Weird Blend Wednesday - Petit Rouge, Cornalin, Mayolet & Vien de Nus, Valle d'Aosta, Italy

Mayolet Grapes

Hello, everyone and welcome back to Weird Blend Wednesday.  Today's wine is a fun little field blend from the Valle d'Aosta that is made up of several different grapes that are specialties of the region.  I think.  See, this wine is sold as a vino da tavola, or, this close to the French/Italian border, a vin de table, which means that the only thing that the bottle can say is whether the wine is white or red, who made it and the name that the producer has decided to give to the bottling, if any (in this case, the wine is called Cuvé de la Côte).  No vintage, geographical indication (other than the country of origin) or grape make-up is permitted on the bottle at all, which isn't usually a problem in this day and age since many producers just put that kind of stuff online and let the consumers find it themselves.  For this wine, though, the only information available is from the distributor (the great Louis/Dressner) who only offers that the wine "is a field blend from a parcel of particularly old vines."  There's really no telling exactly what is in this bottle, and it's possible that the winemaker may not even know, if the parcel is old enough.  The guys at the Wine Bottega, where I picked this bottle up, said that it was most likely a blend of the four grapes mentioned above, and so that's what I'm going with.

Vien de Nus Grapes

We've already taken a good, long look at two of the four alleged grapes in this blend.  Petit Rouge is the savage little grape that forms the base of the wines from the Enfer d'Arvier and Torrette sub-regions within the Valle d'Aosta.  Cornalin is the confusing little grape that is a different thing depending on where you find yourself.  If you're in Italy, you're probably talking about Cornalin d'Aoste, which is usually called Humagne Rouge in Switzerland.  If you're in Switzerland, Cornalin refers to a different grape, known as Cornalin du Valais, which is actually one of the parents for Cornalin d'Aoste.  It's a long, tangled story that you can peruse at your leisure via the link above.

The other two grapes are Mayolet and Vien de Nus.  Mayolet is certainly the more common of the two grapes and can occasionally be found in varietal form, while Vien de Nus is pretty much a blending grape.  Mayolet is referenced in writings dating back to the 18th Century and is thought to be indigenous to the Valle d'Aosta.  Recent DNA testing has shown that Mayolet is one of the parents of Cornalin du Valais (Petit Rouge is the other), which means that both Petit Rouge and Mayolet are the grandparents of Cornalin d'Aoste (Vouillamoz, J., Maigre, D., Meredith, C.P. (2003) Microsatellite analysis of ancient alpine grape cultivars: pedigree reconstruction of Vitis vinifera L. "Cornalin du Valais." Theoretical and Applied Genetics, (107) 448-454).  This wine, then, is kind of like a little family reunion in a bottle where Vien de Nus plays the role of a longtime neighbor who is like an honorary uncle, even though he isn't really related by blood to anyone there.  Vien de Nus also has a long history in the Valle d'Aoste and is thought to be native to the region, but if there is any genetic link between it and the other three grapes in this wine, I haven't been able to find it.

The wine that I was able to try was made by Franco Noussan who lives in the village of St. Christophe in the hills above the town of Aoste.  His bio on Louis/Dressner's site says that he works at the local university, which it turns out is the Institut Agricole Régional, the local agricultural school where the Cornalin and Prëmetta I wrote about earlier came from.  His winery is essentially an extension of his garage which he dug into the hillsides around his house.  He has several parcels scattered around St. Christophe including one with vines over 70 years old, which is where I presume the grapes for this wine came from.  Altogether he farms about 5.5 hectares of land which he works without herbicides.  He hand harvests all of his grapes and uses only indigenous yeasts in his fermentation.  He has been making wine for his family and friends for many years but has only been offering them commercially since 2005.

I picked up my NV bottle of the Noussan Cuvé de la Côte from my friends at the Wine Bottega for about $25.  In the glass, the wine was a medium purple ruby color.  The nose was very aromatic with black cherry, black plum and wild raspberry fruits with a touch of smoke.  There was something wild and savage to the nose that was very interesting and deeply compelling.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with fairly high acid and medium tannins.  There were flavors of black cherry, dried cherry, wild raspberry and blackberry fruit with smoke, char and a little bit of funk.  It was wild and complex but really nicely balanced as well.  There was a good mixture of red and black fruits with nice charred, smoky undertones to it that was all held up with a lively vein of acidity.  I really felt like the wine over-delivered in terms of complexity and depth for the price, especially since wines from the Valle d'Aoste tend to be fairly expensive because of their limited production.  It would go well with all kinds of food but I think something with duck or sausage would be great as the bright acidity here would just cut through the fat and match well with meat that's a little funky.

Petit Rouge - Enfer d'Arvier, Valle d'Aosta, Italy

Today marks Fringe Wine's first foray into the wild and wonderful Valle d'Aosta, the smallest region of Italy.  What the region lacks in size it more than makes up for in its wide array of native grape varietals, though.  While you may see familiar northern Italian names like Nebbiolo and Dolcetto or familiar French names like Gamay and Pinot Noir on the lists of approved varietals for DOC level wines, you're much more likely to see things like Premetta, Cornalin, Prié Blanc, Fumin, or today's grape, Petit Rouge, just to name a few.  The Institut Agricole Régional, a local agricultural school (who also makes wine), has identified thirteen indigenous varieties in the Valle d'Aosta.  The region is positively tantalizing for me and should, in theory, provide me with a ton of material to write about on a regular basis except for one thing: the wines from the Valle d'Aosta are really hard to find.

Out of the 20 regions of Italy, the Valle d'Aosta ranks dead last both in vineyard area and total production (though they are seventh in percentage of of DOC wines as about 26% of all production in the region is at the DOC level).  As of 2000, the region had just over 500 hectares of land under vine and produced about 27,000 hectoliters of wine, which is enough to make about 300,000 cases of wine.  By contrast, Piemonte, one region over to the east, produces nearly 3 million hectoliters of wine, and that amount is only good for seventh highest in Italy (first place belongs to the Veneto with a whopping 8.8 million hectoliters produced). E&J Gallo, the largest wine company in the USA, has an annual sales total of 76 million cases, meaning that this single company sells more than 250 times more wine than is produced in all of the Valle d'Aosta each year.

The point being, very little wine is produced here.  To compound matters, the region is a tourist hotspot, as it is located in the Alps on the border with France and Switzerland.  Lots of tourists means lots of demand for local wine so very little of the already miniscule country makes it out of the Valle d'Aosta even to other regions of Italy, much less to places farther afield than that.  While it's certainly not easy to track some of these wines down, it's by no means impossible and I've managed over the past year to stockpile quite a few interesting bottles from this region which I hope to be able to write about over the next few months.

The first grape I want to consider is the most planted native red grape in the region, Petit Rouge.  Somewhat surprisingly given its high altitude, almost 90% of production in the Valle d'Aosta is red wine and Petit Rouge plays a fairly large role in red wines throughout the region.  The grape is thought to be native to the Valle d'Aosta, though it also may or may not be the same grape as Rouge de Valais in Switzerland, which is probably not a big deal to most people as you're not likely to trip over many Rouge de Valais wines in your lifetime.  The variety ripens fairly late and the berries can have a dusty, gray appearance on the vine.

The bottle that I picked up is from a sub-zone within the Valle d'Aosta called Enfer d'Arvier which is apparently a whopping 5 hectares in total.  The winegrowing areas of the Valle d'Aosta are in the valley of the Dora Baltea river as it flows down through the Alps and into the Po River.  The town of Arvier is on the western end of the valley and apparently it can get pretty warm there as the name Enfer d'Arvier suggests (it means literally "Hell of Arvier).  The DOC regulations for this area dictate a minimum of 85% Petit Rouge, but this particular wine clocks in at 100%.  The producer is Danilo Thomain who farms about one hectare of land in this region and is the only independent producer in the area (everything else is vinified and bottled by co-ops).  His total production is a miniscule 2400 bottles per year.  I was able to find the 2008 bottling of his Enfer d'Arvier for $35 from my friends at the Wine Bottega.

In the glass, this wine had medium saturation and was a nice ruby color.  The nose was very aromatic with plummy fruit, wet leather, and stewed berries with a bit of sweaty funk to it.  On the palate, the wine was medium bodied with no tannins but surprisingly high acidity.  This grape typically isn't very acidic when fully ripe, but given the relatively light color (the grape can be very dark and is frequently used in blends to deepen the color of the finished wine), it may have been picked early enough to keep some of that acidity around.  There were tart red cherry and wild raspberry fruit flavors with a bit of bitter funkiness on the end.  It may have had just a touch of residual effervescence to it...I wasn't able to make up my mind for sure one way or the other.  It definitely had a kind of prickly sensation in the mouth that made me think there may be a little CO2 running loose in there.  Overall, it was a nice, tart and zingy red wine with bright juicy berry fruit and a touch of red plum.  On day two it started to pick up some grape soda flavors, odd enough.  This was a very cool, very different kind of wine.  If you have a zero tolerance policy on funk in wine, this won't do it for you, but I thought that it was mild enough and well-integrated enough to add something interesting rather than completely taking over.  The acid here makes it great for a wide variety of foods and the wine itself is light enough that it won't dominate more delicate meat dishes.  If you can find a bottle of this, it's definitely worth your time, especially since you might not get another chance to try it given the production numbers.