Nevertheless, though he may have made some unfortunate financial decisions, he has also made some brilliant life choices, and we are the beneficiaries of those.

His stories, in Vino II, of conversations and dinners with the likes of Giacomo Bologna and Costantino Rozzi, with almost mythical winemakers like Giorgio Grai, owners and winemakers like Sergio Manetti, Angelo Gaja, and many, many more, all read like excerpts from the journals of Rabelais in Italy. Moreover, they illustrate very clearly how wide-open and wild-westish the world of Italian wine had become in the sixties and seventies of what is now the last century. Everything lay in the future: The present was all flux and change, with no surety about what would happen next. There were giants in those day, and Anderson ate and drank with them.

This book was a major nostalgia trip for me, but I know that for many people it will serve as an excellent – and vivid – introduction to the story of how Italian wine achieved the prestige it now has, and even more importantly how and why it has become so complex. The most amateur of wine drinkers knows to expect complexity from Burgundy and knows that there is a long tradition behind the most seemingly arcane of distinctions in French wine, but most wine lovers – and I include here the great majority of wine “professionals” – remain basically clueless about the great diversity of Italy’s noble varieties and the incredibly diverse geography and geology of the country that created and preserved them. As was true of Vino in 1980, Vino II is a great place to start pleasurably learning about them. Not to mention savoring the tales of the great individualists – and I emphatically include Burton Anderson among them – who created the marvelous cornucopia of fine Italian wine we enjoy today.

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Is Brunello Headed in the Wrong Direction?

To put you out of no-doubt-intolerable suspense, my answer to that question is yes.

I’ve been drinking some Brunellos lately that are getting positively burly – and that, to my mind, is definitely the wrong way for a Sangiovese wine to go. Sangiovese is a grape whose character is gracile, not muscular, like a sculpture rather than a quarry. Sangiovese makes a wine of elegance and suppleness, even delicacy, a wine of nuance and complexity, not a push in the face.
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It’s been a few years now since I’ve been able to attend the Brunello Consortium’s annual new release event in Montalcino, so I can’t claim to be fully up to date on the broad spectrum of Brunellos. This opinion piece is based on my recent experience of some young and youngish Brunellos, bottles from solid if not stellar producers, who represent to my mind a fair sampling of what the large middle ground of Montalcino winemakers have been up to in recent years – and I’m not happy with it.

Let me be clear: I’m not saying these are bad wines. Far from it. Many of the bottles I’ve tasted lately, wines like Val di Cava 2010 and Le Gode 2012 and Mastrojanni 2015, have been very enjoyable. But they have been big, and high alcohol, and they seem to be pursuing a model of winemaking that I think is a misdirection for Brunello, one that if followed to its logical conclusion will result in a wine that I for one will no longer recognize as Brunello di Montalcino.

Just the other evening, to test my palatal memory and to make sure I wasn’t imagining this whole problem, I opened a bottle of Donatella Cinelli Colombini’s Brunello Riserva 1999.

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(Believe me when I say I’m very aware of the difference between a mature wine and a young one. I’ve been doing this a long time, and I know how to taste a young wine to discern what its aging and maturation potential is. Almost all the reports I’ve ever written about Brunello new releases – and they have been many – have demanded that kind of palatal knowledge.)

Donatella’s wine was lovely, everything I think a Brunello should be: Balanced and mouth-filling, without being in any way heavy, rich with mature fruit flavors while still subtle and nuanced, complex and changing with every dish, from a spicy rabbit pâté to poulet Marengo (the whole deal, with fried bread and poached eggs), to a gorgeous ripe pont l’éveque. Never aggressive but always responsive, not insisting on its own primacy but establishing its greatness by its gracefulness.

That is exactly what I am not tasting in the younger Brunellos I’ve recently drunk, and that is what worries me. Maybe it’s resulting from global warming and the steadily increasing heat in many wine zones, with consequent super-ripeness. Or maybe it’s resulting from young winemakers playing their version of who’s the toughest kid on the block. I can’t answer that, and I’d be very interested to hear from other Brunello lovers about whether their experience tallies with mine and how they account for it.

All I’m really sure of is this: that I feel very strongly that the Brunello I have loved for many decades now is slipping away.

Kerin O’Keefe, in her landmark book, Brunello di Montalcino, describes her early experiences learning Italy’s great wines: “While I relished discovering those glorious Barolos, it was Brunello, exceedingly elegant and vibrant, with more complexity than muscle, that won my heart.” That’s an assessment that’s hard to better: lively, vibrant elegance, complexity and nuance foregrounded over power. I couldn’t agree more. What I’m worried about is that muscle – always easier to achieve than elegance, especially in warmer and warmer vintages – is pushing elegance out the door.

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Four Fine Fonterutoli New Releases

Who says I’m too old to believe in Santa Claus? Taub Family Selections just provided four samples of Fonterutoli’s newly released best wines for me to try, and that’s one of the nicest Christmas packages I’ve received in a long time. Vicoregio 36, Castello Fonterutoli, Badiòla – all 2017 vintage, all Chianti Classico Gran Selezione – and 2018 Siepi IGT are the bottles in question, and opening them was a big holiday treat.

Fonterutoli is the Mazzei family. That tiny hamlet in the heart of the Chianti Classico country has been the family seat since the middle of the 15th century, and the Mazzei have been deeply involved in Tuscan wine since at least 1435.

That adds up to many generations of wine know-how and experience, which the present generations have used to keep their wines at the forefront of Tuscan production. The Mazzei have steadily pushed for the improvement of Chianti Classico: They were deeply involved in the Chianti Consortium’s Chianti 2000 project for instance, one of whose results shows in the 36 clones of Sangiovese that make up Vicoregio. And Siepi was one of the earliest – for my palate one of the most successful – of what used to be known as supertuscans, the wines that are credited with pushing Tuscan (and subsequently all Italian) winemaking into the modern age.

(A necessary aside: I’m very happy that “supertuscan” as a phrase is fading from use. I’ve always thought that the real supertuscans are the wines made with indigenous varieties, chief of them Sangiovese: Brunello, Carmignano, Chianti Classico, Chianti Rufina, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano. Wines made from “international” varieties can be very fine, but they are rarely truly Tuscan in character. I would rate Siepi as one of the few exceptions to that, insofar as Merlot – its “international” component – has shown itself to be one of those varieties that have adapted best to the soils and climates of the Chianti Classico zone.)

I have been a steady admirer of Fonterutoli wines for several decades now, and there was nothing in these four bottles to change my opinion. With the proviso that all are very young and showing a small touch of bottle shock, they all impressed with their separate but equal expressions of their grapes and terroirs, and all promised interesting evolutions as they age.
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Vicoregio 36, Chianti Classico Gran Selezione 2017

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This wine originates in the Mazzei’s southernmost vineyards, in the commune of Castelnuovo Berardenga, and it reflects the huskiness of the wines of that area. It shows a rich, grapey nose, earthy, and a touch smoky (that may be the barrels), with a hint of dried figs. These elements all follow through on the palate. A smooth, round, mid-weight wine, with excellent Sangiovese character and a big, dry-fruit finish. Very fine for immediate drinking or keeping for five or more years.
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Castello Fonterutoli, Chianti Classico Gran Selezione 2017

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This is the family’s flagship wine, sourced entirely from the home vineyards surrounding the village of Fonterutoli. It displays the same aroma and flavor characteristics as the Vicoregio but feels lighter in body and higher in tone, simply more elegant overall – very typical of the best Chiantis from the heart of the zone. I tasted a wonderful zing of wild cherry in the mouth and the finish. An excellent wine, for immediate drinking or keeping for five to ten years.
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Badiòla, Chianti Classico Gran Selezione 2017

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The vines that make this wine grow in Radda at 570 meters, the highest altitude of any of the Fonterutoli wines. They are 100% Sangiovese, and they fill the wine with wild cherry notes from aroma through palate to finish. The other aroma and flavor components are like those of the two preceding wines, only more so, with an extremely long finish. This is about as elegant as a Chianti gets. Very, very fine: good drinking now but structured, I would guess, for a much longer haul.
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Siepi, IGT Toscana 2018

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Composed of 50% Sangiovese and 50% Merlot, this is a darker wine in all respects than the Chianti Classicos. It’s rounder and softer – smells and tastes of mulberry. On the palate, that mulberry merges nicely with the Sangiovese cherry. The wine is big and soft in the mouth (the Merlot showing its stuff), very composed and balanced. For all the Merlot, it shows some genuine Tuscan character in its fine acid balance. Truly, a one-of-a-kind wine, unique and fine.
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To sum up:  Siepi is a kind of wine I admire, but the three Chiantis are the kind of wines I love. Can’t help it: I’m old-fashioned – so let me wish you an old-fashioned Merry Christmas and a very Happy post-Covid New Year!

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