Know Your Lambrusco - Salamino, Emilia-Romagna, Italy

Last week, I started a new series called Know Your Malvasia where I take a look at different Malvasia-named grapes and explain where they're grown and how they do or do not relate to other Malvasia grapes.  Today I'd like to expand that concept a little and start to talk about the various Lambrusco-named grapes.  There is a lot of bad information out there about Lambrusco grapes and over the next few weeks, I'd like to try to set as much of it right as I can, starting with the Salamino grape today.

The two most common bits of misinformation regarding the Lambrusco grapes are pretty much the same as for the Malvasias.  Some people will tell you about the Lambrusco "family" of grapes, while others will tell you that the various Lambruscos are made from "sub-types" or "sub-varieties" of a single Lambrusco cultivar.  The people that tell you this are wrong.  A study done in 2005 (citation 1 below) analyzed most of the Lambrusco-something cultivars grown throughout Emilia-Romagna and while they found first degree (parent/offspring) relationships between a few of the grapes in the study, pretty much none of the major of Lambrusco cultivars were found to be that closely related to one another.  Which isn't to say that they aren't related at all.  When the team analyzed genetic similarities for all of the grapes in the study, they did find that most of the Lambrusco grapes clustered together, indicating that they probably share a common ancestor at some point along the line, but how distant that relative might be is difficult to say. 

As we learned in my last Know Your Malvasia post, there really is no such thing as "sub-varieties" of grapes.  But one might wonder, if there isn't any direct familial relationship and if they aren't "sub-varieties," then why do they all have the same word in their name?  The word "Lambrusco" means "wild grape" in Italian, and it was long thought that the Lambrusco grapes were domesticated from wild vines around Emilia-Romagna.  A study done in 2009 (citation 2 below) analyzed many wild grape varieties in Piemonte and compared their DNA with several Lambrusco varieties as well as several other cultivated grape varieties of the region.  They found that the Lambrusco grapes had more DNA in common with the wild grapes than the other cultivated varieties, indicating that they were more closely related to the wild vines and may have been domesticated more recently.

It's worth noting that here in the United States, when we think "wild vines" we think of Vitis labrusca or some of the other "foxy," native American varieties.  In Europe, the situation is a little bit different.  Wild vines in Europe are still Vitis vinifera, but there is actually a sub-species of the vinifera species called sylvestris.  Please note, this is a sub-species, not a "sub-type" or "sub-variety."  Vitis vinifera subsp. sylvestris is differentiated from Vitis vinifera subsp. vinifera mainly by the fact that vinifera flowers are hermaphrodites, meaning that they have both male and female organs and so can pollinate themselves, while sylvestris flowers are dioecious, which means that some flowers are male and produce pollen while others are female and need to receive pollen from males in order to produce fruit (unpollenated flowers just fall off a vine and die, while pollinated flowers produce berries). One can easily understand why hermaphroditism was selected for by early farmers, since the ability to self-pollinate produces a more reliable and a larger crop.  Interestingly, there are a handful of Vitis vinifera subsp. vinifera vines that are not self-pollinating, but which are not necessarily dioecious.  Lambrusco Sorbara, for example, only has female flowers, so it must receive its pollen from other vines.  As a result, Sorbara is often inter-planted with Lambrusco Salamino so that the Salamino pollen can pollinate the Sorbara flowers. 

What all this means is that though many of the Lambrusco grapes may be distantly related to one another, they're not exactly a "family."   Furthermore, they are all separate grape varieties and are not "sub-types" of any single Lambrusco grape.  So how do you know which Lambrusco grape you're drinking?  Like Malvasia, it often depends on where you are.  Some of the Lambrusco grapes are easy to spot, since their names are typically printed right on the label.  Lambrusco di Sorbara is made from the Sorbara grape, while Lambrusco Grasparossa di Castelvetto is made from the Grasparossa grape.  Lambrusco Salamino can be found in the Lambrusco Salamino di Santa Croce DOC wines, but can also be found in basic Reggiano DOC wines as well as the wines of Lambrusco Mantovano and the Colli di Scandiano e di Canossa.  You can always check the DOC regulations for the region of wine that you're drinking, but if there are many different varieties authorized for use or if your wine is labeled as IGT, then you may just have to live with the mystery.

Lambrusco Salamino is the most common of the Lambrusco varieties and is planted on over 10,000 acres of land (mostly in Emilia-Romagna, though a little bit is surprisingly found in Sardinia).  The name "Salamino" comes from the fact that the grape bunches are long and cylindrical and thus thought to resemble little sausages, or "little salamis."  There are at least five different clonal variants of Salamino that are recognized by ampleographers: tender, red-leaved, green-leaved, red-stalked, and green-stalked.  Salamino grapes are naturally very high in sugar and so they lend themselves to the production of sweet and off-dry wines, though bone-dry wines made from the grape are also widely available. The berries are deeply colored and can provide quite a bit of tannic grip to the finished wine, and Salamino-based Lambruscos are typically heavier-bodied and more aromatic than those from other Lambrusco grapes.

For those who might object that Lambrusco is far too common for me to write about here, I would counter by saying that the first of the three Salamino-based wines that I'll be reviewing is actually a Lambrusco Bianco, which is made from 100% Salamino grapes that were crushed and rapidly moved off the skins before picking up any coloring, as in a Blanc de Noirs Champagne.  The wine was the NV Lini 910, which I picked up from my friends at Curtis Liquors for around $16.  In the glass the wine was a fairly pale silvery lemon color with nice frothy bubbles.  The nose was fairly intense with aromas of toasty bread, apple, green apple candy, toasted nuts and a touch of raspberry.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with high acidity.  There were flavors of toasted nuts, toasted bread, ripe apple, pear, fresh cut lemon and lemon peel.  The fruits were a bit subdued, but there was a lot of secondary fermentation aromas and characteristics that were quite nice indeed (which is interesting, since this is a tank-fermented wine).  I found the wine both interesting and delicious and thought that it was a really great value for the money.

I also had the opportunity to taste Lini 910's regular Lambrusco bottling ($17), which their website says is 85% Salamino and 15% Ancelotta, which is a common Lambrusco blending grape that tends to soften the tannic edges of other grapes and round out the flavor profile a bit. In the glass this wine was a fairly deep purple ruby color with lots of fizz.  The nose was fairly intense with aromas of blackberry and black cherry fruit along with grape soda and leather.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity.  It was dry with flavors of black cherry, blackberry, cola, grape soda and a touch of smoky charcoal.  It was very fresh and very fruity, but also dry and very refreshing.  This wine is also tank-fermented, and I definitely think it helped to accentuate the fresh fruit flavors.  I had this wine with an Italian cold-cut calzone, and it was absolutely perfect, cutting through the oily meats while also standing up to and complementing the tomato sauce I was dipping into.

A few months ago, I wrote about a wine being imported by my friend Matt, who is a co-owner of the Wine Bottega in the North End of Boston, and his new company Selectio Naturel.  Matt brings in wines from all over Italy (and some from France too), and he has a handful of really killer Lambruscos in his portfolio.  One of them is the 2010 Fondo Bozzole "Giano," which is made from 100% Salamino grapes ($18 at the Bottega).  In the glass this wine was a deep, inky ruby-black color with bright purple fizz.  The nose was moderately intense with aromas of grape soda, black-berried fruits, dark chocolate, cocoa and char.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity.  It was dry, but absolutely loaded with blackberry and black cherry fruits and dry grape soda flavors as well.  There was a savory edge to the wine as well and I thoroughly enjoyed it with some ground-turkey lasagna.  It is versatile enough to pair nicely with a variety of foods, but is also delicious enough to just drink on its own. 

CITATIONS

1)  Boccacci, P, Marinoni, DT, Gambino, G, Botta, R, & Schneider, A.  2005.  Genetic characterization of endangered grape cultivars of Reggio Emilia province.  American Journal of Enology and Vititculture, 56(4), ppl. 411-416.

2)  Schneider, A, Marinoni, DT, Raimondi, S, Boccacci, P, Gambino, G.  2009.  Molecular characterization of wild grape populations from north-western Italy and their genetic relationship with cultivated varieties.  Acta Horticulturae, 827, pp. 211-216.

Carricante - Mt. Etna, Sicily, Italy

Given that there are several thousand different grape varieties used for commercial wine production, I'm sure that everybody has a few that they are always getting confused.  I know that I personally have a lot of trouble keeping all of the Italian Ver-word grapes straight (Vermentino, Verdicchio, Vernaccia, Verduzzo and probably many more).  I also find myself struggling with Vespaiola and Vespolina, Albarola and Albanello, and today's grape, Carricante, and Catarratto.  Carricante and Catarratto are especially troublesome for me because both are white grapes that are found almost exclusively on the island of Sicily, though Catarratto is much more common than Carricante (Catarratto covers more than 100,000 acres in Sicily while Carricante manages a scant 250 or so).  I'm apparently not the only person with this problem, as Carricante is often erroneously called Catarratto in some parts of Sicily, though the grapes are definitely different cultivars and are not even related.  There's not a lot of things to say about Carricante, but I've summarized what I've found below and also have a review of a wine made mostly from Carricante with a little Catarratto thrown in for good measure.

Catarratto tends to be found on the western end of Sicily, in the heart of traditional Marsala country, while Carricante tends to be found around Mt. Etna in the east.  Carricante is thought to be native to the area of Viagrande, which is just southeast of Mt. Etna, and early written records indicate that Etna vintners used to barrel-age Carricante wines on their lees so that malolactic fermentation would kick in and soften the wines sharp acidic edge.  The name Carricante may be derived from the word carica, which means "load," because the grape is apparently a fairly prolific yielder.  If that is the case, then it seems odd that there isn't more Carricante planted, as wines made from the grape are increasingly recognized for their quality.  A paper published in 2010 (citation 1 below) found that Carricante's parents were two grapes called Montonico Pinto and Scacco, neither of which are familiar to me.  The Etna Bianco DOC requires that wines be made from at least 60% Carricante, though Etna Bianco Superiore requires 80% (and the grapes must come from Milo). Though I've never seen a wine made from Carricante outside of Sicily, the Italian agricultural census of 2000 reported 650 acres of Carricante throughout Italy, though only 250 of them are in Sicily.  I do now know where they are hiding the other 400 acres or so and would be interested in hearing from any readers who have come across this grape on the Italian mainland. 

I was able to find a bottle of the 2009 Graci "Quota 600" from Mt. Etna in Sicily, which is a blend of 70% Carricante and 30% Catarratto.  Carricante is typically blended with other Sicilian grapes, though varietal wines can be found as well.  I picked this wine up from my friends at the Wine Bottega for around $35.  In the glass the wine was a fairly light lemon gold color.  The nose was moderately intense with aromas of fresh cut lemon, green apple and river stones.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity.  There were tart, racy flavors of lemon and lemon peel, green apple, pear and a really intense stony minerality.  There wasn't a lot of complexity to this wine, but there was a lot of intensity.  It was really heavy on the citrus and stony minerals, and I really enjoyed drinking the wine, but the steep price tag is a little difficult to justify for what you get.  My bottling also had a minor cork failure with some seepage around the cork, but I don't think that it threw the wine off in any way.

Cipriani, G. et al. The SSR-based molecular profile of 1005 grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) accessions uncovers new synonymy and parentages, and reveals a large admixture amongst varieties of different geographic origin. 2010. Theoretical and Applied Genetics. 121: 1569-1585.

Rebo - Benaco Bresciano, Lombardy, Italy

I frequently receive emails from readers who are looking for more information about a particular grape that they've come across that I haven't had an opportunity to write about yet.  A few months ago, several different readers started asking me about an Italian grape called Rebo, which at the time I had not heard of before.  One of the people inquiring was just starting to import wine into Ontario, Canada, under the name Don Emilio Brands, and a wine made from the Rebo grape was going to be his first import.  It took some creativity, but I was able to get a bottle of Rebo from him, and I'd like to tell you a little more about the grape and the wine made from it.

Rebo was created in 1948 by an Italian agricultural geneticist named Rebo Rigatti at the San Michele all'Adige research center in Trentino.  Rigatti lived from 1891 until 1971, which made him a contemporary of Luigi Manzoni, creator of many Italian crossings such as Manzoni Bianco.  Manzoni was certainly a more prolific breeder and his crossings are definitely more widespread today than Rigatti's, as evidenced by the fact that Rebo, Rigatti's most well-known crossing, is planted on less than 100 acres in Italy today, as opposed to 24,000 acres for Manzoni Bianco.  Many sources (such as Wine Grapes) indicate that Rigatti initially listed Rebo's parentage as Merlot x Marzemino, but that DNA evidence has recently shown that it is in fact a Merlot x Teroldego crossing.  Lacombe et al. (citation 1), in their massive study which analyzed several thousand grape varieties to test for synonymies and parental relationships, confirmed that the correct parentage is Merlot x Teroldego, but they list it as confirmation of the breeder's data, which suggests that Rigatti had the parentage recorded correctly all along.  I do not have access to Rigatti's papers or published reports so I'm not sure what he actually said, but I don't suppose it matters much since the actual parentage has been confirmed several times at this point.

Most of the Rebo grown in Italy is in the province of Trentino, where Rebo Rigatti lived and worked.  Wine Grapes claims that varietal wines from Rebo are grown only in the Trentino DOC, but I think what they mean is that the Trentino DOC is the only DOC or DOCG area in Italy that allows for varietal Rebo wines.  Today's wine, the 2009 Pratello "Nero per Sempre," is from the Benaco Bresciano IGT region, which is around the western shore of Lake Garda in Lombardy.  Nero per Sempre means something like "black forever" in Italian, but I'm not exactly sure what that's supposed to mean in this context.  This wine is made from 100% Rebo grapes that are dried in wooden boxes with forced ventilation for 30 days.  The partially dried grapes are then pressed and the juice is poured into stainless steel tanks for fermentation.  The process is very similar to the production of Amarone, but the drying time for Amarone grapes is much longer.  Pratello also makes a regular table wine from non-dried grapes that is 95% Rebo and 5% Barbera, but I wasn't able to try that particular wine.

As mentioned above, the Nero per Sempre was sent to me as a sample bottle (online store here), and I'm not sure what retail on the bottle would be, though the importer told me it might be around $30 in Ontario.  As usual, I have not received any compensation for this review other than the bottle itself and what follows is my honest appraisal of the wine.  In the glass the wine was a deep, nearly opaque purple-ruby color.  The nose was fairly intense with delicious, fruity aromas of black cherry, blackberry jam, cocoa powder and dried cherries.  On the palate the wine was full bodied with fairly high acidity and soft medium tannins.  There were flavors of blac cherry, dried tart cherry, blackberry jam, bittersweet chocolate and espresso.  The wine clocks in at 15% alcohol and really shows it, as I found it very hot and a little clumsy.  It is an absolute whale of a wine, though, with huge, pure fruit flavors.  It doesn't have the depth and complexity of fine Amarone, but it also doesn't carry the whopping price tag either and if it's really only around $30, it's a very nice value for those looking for the Amarone experience on a budget.  It's such a powerful wine that I have trouble thinking of foods it might complement, and I find myself thinking that it's probably at its best after a meal, maybe with a little bit of cheese.

CITATIONS

1) Lacombe, T., Boursiquot, J.M., Laucou, V., Di Vecchi-Staraz, M., Peros, J.P., & This, P. 2012. Large scale parentage analysis in an extended set of grapevine cultivars (Vitis vinifera L.). Theoretical and Applied Genetics, 126(2), pp 401-414.

Terrano - Carso, Friuli, Italy

In the very early days of this blog, I went through a few of the wine books that I had and tried to put together a grape "wish list."  The first list had about two dozen grapes on it and I sent it around to a few of the wines shops that I frequented to see if they had any of them in stock or to see if they could possibly order some of them for me.  The Terrano grape was on that list, and I'm happy to say that not only were my wine shop friends able to help me track that particular grape down, but also every other grape that I could come up with at that time.  I don't really keep a list any more these days (though I do have a kind of unofficial list in my head of things that I'm always on the lookout for) but I do still hang on to that first one so I can see just how much ground we've covered here in only a few years time.

Which brings us to today's grape, Terrano.  Terrano has been around for a very long time, with the first mention of it actually coming all the way back in 1340 AD.  These old references mention both a white and a red-berried Terrano, but the white-berried form seems to have been lost to history.  The very earliest mentions of Terrano in print are to plantings in modern day Slovenia, where it is currently known as Refošk.  Slovenia is the world leader for plantings of Terrano with a couple thousand hectares under vine around the city of Trieste, which is actually  in the region of Friuli in Italy, but it's in that weird little finger of Italy in the extreme northeast that is practically surrounded by the nation of Slovenia (see map).  Most Slovenian plantings are just north and south of the city of Trieste, and many of the Italian plantings can be found around Trieste as well (there were only about 200 hectares of Terrano in Italy as of 2000).  If you go south from Trieste and through the narrow band of Slovenia into the Istrian peninsula of Croatia, you will find more plantings of Terrano, as Croatia has nearly 500 hectares of Terrano (known here as Teran) under vine.

 There is a particular kind of soil called Terra Rossa, or "red earth," in this little corner of the world and it is said that Terrano reaches its greatest heights only when grown on this terra rossa soil.  When dirt turns red, it is usually because of high iron content, and according to Wikipedia, wines made from Terrano are unusually high in iron.  Wikipedia's source is a link to this page, which says that Terrano's unique flavor is actually due to the iron (bivalent iron, whatever that means) reacting to lactic acid in the finished wine, and, further, that wines made from Terrano tend to deteriorate quickly because the iron levels drop rapidly within a year or two of fermentation and this special chemical bond dissipates.  There are no sources cited and I haven't found any evidence elsewhere to support these claims, so caveat emptor etc (though if commenter WineKnurd is reading, I'd be very interested to hear his take in the comments below).

Terrano belongs to something called the Refoschi Family, whose name is a bit misleading since many of the grapes in this family aren't actually related to one another.  Like the word Trebbiano or Malvasia, over the years the word Refosco has been used to describe a number of different grape varieties grown in and around this little area where Italy, Slovenia and Croatia meet.  The most common Refosco grape is Refosco dal Peduncolo Rosso, which we covered here some time ago.  There is also Refosco di Faedis, Refosco d'Istria (which is the same as Terrano), Refosco di Guarnieri, Refosco del Botton (which is the same as Tazzalenghe) and Refosco Gentile.  Of these grapes, only Refosco del Botton, Refosco Gentile and Refosco di Faedis seem to have any genetic relationship to one another (the former two seem to have a parent-offspring relationship with the third).  While the others do share many ampelographic traits, to the extent that Terrano and Refosco dal Peduncolo Rosso were long thought to be the same variety, the DNA evidence seems to show that they are actually distinct varieties*.  Interestingly, the grape known as Cagnina in Emilia-Romagna (where it is made into sweet red wines) is the same grape as Terrano, and this is one of the very few places outside of Friuli/Slovenia/Croatia where this grape can be found.

I was able to try two different wines made from the Terrano grape.  The first was the 2009 Tenuta Amalia "Mamertino," which I picked up from my friends at the Spirited Gourmet for around $12.  I don't know very much about this wine since the bottle just says "Product of Italy" and "Italian Frizzante Red Wine."  The importer's website says it is 100% Terrano, but I have no idea where the grapes are from.  The back labeling almost seemed to be saying that the grapes come from Italy, but the wine itself may be made, or at least bottled, here in the US.  In any case, the wine was a medium purple ruby color in the glass.  The nose was reserved with aromas of black cherry, blackberry and grape soda.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity.  It was also sweet with just a touch of fizziness to it.  There were flavors of grape Kool-aid, black cherry and grape soda.  The finish was astoundingly short and really tasted more like soda or juice than wine.  I don't really know what this is or what it's supposed to be, but I don't think I'm a fan of it.

I figured there had to be more to Terrano than this, so when I found a bottle of the 2011 Catelvecchio Terrano from the Carso region of Friuli, I snapped it up ($20 from Vintages in Concord, MA).  As I mentioned above, I had read that Terrano-based wines are really not meant for ageing, so I figured I'd give a newer vintage a shot.  In the glass the wine was an inky purple black color with a bright purple rim.  The nose was moderately intense with aromas of smoke, sour cherry, cranberry, wet leather, blackberry and black cherry.  On the palate the wine was on the lighter side of medium with very high acidity and medium tannins.  It was sour with flavors of tart cherry, cranberry, under-ripe blackberry and leather.  It was bright and zippy, but also almost painfully sour to drink and really demanded some high acid, tomato-saucy kind of food.  It was miles better than the Mamertino, but still wasn't something that I think I'll find myself reaching for very often.

*This is according to Jose Vouillamoz's private research reported in Wine Grapes, which you can read all about here to decide how big a grain of salt is required.

Odds and Ends - Turina Wines Edition (Marzemino, Friulano, Schioppetino and sparkling Groppello/Marzemino)

Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Odds and Ends, where I write about interesting wines that I've tried lately which I don't think merit a full post on their own.  All of the wines I'll be writing about today are made from grapes that I've already written extensively about in the past and those relevant links will be included in each write-up.  Additionally, all of the wines I'll be looking at today are imported by my good friend Paul Turina, whose new and improved company website can be perused here.  I profiled Paul and his company about a year ago (read here) and have since tried a handful of wines from various producers that he imports.  All of the wines I'll be writing about below were provided to me as samples by Paul, but all opinions expressed are entirely my own and I have received no compensation for any of the reviews below other than the wines themselves.

About a month after I first met Paul, I was introducing him to some people in the Boston area to try and get his wines distributed here (he is still looking for a Massachusetts distributor, so if anyone is interested, please email him).  One of the wines he poured at a meeting that I accompanied him to was this sparkling pink wine made by some distant relatives of his around Lake Garda in Italy.  I wasn't able to get a note written on the wine (unlike the sparkling Turbiana he also brought which I wrote about here), but I remember enjoying it quite a bit.  I asked him a few weeks ago if he still had any around and he said he had a few bottles from a recent shipment.  He handed the bottle off to me the next time he was in town and I promptly popped the cork on it.  It's a non-vintage, tank-fermented sparkling wine that is made from about 50% Groppello and 50% Marzemino and retail on the bottle (from Paul's website) is about $17.   In the glass the wine was a medium salmon pink color with fine steady bubbles.  The nose was fairly intense with aromas of fresh cut strawberry, red cherry, watermelon and pink bubblegum.  On the palate the wine was on the lighter side of medium with fairly high acidity.  It was dry and tasted like cut watermelon and strawberries with a touch of red cherry.  It finished with a clean, almost quinine-like bitterness.  It's a fun wine, but it's well structured enough to be serious as well.  I drank it around Valentine's Day and it's the perfect wine for that occasion.

His distant Italian relatives not only make wines from Groppello and Turbiana, but also from the Marzemino grape, which I wrote about around a year and a half ago.  Paul recently let me try his family's 2009 Marzemino from the Brescia region of Lombardy on the western shore of Lake Garda.  In the glass the wine was a medium purple ruby color.  The nose was moderately intense with aromas of sour cherry, blackberry, cocoa powder and leather.  On the palate the wine was on the lighter side of medium with high acid and fairly soft tannins.  There were flavors of tart cherry, blackberry, old dusty leather, black plum and cocoa powder.  It was a little lean, but it made up for it with a nice, bright, racy streak of acidity.  As I said in my previous post, Marzemino seems like a grape tailor-made for tomato sauces and pizza.  I had this wine with a big plate of spaghetti and it was a near perfect match.  While I'm not as fond of Marzemino in general as Don Giovanni was, I do like it in the right circumstances and this is a very well made example.

Paul imports wine from a number of different regions in Italy and from a number of different producers.  I've taken a look at some of his producers making wines from Vespaiola, Grechetto and Sagrantino in the past, but today I'd like to take a look at a couple of wines from a producer he works with in Friuli called Petrussa.  Petrussa is located in the Colli Orientali del Friuli region of northeastern Italy and they deal with many of the grapes that are common to that region.  One of them is Friulano, which we took a look at about a year ago.  This particular bottling is from the 2009 vintage.  In the glass the wine was a medium lemon gold color.  The nose was fairly reserved with aromas of white pear, lilac and eucalyptus.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with fairly low acidity and a kind of oily mouthfeel.  There were flavors of eucalyptus, pear and lime with a kind of stewed vegetable quality that I find in many of the wines made from the Friulano grape.  This is a well-made wine, but it's a grape that I just can't fall in love with.

The next wine from Petrussa that I tried was made from the Schioppettino grape, which I did like quite a bit when I was able to try it before.  This particular wine was from the 2008 vintage and in the glass it was a medium purple ruby color.  The nose was moderately intense with aromas of black cherry, plum, fresh turned earth, damp leaves and leather.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with high acidity and soft tannins.  There were flavors of tart cherry, blackberry, old leather and wet leaves.  Right after the cork was pulled, the wine was searingly, almost abrasively sour but it does round out a bit as it settles into the glass.  It's bright and zippy the whole time, though, so fans of high-acid red wines probably need not apply here.  The bright, tart fruits are really well balanced by the damp earthy flavors and the wine reminds me a bit of an electrified Pinot Noir.  It needs food and it needs high acid food so anything with tomato sauce would go quite nicely here.

Ortrugo - Colli Piacentini, Emilia-Romagna, Italy

"It's hot, drink Ortrugo."  These were the words, tweeted by my friend Matt at the Wine Bottega (way back in the summer, naturally), that introduced me to the Ortrugo grape.  I had never heard of it before, but after some quick Googling, I could tell that this was something I'd be interested in.  I asked Matt whether they had any Ortrugo in stock and he said that they did, but the wine was only about 35% Ortrugo.  I like to try and write about varietal wines whenever possible and if that isn't possible, I try to aim for at least 75% of a blend, but sometimes I have to take what I can get.  I bought the wine and held out hope that I'd be able to find a varietal Ortrugo at some point in the future, but to date my efforts have been in vain.  I decided it's time to go ahead and write the post so today I'd like to tell you a little bit about Ortrugo and the wine that I was able to try.

Like an unbelievable number of grapes (see Abouriou, Malagousia, Timorasso, Pugnitello, Roscetto, Pecorino and Casetta, among many others), Ortrugo was on the brink of extinction until it was rediscovered and rescued in the 1970's.  It was first mentioned in print (under synonyms Artrugo and Altrugo) in 1881 and the first mention of it as Ortrugo appeared in 1927.  It is thought that the name comes from altra uva, which means "the other grape" in the local dialect, though it's not entirely clear what the other grape that it is being contrasted with might be.  It could have been Trebbiano Romagnolo, the Trebbiano variety native to Emilia-Romagna that covers a lot of ground throughout that region, or it could be Malvasia di Candia Aromatica which was the grape that was perhaps most responsible for Ortrugo's decline.  Throughout the early and middle parts of the 20th Century, many growers replaced their Ortrugo vines with Malvasia di Candia Aromatica, though I'm not really sure why since Ortrugo is a high yielding vine that is fairly easy to grow, though it is somewhat susceptible to the European grapevine moth.

The grape had all but disappeared when Luigi Mossi discovered a small patch of Ortrugo growing in a decrepit corner of one of his vineyards near the city of Piacenza in the Val Tidone.  Rather than just pull up the vines, Luigi decided to harvest them and make a small bit of wine from them.  He tasted the resulting wine with some of his friends and decided to plant an entire vineyard over to the grape.  People thought he was crazy to plant so much land to a grape that no one had really heard of, but pretty soon his wines made from Ortrugo were outselling his Malvasia based wines.  Other growers took notice and began to plant Ortrugo vines of their own.  Today there are about 500 hectares (1,300 acres) of Ortrugo planted in Italy and nearly all of them are in and around the Colli Piacentini DOC in the western part of Emilia-Romagna, which used to be a part of Piedmont and is just southeast of Oltrepò Pavese in Lombardy.  Varietal wines from Ortrugo are allowed here and some producers do make them, but it is also frequently blended with Malvasia and Trebbiano Romagnolo.  Ortrugo lends itself well to sparkling wine production and wines made from it can be found in fully sparkling, frizzante and still forms.

The wine that I was able to find was the 2010 La Tosa "Rio del Tordo," which is a still wine made from 35% Ortrugo, 35% Malvasia, 20% Trebbiano & 10% Sauvignon Blanc.  In the glass the wine was a medium lemon gold color.  The nose was moderately intense with aromas of grapefruit, peach and a touch of grassy herbaceousness.  On the palate the wine was light bodied with fairly high acidity.  There were flavors of lemon, grapefruit, green apple, apricot, and citrus peel.  It was tart, bright and refreshing and I was surprised at how much the wine reminded me of varietal Sauvignon Blanc given that that grape only made up 10% of the final blend.  It had a lot of Sauvignon Blanc character with a bit of peachy stone fruit and white flowers thrown in for good measure.  It's a very nice wine that is definitely great on a hot summer day, which is fortunately the situation that I was able to try it it in rather than the blizzard conditions we've been experiencing here in the northeast lately.  I hope to find a varietal Ortrugo some day, but in the meantime, this is the best that I've been able to do.

Cococciola - Terre de Chieti, Abruzzo, Italy

Cococciola is the kind of grape that makes me hate writing.  That sounds a little harsh, I know, but I remember being so excited when I came across it in a local Italian wine shop since it was something completely new and different to me, which is no small feat these days.  I naturally bought the wine and opened it almost right away.  I enjoyed it quite a bit and immediately starting trying to find more information on it for a post here.   After I drank it, I started to see a few email offers for wines made from the Cococciola grape and saw a few pieces online about it, but when I tried to really dig in and find enough good information to fill out an entire blog post, I just wasn't getting anywhere.  There is virtually no mention of Cococciola in any of the academic databases I usually use and the few references in books and online that I have been able to track down rarely have more than a sentence or two of vague, generic boilerplate information that hardly seems like it is worth reporting.  I keep looking for a story with Cococciola and I think that the best story that I've been able to find is that there really isn't much of a story to Cococciola at all.  So I finally decided to just give up on researching this grape and will just present the little bit of information that I was able to find and get to the tasting note as quickly as possible.

I started, as I usually do, with the Oxford Companion to Wine, whose entry on the grape reads in full "white wine variety native to the Abruzzo where it is blended with Trebbiano."  Lettie Teague at the Wall Street Journal wrote about Cococciola back in 2010, but her entire blog post only runs to two paragraphs, only one sentence of which actually contains any informational content ("Cococciola is a grape grown in the Abruzzi region of Italy (in the province of Terre di Chieti) where it produces a pleasingly crisp, slightly grassy white that’s a wonderful aperitif and a perfect summer drink").  There's a handful of brief blog posts more or less in that vein scattered across the internet that you can Google at your leisure, but pretty much none of them go any deeper than the two quotes above.

The most in-depth treatment of Cococciola comes from Wine Grapes, but even their coverage is pretty sparse.  The "Origins and Parentage" section is a single sentence, which reads in full "The origins of this variety and of its strange name are unclear and its earliest mention seems to be in Viala and Vermorel's Ampélographie (1901-1910) under the synonym Cacciola."  Though I've been able to track down a few volumes of the Ampélographie online, I haven't found the volume (there are 7 in total) that mentions Cacciola and since I don't have thousands of dollars to spend on a copy for myself, I can't report what that book has to say about the grape.  Wine Grapes goes on to say that Cococciola is mostly planted in Abruzzo and northern Puglia where it was traditionally used as a very minor blending component with Trebbiano d'Abruzzo (thanks largely to its high yields), though it is being used more these days to make varietal wines.  As of 2000, there were shockingly 893 hectares (2,207 acres) under vine in Italy, which is much higher than I would have expected.

The wine that I was able to find was the 2010 Cantina Frentana Cococciola from the Terre di Chieti area of Abruzzo, which i picked up for around $19 from Panzano Proviste. In the glass the wine was a pale silvery lemon color. The nose was moderately intense with subtle aromas of lemon, apricot, green apple and white flowers. On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity. There were tart, racy flavors of lemon and green apple with a touch of apricot and pear and a lovely stony mineral finish. I found the wine bright and sharp with really lively acidity, but there were also nice round stone fruit flavors that kept this from being too austere. I thoroughly enjoyed drinking it and am glad that I gave it a shot, even if it has been unpleasant to try and post about. I guess it just goes to show that a grape doesn't have to be interesting in order for the wine to be good. This is definitely a grape to try if you happen to run across it in your local shop.

Odds and Ends - Sparkling Turbiana, Picpoul de Pinet, Frappato, Verdejo & Listán Blanco

Hello everyone and welcome once again to my erratic Odds and Ends feature, where I take a look at a few wines I've tried recently that I feel either don't warrant a full post or which feature grapes that I've already written a full post about.  I've got a handful of interesting wines here that I hope you'll enjoy reading about, so without further ado, let's get to them!

I've written several times (as in my posts on Groppello, Vespaiola, Grechetto and Sagrantino) about the wines of Paul Turina, an Italian importer from Maine who is a friend of mine.  Paul has some distant relatives who make wine in the area around Lake Garda in Italy and I've written about some of their offerings in the post on Groppello linked above.  His family also works with the Turbiana grape, which, as we discovered in my post on that grape last year, is actually Verdicchio.  I've tried a sparkling Verdicchio from the Marche, but I've never tried a sparkling Turbiana from Lugana so when Paul gave me the opportunity to taste his family's wine, I graciously took him up on it.  In the glass the wine was a fairly pale lemon gold color with steady bubbles.  The nose was somewhat reserved with aromas of apple and pineapple and little else.  On the palate the wine was on the lighter side of medium with fairly high acidity and a loose bubble structure.  There were flavors of ripe apple, pear, baked white fruits, candied apple and pineapple.  This is a tank fermented wine that has more complexity and depth than your average prosecco.  It's really a lovely little bottle and those interested in trying it are advised to contact Paul via his website.

Next up is a wine made from one of the very first grapes that I wrote about, Picpoul Blanc.  Even though that post was only the tenth one that I had written, I really don't have any new information to add to it.  Picpoul is a pretty straightforward grape without any real controversies or interesting family connections.  I'm still a big fan of it, though, and this bottle, the 2010 vintage from the Saint-Peyre winery in the Coteaux du Languedoc region of France, was given to me as a gift by my wife (retail is around $11).  In the glass the wine was a fairly light silvery lemon color.  The nose was fairly intense with aromas of grapefruit, grapefruit peel, pear and some grassy herbs.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity.  There were flavors of pear, grapefruit peel, golden apple, lemon and cut grass.  Picpoul always reminds me a bit of Sauvignon Blanc, and this wine was certainly no exception.  It's bright and zippy with a wonderful wild, grassy vein running through it as well.

I've mentioned one of my favorite shops, The Wine Bottega in the North End of Boston, over and over again because they always have an interesting selection and are always incredibly nice and knowledgeable about their merchandise.  Matt is one of the co-owners of the shop and he has recently started his own importing label on the side called Selectio Naturel.  Like the Bottega, Selectio Naturel is focused on representing small producers making natural wines.  One of those producers is Lamoresca whose vineyards are located deep in the hills of central Sicily at an altitude around 430 meters above sea level.  Their approach in the vineyard and in the winery is minimalistic, and you can read more about it here.  Matt imports their Rosso, which is a blend of Nero d'Avola and Frappato, their Bianco, a blend of Vermentino Corse and Roussanne which I'll have a full review of shortly, and the Nerocapitano, which is 100% Frappato.  Frappato is absolutely one of my favorite grapes and in my prior post on it, I got a little carried away with an example from Occhipinti, so I had high hopes for this bottle, the 2011 vintage, which I picked up at the Bottega for around $30.  In the glass this wine was a fairly light pinkish ruby color.  The nose was intense with aromas of red cherry, wild strawberry, raspberry and rose petals.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity.  There were flavors of bright red cherry, raspberry, rose water and wild strawberry.  While it wasn't as intoxicating as the wine from Occhipinti, it was still gorgeous with a beautiful perfume and pure fruit flavors on the palate (and it costs about $20 less per bottle).

Another one of my very early posts was on the Verdejo grape from Spain.  In that post, I wrote that Verdejo was best known in Rueda, Spain, but the bottle that I was able to try was from La Mancha, which is a little further south, a little further inland, and a bit hotter and drier than Rueda.  I enjoyed the bottle that I had picked up, but I was curious to try a more representative sample from an area where the grape was more traditional and more highly regarded.  I found the 2009 Shaya Verdejo ($17) a few months after I wrote my initial post and have had the tasting note kicking around in a notebook for quite some time now.  In the glass the wine was a pale silvery lemon color.  The nose was moderately intense with aromas of pear, white peach and fresh cut lemon.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity.  There were flavors of pear, lemon peel, and lees with a stony, chalky minerality on the finish.  It was an OK wine, but I didn't like it as much as the example from La Mancha, which was actually a little bit cheaper than this bottle.

A few months ago, I was shopping at another one of my favorite local stores, the Spirited Gourmet in Belmont, and came across a bottle of wine made from the Listán Blanco grape (the 2008 Bodegas Carballo, which cost around $24). I had recently picked up a few bottles made from Listán Negro and was excited to find something that I didn't think I had tried before. I bought the bottle without asking anyone about it or bothering to look it up on my phone and so was somewhat disappointed when I looked it up at home and discovered that Listán Blanco is actually just another name for Palomino, which I've already written about.  This wine was from the Canary Islands, though, and was made with some skin contact, so I was curious to see what it was like.  In the glass the wine was a fairly deep lemon gold color just starting to go bronze.  The nose was intense with aromas of red apples, apple cider, fresh cracked pecans, seawater and autumn spice.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity.  There were flavors of baked apple, apple cider, fresh cracked pecans, toasted walnuts, autumn spice and dried leaves.  When I used to jump into raked leaf piles as a kid, I remember there being a particular smell and taste that would result from the leaves being crushed by our bodies.  A fine powder would form and coat the inside of our noses, our mouths and our clothes and that powder had a very distinct kind of taste and smell that I had essentially forgotten about until I drank this wine.  Everything about this bottle screams autumn and I almost felt like the wine had a kind of mulled character to it.  This was miles better than the Palomino I tried previously and it gives a hint as to what Palomino may be capable of in careful hands.

Inzolia/Ansonica - Sicily and Isola del Giglio, Tuscany, Italy

A few days ago, we took a look at a grape known as Garganega in the Veneto in northeastern Italy and as Grecanico Dorato in Sicily way down in southern Italy, but virtually nowhere in between.  While I found that particular geographical situation odd, it is certainly not unique.  Today's grape, for example, is found primarily in Sicily, but is also fairly well represented in Tuscany and has been known in each of those areas for over 300 years, but aside from a few stray vines in Sardinia, Campania and Lazio, it isn't really grown anywhere else.  In Sicily, that grape is known as Inzolia while in Tuscany, it is known as Ansonica and today I'd like to take a closer look at it and its journey.

As mentioned above, Inzolia/Ansonica are first mentioned definitively in the literature around the 16th or 17th centuries.  I say definitively because the ancient Roman writer Pliny the Elder mentions a grape called Irziola in his Naturalis Historia, which some have taken to be the first mention of Inzolia in print, but aside from their similar sounds, there is no evidence that indicates that Pliny was talking about the grape we know as Inzolia today.  In Sicily, Inzolia has historically been found mainly on the western end of the island where it is has been valued as an ingredient, along with Grillo, in high-end Marsala production.  As the production of high-end Marsala has fallen, Inzolia has given way to Catarratto, which is more widely used for low-end Marsala production.  Inzolia is still relatively widely planted, though, as current Sicilian acreage stands at around 19,000 acres.  As table wine production has taken off in Sicily over the past few decades, more and more of the existing Inzolia plantings have been used for that purpose as well.

In Tuscany, the grape is known as Ansonica and is planted mainly along the coast and on some of the nearby islands of the Tuscan archipelago.  The most famous of these seven islands is Elba, where Napoleon was banished in 1814, and while Ansonica is grown there, the island we're most concerned with is called Giglio.  Giglio is a small (about 1.36 square miles), mountainous island made primarily of granite and located about 10 miles from the Tuscan shore.  It has been inhabited since the Stone Age and has been ruled over by the Etruscans, Greeks, Romans and Florentines among others.  At various times throughout history, the island has been completely abandoned as invading forces deported the native population, but it has always been resettled eventually.  Grapes have been grown on this island since at least the 6th Century BC, and today, Ansonica is the mostly widely planted grape there.

Despite their geographical distance, ampelographers have long suspected that Inzolia and Ansonica were the same grape and the Italian authorities have recognized them as the same for many years.  In 1999, the first DNA evidence started coming in which validated this particular hypothesis.  An Italian team used AFLP markers, which are a little bit different from the microsatellite markers primarily used today, to show that the Ansonica from Giglio was most closely related to Ansonica from the Tuscan mainlaind, Inzolia from Sicily, Roditis from Greece, Airén from Spain and Clairette from France.  While these results are interesting, we do have to take them with a grain of salt.  AFLP analysis is looking at DNA sites throughout a sample's genome, which means that it can be more precise than microsatellite analysis, but that precision isn't necessarily a good thing.  If you're looking for a murderer, then you want to be as precise as possible, but when you're dealing with families of plants that are subject to genetic mutation over time, that precision can indicate differences in two plants that you would otherwise consider to be identical.*  Clonal variants can show up in AFLP analysis as different varieties, as can geographically disparate populations that shared a common ancestor hundreds of years ago, but which have been evolving separately from one another ever since.  This is the case with Inzolia and Ansonica, and this AFLP analysis was able to show that there were differences not only between Tuscan Ansonica and Sicilian Inzolia, but also between Ansonica from Giglio and Ansonica from Tuscany.  The two Ansonicas were closer to one another than to Inzolia from Sicily and the Tuscan Ansonica was closer to the Sicilian Inzolia than the Giglio Ansonica was, which would indicate that the grape likely came from Sicily to Tuscany and then to Giglio.

I mentioned above that this study also found similarities between Inzolia/Ansonica and Roditis, Airén and Clairette, and this probably needs a bit of explanation as well.  Many genetic studies compare large groups of grapes from specific geographic regions in order to see how similar they are to one another genetically.  The theory is that grapes from a certain region have likely been together a very long time and are probably distantly related to one another in ways that are too complicated to tease out with pedigree analysis.  When testing a large pool of grapes, the scientists look to see which grapes have the most DNA in common with one another and then hypothesize that these grapes are then more closely related to one another than to the other grapes in the study.  The main problem in interpreting the results is that you are limited by the number and the variety of grapes in a study.  The results are really only telling you that these grapes are more like each other than the other grapes in the study, which can be problematic if you've chosen your samples poorly.  Imagine a study like this done with human beings where you're Italian and your family has lived in a small village for hundreds of years.  The researchers select you and a handful of people from your town and compare them with another group from the mountains of Tibet.  The study should show that you are more closely related to the people from your village than the villagers of Tibet.  Now imagine that the study took you, one person from the village in Tibet, and a pack of chimpanzees.  Suddenly you and the Tibetan villager look a lot more closely related.

The point is that these relatedness studies can be useful, but they can also be misleading.  The group above sampled a very high number of Greek grapes along with a handful of grapes from a whole bunch of different regions all over the world.  They tested very few Sicilian or Tuscan varieties, which one would expect to be more closely related, and so the results may be a little skewed.  They interpreted their results as showing that Inzolia likely came from Greece, due to its relatedness to Roditis, into Sicily before moving to Tuscany and then to Giglio.  In Wine Grapes, Vouillamoz points to a 2010 study (citation 1) where another Italian team analyzed 82 different Sicilian grapes to see how closely they were related as refutation of the study above.  They found that Inzolia was mostly closely related to a few other varieties with Inzolia in the name (but which are separate varieties) such as Inzolia Imperiale and Inzolia Nera (which is not a red-berried mutation of Inzolia at all, but rather a separate variety).  Further, this group also had similarities with Coda di Volpe, Grecanico, Frappato, Carricante and Nerello Mascalese among others.  Vouillamoz claims that the relatedness of Inzolia to these other Sicilian grapes indicates that it is likely from Sicily and not from Greece.  Since this particular study did not include any Greek grape varieties, it seems difficult to compare the results from the different studies and come to that kind of conclusion.  Both studies do seem to indicate that Inzolia came from Sicily to Tuscany, but whether it is native to Sicily or whether its ancestors or Greek seems to still be an open question.

I was able to try two different wines, one from Sicily and one from Giglio, made from the Inzolia/Ansonica grape.  The first was the 2009 Ansonaco from Familia Carfagna, which I picked up for around $50 from my friends at the Wine Bottega (though I have recently seen it available at Curtis Liquors as well).  In the glass the wine was a medium bronze gold color.  The nose was intense with aromas of ripe red apples, toasted nuts, apple cider, poached pear, brown sugar, dried apple and abundant autumn spice.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly acidity.  There were flavors of dried apricot, red apple, apple cider, toasted almonds, autumn spice and dried leaves.  I would have sworn that this wine saw some skin contact, but this website seems to indicate no maceration.  I thought this was a really gorgeous wine that was an absolute pleasure to drink.  It should be drunk at cellar or room temperature, as the cold really blunts the aromas and flavors.  It is a bit pricey but I thought it was worth every penny.  You probably could pair this with some food, but I really just enjoyed it on its own.

The second wine that I tried was the 2010 Case Ibidni Inzolia from Sicily, which I picked up from my friends at the Wine Bottega for around $12.  In the glass the wine was a medium lemon yellow color.  The nose was moderately intense with aromas of ripe white pear, green melon, ripe apple and something vaguely tropical.  On the palate the wine was on the lighter side of medium with medium acidity.  There were flavors of ripe, round white pear and red apple along with a touch of mild pineapple and banana.  Inzolia does have a tendency to get flabby if not picked early enough, and I think that these grapes maybe hung on the vine a little too long.  It had some of those flat fruit-cocktail kinds of flavors going on and really wasn't my thing.

Reader and frequent commenter WineKnurd was able to try a more recent vintage (2011) of this wine which he picked up from his friends at Wine Authorities in Durham, North Carolina.  His tasting note reads:

"100% Insolia from Sicily, 12.5% abv with a slight spritz in the glass on first pour. Classic Italian white wine nose full of wet stone and minerals backed with notes of fresh cut granny smith apple and some hints of cantaloupe rind. The palate was lighter and less intense than I was expecting based on the nose and the wine in general had lower acidity than what I was expecting for an Italian white. Up front there are flavors of sour apple and melon rind but somewhere along the mid-palate it thins out and finishes weak. My guess is that this needs to be consumed as fresh as possible in Sicily, not a year behind in the USA. At $12.99 it doesn't break the bank but this is money better spent elsewhere."

CITATION

1) Carimi, F, Mercati, F, Abbate, L, & Sunseri, F.  2010.  Microsatellite analyses for evaluation of genetic diversity among Sicilian grapevine cultivars.  Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution.  57(5): pp 703-719.

*It really seems to be taken for granted that Inzolia and Ansonica are genetically identical, but I actually was not able to find any studies that specifically prove the synonymy.  I checked the microsatellite profile data in the VIVC with the data given for Inzolia in Citation 1 and found that the adjusted values matched at all six sites, so that's good enough for me.

Manzoni Bianco (Incrocio Manzoni 6.0.13) - Benaco Bresciano, Lombardy, and Vignetti Delle Dolomiti, Trentino, Italy

Most countries that have an established wine industry also tend to have oenology and viticulture research programs which have a number of different aims.  In general, these programs are responsible for carrying out research to try and improve the wine quality within a given country.  At one time, grape breeding was a big part of this particular mission.  Many of the French hybrid grapes were created in an effort to combat the phylloxera louse, while many of the German crossings (such as Sheurebe, Kerner and Dornfelder, among others) were created in an effort to match individual grapes with various aspects of the difficult German climate.  In the United States, much of the work done in grape breeding was done by Harold Olmo at UC Davis (who created Symphony, Emerald Riesling and Early Muscat), though the University of Cornell has released a few grapes (like Chardonel) as have some private breeders like Elmer Swenson (who created St. Croix).  The one huge wine power who seems to be missing in this story is Italy.

Italy does have research institutions throughout the country devoted to grape research, but grape breeding has never really been their focus.  There are specific Italian crosses, but they aren't as well known or as widely spread as those efforts from other countries for a variety of reasons.  The primary reason is that Italy is embarrassingly rich in native grape varieties with several hundred approved for use and an estimated several thousand actually spread throughout the country. Another big reason for the lack of Italian crossings/hybrids is that Italy does not have the same challenging climates as countries like Germany or the USA and so there wasn't and isn't any real need to develop new varieties that could survive.  Furthermore, even some of the more difficult climates in Italy have been growing grapes for hundreds of years that are native to the area and thus already adapted to the local weather systems.  In short, why would you need to create any new grapes when you have so many varieties close at hand and when you have climates that are essentially tailor-made for the growth of vines?

One of things that makes us human, though, is our inability to accept the limitations that nature has laid upon us.  Yes, we have many excellent grapes that grow well in our climates, but surely we can do better?  It was in that spirit that Professor Luigi Manzoni began his work in grape breeding at the Viticulture and Oenology School of Conegliano in the Veneto region of Italy.  Manzoni, who lived from 1888 until 1968, was involved in many different kinds of research on the vine, and one of the areas he was experimenting in was grape breeding.  He was not the only grape breeder active in Italy (see also Bruno Bruni, creator of Incrocio Bruni 54), but he was perhaps the most successful.  His aim was to try and create new varieties for the Veneto that were of higher quality than those already being cultivated, but which would also yield more prolifically and be more disease resistant.  Manzoni was not the only grape breeder active in Italy (see also Bruno Bruni, creator of Incrocio Bruni 54), but he was perhaps the most successful.

Manzoni created many different crossings throughout his career, but as with most grape breeders, only a few have had any lasting importance.  He created Manzoni Moscato by crossing Moscato di Amburgo and Raboso, Manzoni Rosa (or Manzoni 1.50) by crossing Trebbiano and Traminer, and Incrocio Terzi N.1 by crossing Barbera with Cabernet Franc.  Two of his most famous red grapes are known as Incrocio Manzoni 2-14 and Incrocio Manzoni 2-15, and both are supposedly made by crossing Glera and Cabernet Sauvignon, but a recent study (citation 1) seems to indicate that 2-15 is actually a crossing between Mathiasz Janosne (Mathiasz 210) and Kövidinka.  Many of these grapes are grown in commercial quantities in northeastern Italy, but just barely.

The most famous Manzoni creation, though, is almost certainly Manzoni Bianco, or Manzoni 6.0.13.  Manzoni created this grape at some point in the early 1930's supposedly by crossing Pinot Bianco and Riesling.  Wine Grapes indicates that this parentage was disputed by a few Italian authors who believed that the grape was actually a Chardonnay and Riesling cross, but Vouillamoz assures us that his DNA research shows that the given pedigree is correct (I do not have access either to the original dispute or to Vouillamoz's DNA data, so I suppose I'll take his word for it).  You may be surprised to learn that Manzoni Bianco is currently the 13th most widely planted grape in all of Italy with nearly 24,000 acres devoted to it.  It is permitted in a few DOCs in the Veneto and in Trentino, but most of the plantings are actually further south in Calabria, Puglia and Molise where it is likely used for bulk wine production.

I was able to track down two wines featuring the Manzoni Bianco grape.  The first was the 2009 Pratello "Lieti Conversari," which I picked up from my friends at the Spirited Gourmet for around $25.  This wine is 100% Manzoni Bianco from the Brescia region of Lombardy.  The grapes for this wine are hand harvested and 80% are fermented in stainless steel while 20% are fermented in oak barrels for 3-4 months (it is unclear whether it is new oak or not, but the wine didn't taste oaky to me at all and I would have guessed this saw 100% stainless steel).  In the glass the wine was a medium lemon gold color.  The nose was moderately intense with aromas of white peach, green apple, pear and grapefruit.  On the palate the wine was on the lighter side of medium with fairly high acidity.  There were flavors of grapefruit, lime, racy green apple, pear and white peach.  It felt like there was still a slight prickle of CO2 to the wine as well, but since it didn't really dissipate, it was probably just an effect of the acidity.  It was bright and zippy, despite the fact that it clocked in at a pretty hefty 14% alcohol.  I found it lithe, vibrant and very enjoyable overall.  Fans of snappy high acid whites will find a lot to like here, but be careful as it wears the 14% alcohol well and it can sneak up on you.

The second wine that I tried was the 2010 "Fontanasanta" from Elisabetta Foradori, which I picked up for around $28 from my friends at the Wine Bottega.  This wine is 100% Manzoni Bianco from the hills above Trentino that is left in contact with its skins after crushing for about a week in large, egg shaped cement containers (there's a biodynamic reason for this that I don't really buy, so I'll just leave it at that).  The wine is then aged for 12 months in acacia casks prior to bottling.  In the glass the wine was a medium bronze gold color.  The nose was moderately intense with aromas of pear, toasted almond, honey, red apple and lemon peel.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity.  There were flavors of ripe apple, pear, almond, honeysuckle flower, pineapple and a touch of apple cider. It's difficult to imagine two wines more different from one another than the two I tried for this tasting.  The Foradori was deep, rich and honeyed with lovely cidery notes and bit of oxidative tang.  What it lacked in vibrancy and freshness, it made up for in depth and complexity.  It's difficult to say which wine is "better" since both were clearly made to be such different things.  In the spring and summer months, I'd probably reach for the Pratello, but in the cooler fall and winter, I'd definitely go for the Foradori.  Both are very good, very interesting wines that really show what Incrocio Manzoni is capable of in careful hands.

CITATIONS

1)  Lacombe, T., Boursiquot, J.M., Laucou, V., Di Vecchi-Staraz, M., Peros, J.P., & This, P. 2012. Large scale parentage analysis in an extended set of grapevine cultivars (Vitis vinifera L.). Theoretical and Applied Genetics. In press.

Garganega/Grecanico Dorato - Veneto and Sicily, Italy

I wasn't sure whether I was going to write about the Garganega grape or not.  It is the 11th most planted grape in Italy with nearly 30,000 acres devoted to it and is the star grape (making up at least 70% of the blend) in one of the most common white wines from Italy, Soave.  It's a grape right on the fringe of being fringe and I went back and forth about it for a long time.  I ultimately decided to write about it, though, because it turns out that Garganega is a really interesting grape with connections to a surprisingly large number of other Italian grapes.  I was also able to find some interesting wines made from it outside of the Soave region of the Veneto so I thought, what the heck, let's take a look at Garganega.

Garganega is one of the oldest grapes known in Italy.  Its first appearance in the literature dates to a 13th century work by Pietro de Crescenzi which says that it was cultivated around Bologna (in Emilia-Romagna) and Padova (in the Veneto) at that time.  It seemingly hasn't moved very much from this general area in the 800 or so years since de Crescenzi wrote his book since nearly all of the plantings of Garganega and nearly all of the DOC regions where it is approved for use are clustered in the Veneto with just a few in Lombardy, Trentino-Alto Adige and Umbria as well.  There's a little bit of twist to that story, though.  Some ampelographers noticed that Garganega looked an awful lot like a grape called Grecanico Dorato grown in Sicily, but nobody could quite figure out how or why the same grape would show up in such geographically disparate regions and nowhere in between.  Grecanico had been known and grown in Sicily for hundreds of years while Garganega had been known in northeastern Italy for longer than that so while the hypothesis of the two grapes' synonymy was intriguing, it remained just a theory for many years.

In 2003, an Italian research team conducted a study on vines from the Veneto to see if and how any of them were related to one another.  They tested three clones of each of fourteen different Veronese grapes, one of which was Garganega.  The team then took the DNA data they obtained from their Garganega samples and compared them to an exiting profile for Grecanico Dorato from another team's experiments and found that "these cultivars are highly related and most likely represent the same grapevine."  In 2008, another Italian team decided to look at the DNA from Garganega and Sangiovese and compare it to a wide range of grapes from all over Italy in order to see if they could find any interesting relationships.  They tested samples of both Garganega and Grecanico Dorato and found that the two vines were definitely identical.  This result confirmed a study done a year earlier (citation 1) that showed that not only was Garganega the same as Grecanico Dorato, but it was also the same as a grape called Malvasia de Manresa from Spain (which raises a whole bunch of interesting questions that I'm afraid I can't answer).  The vine is no longer cultivated in Spain, but there are still some vines in holding collections in Europe.

The most interesting findings in these last two papers had to do with the other grape varieties that had a close relationship with Garganega.  The team from citation 1 found that Garganega and another grape called Uva Sogra were the parents of Susumaniello, a red grape grown primarily in Puglia today.  They also found that Garganega has a likely parent-offspring relationship with Malvasia di Candia, Trebbiano Toscana and a few other grapes that I've never heard of before.  These results were confirmed in the 2008 study mentioned above and augmented by the discovery that Garganega also appears to have a parent-offspring relationship with Marzemina Bianca, Catarratto, Albana, Greco del Pollino and Empibotte.  The connection with so many different grapes throughout Italy makes Garganega one of the most important cultivars in the history of Italian wine grape evolution.  Though it is a very interesting question, I don't believe than anyone has given a satisfactory answer as to how the grape moved throughout the country of Italy to end up in two places so far apart, leaving only relatives in its wake.  It is thought that since Garganega is more closely related to the vines of the Veneto, it likely came from there originally before making its way south to Sicily, and that's as good an explanation as any, I suppose.

I was able to try a variety of wines made from Garganega/Grecanico from both the Veneto and from Sicily.  The first was the 2008 "Pico" from Angiolino Maule, which I picked up from my friends at the Wine Bottega for around $30.  This wine is 100% Garganega from Maule's vines in the Veneto.  The grapes are crushed and left to ferment in open vats without any temperature control for 2-4 days.  The wine is then moved to old (neutral) 1500 liter barrels for a year prior to bottling without any fining or filtration.  In the glass the wine was a hazy medium gold color.  The nose was fairly intense with aromas of ripe apple, white flowers, pineapple, honeysuckle, pear and grapefruit.  It was deep and wonderful, revealing something new with every sniff. On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity and just a touch of tannic grip.  There were flavors of ripe apple, honey, pineapple, apple cider, Meyer lemon, almonds and grapefruit.  This blows every Soave I've ever had completely out of the water.  It is a complex, fascinating wine that was an absolute delight to drink.  If you've given up on the Garganega grape because you've only had a few bland examples from Soave, let this bottle change your mind.

The second wine that I tried was the 2010 Planeta "La Segreta" ($15 retail) from Sicily.  This is a blended wine made from 50% Grecanico, 30% Chardonnay, 10% Viognier and 10% Fiano.  In the glass the wine was a medium lemon gold color.  The nose was moderately intense with aromas of pear, white peach, lemon peel, chalk and something faintly tropical.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity.  There were flavors of white grapefruit, cut grass, citrus peel, pear and ripe apple with a subtle stony minerality to the finish.  Overall, I found the wine sharp and snappy with a bit of fleshiness to it that helped to balance it out.  It was really citrusy and grassy and reminded me a lot of Sauvignon Blanc, which is one of the few grapes not in the blend at all.  It almost tasted a little under-ripe, which is surprising when you consider how much warmer Sicily is than the Veneto.  I thought it was a decent enough wine, but there wasn't too much in it to get me excited and it really just seemed flat and uninteresting after drinking the Pico.

The final wine that I tried was the Cornelissan Munjebel Bianco 6 from Sicily, which I picked up on clearance at the Spirited Gourmet for around $67.  I've written about Frank Cornelissan before, but his story is worth telling again.  In short, Frank Cornelissan is what happens when you extend the natural wine movement to its most extreme end.  His 8.5 hectares of vines consist of many different native Sicilian vines, inter-planted among one another, that are never sprayed and which are all harvested at the same time.  I don't know precisely what is in the Munjebel Bianco, but I've been told that the bulk of it is likely Grecanico with some Coda di Volpe, Carricante and Catarratto as well.  After harvest, the grapes are crushed and fermented in 400 liter terracotta vessels buried in the ground.  The skins and seeds are left in contact with the fermenting juice for up to a whopping 7-14 months for both red and white wines.  The wines are then pressed and returned to terracotta vessels to be aged "until several full cosmic cycles have passed" before bottling.  The vines are planted on a slope of Mt. Etna and his three different price points for his wines correspond to the altitude at which the grapes used for the wine are planted (the higher the altitude, the higher the price).  Munjebel is the middle tier, and the six refers to the fact that this is the sixth Munjebel white that Frank has produced.  The wines are not vintage dated, but savvy Cornelissan drinkers can tell which vintage a given wine is from the wine's name and its number.  I'm not one of those drinkers, so I have no idea what year this wine is from (though Jamie Goode over at the Wine Anorak says that it's 2009, and I suppose he would know).

Cornelissan's wines are bottled with no sulfur dioxide and with no fining or filtration at any step along the way.  When you look through the bottle at the liquid inside, I'll admit it doesn't look very appetizing as there are frequently both large chunks and fine cloudy particulates that float around inside the bottle at the slightest movement.  The wines can be a bit of a gamble since the lack of preservatives means that if the wine was stored improperly, the chance of microbial spoilage goes up considerably.  This is a sobering prospect for a bottle that costs $67 on clearance, and an even more sobering prospect for the $150 demanded for his highest-end bottling, the Magma.  I was sure to store my bottle carefully and also carefully poured it into my glass, where it was a hazy bronze color that was almost a little tawny.  The nose was moderately intense with aromas of cider, honey, caramel apple, toasted nuts and autumn spice.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with high acid.  The first descriptor I have in my notes is "crazy."  There was a slight tingle of CO2 followed by flavors of toasted nuts, unfiltered cider, golden apple, pear and pickle juice.  I've tasted only a handful of wines from Cornelissan and only drunk two full bottles of his wines, but their hallmark to me is the excellent balance between oxidation and bright, zippy freshness.  I have always found his wines fascinating and deeply interesting, but I understand that they are an acquired taste in a niche market.  I wouldn't pair this wine with any food at all.  It's the kind of thing that really needs to be experienced on its own.  It really demands the drinker's full attention and should be drunk slowly, over the course of several hours, so one can really see the wine evolve and devolve.  These aren't wines that I would want to drink every day, but when I do find myself with a Cornelissan wine open in front of me, it's always a memorable experience.