Wine Jabber

2010 Tasting Trip, Day 9: Bartolo Mascarello

3.2.10. What can be said about this winery that hasn’t already been said? Bartolo Mascarello was a legendary figure in the Barolo, one of the few producers who categorically rejected modernist winemaking, acting as a cultural memory of historical Barolo. He’s a larger-than-life figure who has assumed mythic figure since his death in early 2005. I never met him. But I’ve loved his wines and have a pretty serious collection of his bottles going back to 1958, and I’ve continued to add to this collection every vintage. He spent many winters hand-drawing labels for his friends that expressed his artistic and political leanings: “No Barrique, No Berlusconi” has become a classic of subversive wine etiquettes.

2010 Tasting Trip, Day 9: Paolo Saracco

3.2.10. Tuesday dawns beautiful – the first morning without sleet or rain since Saturday morning in Bolzano. We head out of Monforte for the 45-minute drive to Castiglione Tinella, north and east of the Barbaresco zone. This is serious Barbera and Moscato country – hillsides are packed with vines and the steeply undulating landscape opens and closes as we twist and turn up into the northwestern edge of the Langhe.

Moscato d’Asti can be the most delightfully peachy, appley, minerally lightly fizzy wine; it can also be absolute plonk. After years of tasting, I’m down to one producer occupying the qualitative summit: Paolo Saracco. There are other acceptable, even quite good producers, but none has the insane freshness, delight and vibrancy of Saracco’s bottling.

2010 Tasting Trip, Day 8: Giovanni Corino

3.1.10. This is my first visit to the Corino farm in Annunziata, at the recommendation of Silvia Altare. I’ve had wines from both this branch of the family (Giuliano Corino) and from brother Renato Corino’s label, but prefer this one of the two (more on why later). The original estate, founded by their father Giovanni, was divided after the 2001 vintage between the two brothers (Giuliano and Renato), with Giuliano keeping the original label and name. The wines here come from the La Morra hill and the cru sites are in Arborina and Giachini – both excellent spots.

The bottlings show the stylistic influence of Elio Altare, who mentored a group of younger winemakers, especially from the village of La Morra (others include Marco Marengo, Mauro Veglio and Renato Corino). Macerations are short and cool – 4 to 5 days at 24-25 centigrade – in rotofermentors, then separated from the solids and the wine finishes fermentation in steel tanks. The Barolo are all aged for 24 months in barrique of varying age, depending on the wine. Vineyard practices are consistent with Altare’s as well. The results are excellent: the wines here have the softness and perfume of La Morra fruit, but with the tannic backbone from the wood. These wines have plenty of acid and tannin to sit for long periods in good vintages.

The total production of the cantina is about 45000 bottles – not big. Unfortunately, they are not exported across the entire US market; it takes some digging to find them. Efforts to find the wines will be well-rewarded.

2010 Tasting Trip, Day 8: Cavalloto

3.1.10. I’ve written about Cavalotto wines before, most recently during Alfio Cavalotto’s recent visit to the US, when he stopped in Boulder and Denver. They are a resolutely traditional producer: all the Barolos see long ageing in huge oak botti. The family believes in making really ageable Barolo, and keeps the wines back an additional 2-3 years before release. When you open a Cavalotto Barolo, you are getting a historically correct wine: a core that is tannic and fresh, with great acidity and structure, wrapped around a center of ripe (but never jammy) fruit that never overwhelms. There is none of the aggressive oak of barrique. These are balanced, harmonious wines that are more elegant than sultry. Castiglione Falletto from the winery:

2010 Tasting Trip, Day 8: Altare

3.1.10. We start the day at the Altare farm in Annunziata, Silvia greets us and takes us on an impromptu tasting of the 2007 wines from tank. They had just been assembled from their constituent barrels a few weeks before and are resting, integrating and settling before being bottled later in the spring/summer.

Funny, at Altare, Silvia always gives a tour that goes backwards ...

2010 Tasting Trip, Day 5. Alto Adige, a Grand Day Out.

Friday morning dawns foggy and rainy. We meet for a quick breakfast, then off to Tiefenbrunner in a sprinkling rain. This is an estate I’ve wanted to visit for ages; I’ve really enjoyed their wines (and sold them at both my restaurant and wine store). This producer is a negociant: some of the vines are estate, the balance are growers who have long-term contracts with the Tiefenbrunner family. This allows them to better control what goes where, and how it is farmed. Keeping track of a few hundred vineyard sites is no easy task. As with most wineries here, the products are divided into three lines: Classic, Castel Turmhof, and Linticlarus, the top line.

The hamlet of Entiklar, about two klicks from Kurtasch/Cortaccio, is tiny – a few dozen houses huddled together about a hundred feet above the valley floor on the side of the alluvial fan. Castel Turmhof is the name of the old “castle” – really it is a big fortified farmhouse, charming as hell on a rainy day. Cristof Tiefenbrunner greets us as we arrive. We take a quick tour through the ageing cellars and winery. There have been experiments with rotofermentors, but most fermentation seems to be done in upright tanks, some with automatic punch-pown hydraulics built right into the apparatus. It all looks very sci-fi from a 1950’s movie – in a good way. And as we shall see, this winery has an amazing little bit of history that was very sci-fi when first brought online.

2010 Tasting Trip, Day 4. Südtirol: Negociants and Cooperatives

Bolzano – Bozen in German – is a different world from the rest of Italy. The principal language is German, the surrounding terrain alpine, the cooking a mélange of Italian and Germanic influences, the people reserved. The region, Alto Adige or Südtirol, has been tossed back and forth between empires and countries before settling – a tad uncomfortably - into Italy after the First World War. For me, the Germanic vibe makes me feel instantly at home: it has a familiar rhythm and the language was my second, from going through first and second grade in Switzerland. We have left pasta country! (Pasta here is practically inedible after the glories of the past week – though still better than in the US. In the Alto Adige, knödel or spatzle are the side of choice.)

A note about wineries in the Alto Adige (also called the Südtirol). White wines rule, though reds are gaining in importance. Aromatic whites are the best known of the region, led by Gewurztraminer, which takes its name from the village of Tramin, about 20km south of Bolzano. Typically, a winery will have a lot of different selections: up to 25 or 30 in some cases. Most production (70%) is operated by village cooperatives, then negociant houses (25%); only 5% of the production is by small grower-producers. Quality is generally high: the co-ops are, for the most part, well-run and put out big quantities of admirably high-quality product. Many larger producers organize their wines into three tiers of quality. At some wineries we taste 25 wines – so only the standouts are mentioned.

2010 Tasting Trip, Day 2. Grappa Encounter

Up and at ‘em early as we have an hour to drive to Breganze. Fausto Maculan’s winery is always a highlight on the trip as the winery is both nice-looking and a very efficient workplace, and the wines are delicious. Angela, Fausto’s daughter, takes us through the winery – Fausto’s remote-controlled hydraulic punchdown machine is the usual hit, and cellar is gorgeous – the off to the offices for a tasting. One of my favorite white wines in the world is his Vespaiolo, made from the grape of the same name. It is an amazing honeyed blend of citrus, flowers and ripe fruits wrapped around a core of melons and honeysuckle – balanced by incredibly refreshing acidity. I buy a case to leave at my apartment here. Also excellent this year is the Altura, a barrique-aged Pinot Noir, Crosara (100% Merlot, and I love it, go figure), Fratta (Cab-Merlot blend), all the sweet wine offerings, the Pino & Toi, the Ferrata (Sauvignon Blanc). The only one I don’t completely love is the Costadolio, a rosé of Merlot, which has a touch of that grape’s green pepper and not enough bright strawberry to make me love it completely. A great visit!

2010 Tasting Trip, Day 1. Valpolicella

Day 1 of tasting. (In the interest of clarity and brevity, I only mention the highlights of our tastings. If you’re curious about other wines, drop a note in the comments section at the end of the post.)

Our usual stops on day 1 are with Valpolicella producers. First stop is Allegrini, in the town of Fumane, where Christian takes us up the hill to the La Poja vineyard – gorgeous in the swirling clouds coming off Lago di Garda – and then down to the “Palazzo della Torre” property where the family is busy restoring the historic property. La Poja is a unique wine – it is made from Corvina, the same grape as Amarone, partly dried (raisined) and then fermented to full dryness (despite its name, Amarone usually contains a bit of residual sugar). The La Poja vineyard was carved out of the top of a hill, and has incredible sun and air – the grapes stay healthy, get plenty of breezes to combat rot and help cool them down at night, and are harvested at incredible levels of ripeness. The La Grola vineyard is just below this and only slightly less well-exposed. At less than half the cost of a bottle of La Poja, the La Grola bottling is an incredible value. We taste through the lineup back at the winery with Christian – standouts are the La Grola, La Poja and the Recioto, and amazing and balanced red dessert wine. Overall, I consider Allegrini to be a modern winery – they vinify for bright fruit, relatively low acid, and are not shy about the use of new French barrels – and this visit confirms this opinion. The wines are uniformly delicious and drinkable.

More Cavallotto

Alfio Cavallotto, with whom I visited last week and whose wines are the subject of the previous post, was back in town the Thursday before the holidays. We met with his importer at Sushi Sasa in downtown Denver for lunch. Funny - my fist meeting with Alfio was several years ago when our mutual friend Silvia Altare decided we were all going to drive to Liguria from Barolo for a dinner of ... drumroll please ... raw fish. In the coastal areas of Italy, fish is often served uncooked, just dressed with a bit of olive oil and salt, and sometimes a bit of lemon juice. The restaurant, Buco di Bacco in Pietre Ligure, was fabulous, not least of which was the amazing list of champagne, as well as the owner, who sized us up the moment we walked in and then brought us, without consulting anyone in the group, the bottle of Champagne he thought we would enjoy the most. It was a great meal - the antipasti of raw and slightly cooked seafood and fish ran to about 15 plates, and so we just split a single pasta afterwards and skipped the secondi entirely. In any case, Alfio was great company at that dinner, and we've kept up contact since. He's a most interesting and really intelligent guy - I like people who, when they decide they are interested in something, dive into the deep end, head first. He's like that.