|
A Taste of
North-East Italy
26 March
2007.
To really appreciate the wines from Italy
they should be paired with food. Wine and food can't be
divorced so what better way than to get round the table
with a few friends, ensure a plentiful supply of Italian
salami, bresaola, Parma ham, pasta, parmesan cheese,
anyway you get the picture.
In true Venetian style we started the
evening with a Bellini cocktail, fresh peach puree
topped up with Bisol Crede Prosecco.
The wines that followed were a haphazard
collection roughly covering the geographical area
north-west and north-east of Venice and it shows how
versatile this area is in terms of wine style. Without
fail these were good examples, in some cases excellent
examples of what this area has to offer. Without a doubt
this area produces a sea of uninteresting, cheap and
basic wine, but with a little bit of care and looking
out for the quality conscious producers a much more
interesting class of wine can be found.
Soave Classico 2005
Azienda Agricola Suavia
Soave Classico DOC
Oddbins - £8.99
The DOC Soave was established in 1931
and now churns out around 50 million bottles a year from
just under 4000 different farms. Most of it pretty dire
bottom of the shelf it has to be said. This is one of
those areas in the Veneto, close to Venice where the
name of the producer is more important than the
classification on the label.
It has been said many a time that
classifications don't make great wine, producers do.
Some of those producers are so dissatisfied with Soave's
reputation for low quality and high yields that they
have decided to step out of the DOC altogether and make
wine under the lower IGT classification. Look out for
Roberto Anselmi and Pieropan for great
quality.
On to Suavia then. This very
small estate run by the three Tessari sisters consists
of vineyards on hilly land with a rich volcanic soil.
They make a top single vineyard Soave called Le Rive
which has had some oak treatment but its style may
not please everyone. My money is on this more basic
Soave, made totally in stainless steel from 95%
Garganega and 5% Trebbiano di Soave. Once the initial
smoky, sulphury character disappears, the nose develops
into ripe peaches and apricots, but there is also a
slight grassiness and minerality to it. On the palate it
is fresh with quite a bit of lemony acidity. It is soft
with a hint of bitter almond and develops beautifully in
the glass. Don't over chill this as you lose all the
complexity of which there is plenty.
Pinot Grigio 2004
Cantina di Avio
Trentino DOC
Inverarity Vaults - £7.95
Italian Pinot Grigio is immensely
popular in the UK and beyond. I suppose most of it is
easy drinking, quite neutral, with fairly low acidity.
Not really the attributes of a great wine, but at £3 a
bottle what can you expect? Pay a little bit more and
you can get the above example from Cantina di Avio.
This cantina sociale (like a cooperative) has 180
members farming over 600 ha. on decent sites just east
of Lake Garda.
On the nose this has light floral
notes. We picked up roses and lychees, descriptions
normally found on the more aromatic Gewurztraminers, but
a sign that this has a bit more character. Medium
acidity and a soft peachy palate make this a pleasant
wine, easy to drink on its own. Not greatly complex but
a bit more interesting than most.
Lis Neris - Gris
Pinot Grigio 2004
Lis Neris
Venezia Giulia IGT
Oddbins - £14.99
This is Pinot Grigio in a very different guise. Made
by one of Friuli's most reliable producers, Alvaro
Pecorari, whose wines regularly pick up awards from the
Gambero Rosso, Italy's foremost wine awards.
The wine
has not only been fermented in oak, but has aged another
10 months giving a wine very Burgundian in style with
plenty of weight and complexity. I pick up some creamy
vanilla custard and apple on the nose. The dry palate is
generous with flavours of apple, lemon and peach. The
oak treatment gives it a lightly tannic character and
the minerality and length show a wine with true
character. Although down as a fairly lowly
classification of IGT the fruit is grown mainly in
Gorizia, a sub region of Friuli just north-east of
Venice.
One of the
producer's top wines is called LIS, unusually a
blend of Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay.
It also has the oak treatment and although showing real
class I'm not sure it warrants the £24 it retails for
here if you compare it to the stunning Pinot Grigio.
Both wines show best with food.
Bonacosta Valpolicella 2005
Masi
Valpolicella Classico DOC
Oddbins - £7.99
This very
well-known producer makes some of the best Amarone to
be had, but is also a reliable producer of Valpolicella.
This is a great example from Corvina, Rondinella and
Molinara grapes grown on the lower slopes of the
Bonacosta vineyard. The grapes from the upper slopes are
generally used for the production of Amarone.
A lovely
smoky cherry nose. Dry with medium body and soft ripe
tannin giving a smooth wine with balanced acidity and a
sour cherry flavour with a typical slightly bitter
finish.
Masi now
also own vineyards in Argentina where the company is
know as Masi-Tupungato. Worth looking out for is the
Passo Doble and the Corbec. The latter being
an Amarone style wine, very concentrated and powerful
using both Corvina and, typical for Argentina, Malbec
grapes. The Passo Doble is lighter in style with
the typical bitter cherry finish, lots of brambly fruit
and a lovely spicy nose. Smooth and satisfying.
I recently
tasted Masi's Costasera Amarone 2003. A promising wine
but far too young to be even contemplated. Showing a lot
of fresh fruit and not enough of the secondary aromas
yet that typify Amarone. Definitely one for the cellar.
Berengario 2000
Zonin
Venezie IGT
not available in the UK - approx. £12.00
Zonin is one of Italy's biggest private estates based
at Gambellara in the Veneto. Its vineyards however
stretch the length and breadth of Italy and even extend
to Virginia in the US. The producer is known for
relatively simple wines at honest prices but produces
some unusual single vineyard wines, such as the Berengario which is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and
Merlot from Friuli Aquileia, just south of Udine. The
wine has spent 12 months in French oak. The generous
nose shows violets, vanilla, leather and coffee and
there is a hint of fresh mint. Although tannic, the
palate is ripe and soft. Full bodied with plenty of
blackcurrant and blackberry fruit. The generous length
makes this a very well balanced classy wine that still
feels like it has much to give.
Amarone 2003
Terre Scaligere
Amarone della Valpolicella DOC
Oddbins - £14.99
This is
the second time this year I've tasted this Amarone and
although it wouldn't suffer from a bit more ageing I am
amazed how advanced this wine is already. Compared to
the Masi Costasera I mentioned earlier this example
shows many more of the characters you would associate
with Amarone; gorgeous vanilla butterscotch and maraschino cherries,
coffee, bitter chocolate, cinnamon and a spiritiness.
Soft cherry fruit and candied fruits on the palate with
a healthy dose of tannin and a great length finish this
wine.
Amarone is
made from the same grape varieties as Valpolicella but
typically these are extremely ripe and then left on mats
to dry, which concentrates the sugars and ensures a
powerful, complex and pretty alcoholic wine with an
almost port-like character, although it is fermented to
dryness.
What I am
struggling with is to find anything out about who
produces it. I suspect it may be from a cooperative but
I'm not entirely sure. Answers on a postcard (or
probably easier via
email).
And finally a few stickies;
Maculan is a quality producer in the Veneto
who makes two fantastic 'Passito' wines. The
Dindarello is made from air-dried Moscato grapes.
The drying process concentrates the sugars and flavours.
Mid-fermentation, once the right alcohol and sugar
levels have been achieved the must gets chilled which
stops the fermentation process. This produces an
intensely sweet wine, but with a lovely balancing
citrus acidity. The Moscato grapes give a lovely floral,
grapey nose. This wine suits a lighter dessert with
fresh fruit.
The second wine is the Torcolato, an even more
concentrated wine that has also undergone some oak
ageing, imparting honeyed vanilla tones. Still with a
great balancing acidity it shows riper fruit, like
peaches and apricots. Made in the same way as the
Dindarello from semi-dried grapes, but using Vespaiolo,
Tocai and Garganega grapes it carries the 'Breganze'
DOC. It doesn't actually need any food, just have it
instead of dessert.
Also see:
Regions for
more on this and other Italian regions.
|
