Browse Tag

italy

Thick as a Brich

[albino, eunaudi, zenato]Albino Rocca 1995 Barbaresco Vigneto Brich Ronchi (Piedmont) — Floral dust, which is usually a beautiful outcome for aged nebbiolo. And it’s nice, but it seems muted…either from a little too much age or a little too much effort in the cellar, back at conception. I’m carping; this is a nice wine from which I apparently expect more than it’s willing to give. (4/16)

Kelly Ripassa

[zenato]Zenato 1995 Valpolicella Superiore “Ripassa” (Veneto) — One of those “wait…I still have this?” finds from the move five years ago. Still, I didn’t get around to it until now.

It’s actually holding well — that much non-sugar dry extract has to count for something — and what’s left is like a dense dried fruit residue layered with dried fruit paste. That sounds worse than I mean it, but it’s not really a wine for drinking anymore (which it was in its youth), it’s a wine for contemplating, thinking “huh,” and moving on to something more quenching. (4/16)

Oysters

[ca'rugate]ca’ Rugate 2002 La Perlara Recioto di Soave (Veneto) — Bronzed sucrosity. Incredibly dense. Old and powerful.

[rosso & pet-nat]

Go froth & conquer

The “moment” arrived about ten years ago. Perhaps earlier? Memory’s forever bent by the convex lens of so very many wine glasses. Nor do I remember where, or who…though I have some guesses. I do remember what, though. It was Lini, and as expected it came in red…but it also came in pink, and white. The rosso was disruptive and I wasn’t yet prepared to understand it, the rosato was pleasant enough, but it was the bianco that grappled with my attention.

“Lambrusco comes in white?”

In theory, I’d known this. I’d read the texts, eyes flickering over the allowed expressions in the hilarious anarchy of Italy’s DOCs. Mostly, aside from a very small handful of internationally famous appellations with vaguely restrictive codes (regulations that would be impossible for any self-respecting Italian winemaker to ignore), the “laws” seemed to be the same everywhere. Make it white, pink, red, sparkling, dry, sweet, fortified, aromatized, or really whatever you feel like doing…

But still. “Lambrusco comes in white?”

I drank a lot of that white, over the next few years. As a by-the-glass pour it metastasized all over Boston, where I lived and wrote back then. Why not? It was delicious, and — perhaps more importantly, on the commercial side — it was inexpensive. I occasionally dabbled in the rosato. But the rosso…the rosso…

There lay the actual struggle, even though I didn’t realize it at the time. Keep Reading

Siccagno & shut up

Occhipinti 2009 Nero d’Avola “Siccagno” (Sicily) – Everyone has their dirty secrets, and here’s mine: a plurality of the time, I prefer this wine to her frappato. Why such heresy? Because this one is almost never intrusively volatile, and because the occasionally-present hint of brett (in both wines) melds better with nero d’avola than it does with frappato. (In fact, I usually prefer her Tami frappato to her eponymous one, and for similar reasons.) But enough about the wine that this isn’t. What about the wine that it is? The very transparency that makes the frappato – oh dear, here I go again – so compelling is what’s brought to this often-opaque grape, to its great benefit. It’s still a big, muscular, dark, powerdy-dirt wine…but that’s not all it is. Frankly, it’s a work of somewhat mad genius, or (perhaps more appropriately given the personality of the winemaker) wickedly joyous genius. Is it the “best” nero d’avola one could ever have? Probably not, but mind: a good part of it’s appeal is that it’s not trying to be, either. (8/12)

Bucci cucci

Bucci 2002 Rosso Piceno “Pongelli” (Marches) – From an inventory clearance, and thus the performance of this bottle is not necessarily representative. Fading, trembling red fruit, decrepit and in need of some serious vitamins just to stand upright. (8/12)

Maule-ing

Maule “La Biancara” 2010 “I Masieri” (Veneto) – 100% garganega. A beautiful wine that sneaks up from behind, at first showing little other than a thinly floral note, but really broadening as it rests and warms. There’s terrific minerality here, vastly more complex flower-shop aromas than at its outset, and something honeysuckle-like in its insistent appeal to sweetness-without-sucrosity. (8/12)

For Samsung too

Forsoni “Sanguineto I e II” 2010 Toscano Bianco (Tuscany) – This is a wine I’ve struggled with in other vintages, finding it clumsy compared to their succulent red, but in 2010 they’ve reached my palate. There’s a fruit salad element to it, yes, but not in a clumsy, pushed-ripeness New World sort of way; rather, the sort of careful selection of complementary fruit that often finishes an Italian meal. Just balanced, maybe tilting still a bit towards fruit rather than structure, and letting it get too warm brings out an overweightedness that does the wine few favors. Whether this vintage is an aberration or the new norm, I can’t say. Yet. (8/12)

Aqui-ous

Albola 2010 Aquileia Pinot Grigio (Friuli-Venezia Giulia) – This “wine” achieves the remarkable feat of tasting like nothing. Most water has more flavor. Vodka has more flavor. Air has more flavor. This tastes like absolutely nothing, and I can’t imagine it to be an accident. (7/12)