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Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Keeping ‘the land’ in Italian wines
VERONA, Italy — It only took two days to figure out traffic patterns at Vinitaly, billed as the world’s largest gathering of wine producers, held this year April 3-6. With 5,000 winemakers and an expected 150,000 attendees, well, if you learn of anything bigger, let me know.
It’s a four-day, once-a-year opportunity to taste wines from each of the 20 Italian wine-producing area and you could spend a whole day working your way through just one of the 11 pavilions, each about the size of a football field but much more interesting.
On opening day I wandered around the Friuli (north of Venice) pavilion and met Rino Russolo, a gracious man in his late 20s who’s gradually becoming the fourth generation of his family to produce wine from the rocky soils of the Friuli region.
We had visited the Russolo winery a day earlier, and Rino had shown us the gravelly soils and how he used the Guyot system of trellising to protect his vines.
This stony plain at the foot of the Alps, only 60 kilometers from Venice, is best known for its crisp-edged and minerally whites, including sauvignon blanc, pinot gris and muller thurgau. It also produces some interesting indigenous wines such as malvasia istriana, an aromatic white wine that needs to be drank young, and refosco, a powerful and tannic red also known as terlano, with flavors of currant, wild berry, and plum.
But what stood out during our tasting (I was there with Robert Prough, owner of Epic Wine Co. in Santa Cruz, Cal, who specializes in discovering and importing small production wineries) was the unexpectedly magnificent pinot noir Russolo produces.
It was bright ruby red, with only a hint of the natural smokiness that’s all-too powerful in most American pinot noirs. Aromatic and redolent with flavors of strawberries and cherry cola and a bit of vanilla from a light touch of oak, this was pinot noir at its best.
“In 25 years that’s the best pinot noir from Italy I’ve ever tasted,” Prough said as he stared at his glass. “The flavors are true pinot flavors. I’m sort of shocked.”
A few days later, at a tasting hosted by Alois Lageder, I ran into Anthony Dias Blue, editor-in-chief of The Tasting Panel Magazine. Blue was walking around clutching a glass of Fattoria Zerbina’s 2004 Pietramora sangiovese and offering a taste to anyone who approached.
“I’m astounded,” Blue said, using almost the same words as Prough. “This has to be the best sangiovese I’ve ever tasted. And I’ve never heard of the winemaker before.”
High praise, indeed, from too well-respected and knowledgable wine critics,but it’s indicative of the care and passion shown by many Italian winemakers who strive to keep their yields low and their quality high.
“We want to capture the land in our wines,” said Rino Russolo, and his obvious passion for wine and creating something pure and lovely made the entire trip worthwhile.
But like too many wonderful Italian wines, these probably will never see the U.S. market. Small production, the cost of importing a couple thousand cases, and the strength of the euro all contribute to these wines staying home.
*Rino Russolo explaining the trellis system in his Friulian vineyard.
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MAGRE, Italy - This quiet commune dating from the 12th century lies a few kilometers south of Bolzano and about 40 kilometers north of Trento along the Fiume (River) Adige in northernmost Italy.
Northern Italy, at least this part, is the Sud Tirol, the South Tyrol, a part of the Italian countryside that switched countries and alliances several times over the past centuries as wars and invaders came and went.
Bolzano, locals like to say, is considered the southernmost town in Austria since residents here are more likely to speak German as a first language rather than Italian and everyone is at least bilingual and information signs list both languages.
Magre is a little more than midway between Bolzano and Trento, which in turn is considered the northernmost of the true Italian cities.
“This is a German village and you go down the road to the next village and it’s Italian,” said Alois Lageder with a laugh.
His winery in Magre is the newest building in a village where horsepower can mean the real thing as well as the latest sleek Audi limousine.
The winery, built in 1996 on a site that’s been used for winemaking since the 1400s, uses renewable and alternative energy including solar panels and geothermal exchange for cooling and heating. One side of the building borders a rock cliff offering natural cooling and maintains air flow throughout the winery.
“We’re all proud of our heritage, and we tried to respect that heritage and history when we built the winery,” Lageder said Sunday during Summa 08, a two-day gathering of 36 select wineries showing their products in a drafty and somewhat renovated (electric conduits curled around the corners) granary built in 1620.
Lageder’s is an interesting story. He’s the largest independent wine producer in the area (Cavit and other industrial-sized producers are here, also) and also a fervent believer in bio-organic wine production. 2007 marked his 51st vintage.
“I think we’ve lost some of our contact with the past, especially with the overuse of technology in winemaking,” Lageder said during a brief conversation.
His wines include 22 varietals and blends in the Tor Lowengang line and select reserve and estate reserve wines under the Cason Hirschprunn label.
One of the gates into the Alois Lageder winery at Magre, Italy. * Alois Lageder
