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.

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.

Sparkling Nebbiolo and Nebbiolo Bianco - Piemonte and Lombardy, Italy

At some point in the next few hours, Fringe Wine will pass the 50,000 page view mark.  When I first started writing this blog, I had no idea if anyone would care about these grapes and wines and, further, I didn't know if anybody would care what I had to say about them.  The first full month that the blog was online I got a total of 21 pageviews.  The next month was somehow worse as there was only  a total of 20 pageviews.  I kept plugging away at it and slowly but surely traffic started to rise.  It has taken 19 months to get to 50,000 views, but if traffic holds steady, it will only take about another 7 to get 50,000 more (and if it continues to increase as it has, we'll get there in about half that time).  I've learned so much in the course of writing this blog and have gotten to meet many interesting and amazing people.  I'm blown away every day to see how many people are reading the things that I've written and am grateful to everyone who takes the time to check it out.

In celebration of reaching this milestone I'd like to write about a couple of really interesting wines I've had recently that were made from the Nebbiolo grape.  Nebbiolo is one of the world's great grapes, forming the base of two of the world's most spectacular wines, Barolo and Barbaresco.  I wouldn't ordinarily write about wines made from it, but these two wines were made in very unique styles.  One of them was a white table wine, similar in style to the Blanc de Franc I took at look at a few months back, while the other was a fully sparkling metodo classico rosé wine made by four young winemakers in Piemonte who became friends while attending oenology school together.  But before we get to those wines, let's take a look at the Nebbiolo grape and see if we can learn a bit more about it.

Nebbiolo's name is thought to come from the Italian word nebbia, which means fog and is a reference to the dense fog that tends to form in the Langhe river around harvest time each year.  To be as widely esteemed as it is, plantings of Nebbiolo are shockingly low and not geographically widespread at all.  It is planted on only about 5,000 hectares (about 12,700 acres) of land, which places it well outside of the top 20 most widely planted grapes in Italy (Aglianico sits at number 20 with just over 18,000 acres planted as of 2000).  For comparison's sake, Catarratto is planted on over 100,000 acres of land in Italy, but you'd have a much more difficult time finding a wine made from Catarratto at your local wineshop than you would one from Nebbiolo.  Nebbiolo is planted almost exclusively in northwestern Italy in various parts of Piemonte, the Valle d'Aosta and Lombardia.  There are plantings scattered in other areas of the world, but the grape just doesn't seem to do well outside of very selected areas in Italy.  It is a unique grape in that it seems to perform well in a few very specific, very small places and nowhere else.  Of all of the great wine grapes in the world, Nebbiolo is far and away the most scarce and prices for the best wines made from it definitely show it.

There are three main Nebbiolo clones that make up most of the plantings of the grape: Lampia, Michet and Rosé.  Nebbiolo Lampia is the most common of the three and is the vine we are generally referring to when we talk about Nebbiolo.  The Nebbiolo vine is particularly susceptible to viral infections and Nebbiolo Michet is essentially a Nebbiolo Lampia vine that has been infected with a particular virus which causes the vine's canes to fork.  In a presentation (link is currently dead...similar paper can be found here, in Italian) given at the Nebbiolo Grapes conference in 2004 (in Italian), a team of scientists reported that Nebbiolo Rosé is actually a genetically distinct variety, though it does have a parent-offspring relationship with Nebbiolo Lampia (though we don't know which way the arrow is pointing).  This team also found that Nebbiolo Lampia was very closely related to Freisa and to Vespolina, among a handful of other Piemontese obscuranda.  Decanter filed a report based on this presentation later that year where they claim that Nebbiolo is related to Viognier, though close reading of the article shows that they are overstating the case.  Since Freisa is related to Nebbiolo, then grapes that Freisa are related to are also grapes that Nebbiolo is related to.  The research team found that Freisa had a lot of genetic similarities to Viognier, but they stopped short of saying that there was any provable familial relationship and I've not been able to find any publications since that time which were able to comment on the case with any certainty.  It seems likely that there's some kind of relationship, but we just don't have enough evidence at this point to say one way or the other.

The first of the two wines that I'd like to talk about was the 2010 Pietro Nera "La Novella" from the Terrazze Retiche di Sondrio IGT, which I believe is in the Valtellina area of Lombardia.  The wine is made from 80% Nebbiolo and 20% Chardonnay and, as mentioned above, is a white wine.  I picked this bottle up from my friends at the Gypsy Kitchen for about $21.  In the glass the wine was a very pale silvery lemon color with some greenish tints to it.  The nose was moderately intense with aromas of pears and ripe red apples.  On the palate the wine was on the lighter side of medium with high acidity.  There were flavors of green apple and meyer lemon with some ripe pear and white peach.  It was sharp and zippy but had a bitter, pithy kind of finish.  From the nose you'd expect a broad, ripe flavor profile, but it's actually fairly lean and little bit tart.  It's a really cool wine and it's good, but the price is a little high for what you get.  It's an interesting novelty but it's hard to imagine buying a case of something like this.

The second wine that I tried was the 2006 Erpacrife sparkling Nebbiolo which I picked up from my friends at the Wine Bottega for $75.  This wine is made by four young winemakers who met in oenology school and decided to make a sparkling Nebbiolo for their thesis project.  They continued to make it after they graduated by using the fruit from some of the younger Nebbiolo vines on their properties.  The name "Erpacrife" is a combination of the first syllable of each of their names: Erik, Paolo, Cristian and Federico.  It's a traditional method sparkler with no added dosage.  In the glass this wine was a medium pink color with vigorous bubble.  The nose was strikingly intense with candied strawberry and rose petal aromas.  On the palate the wine was light bodied with very high acid and intense bubbles.  The flavor was very floral with rosewater, dried strawberries and something a little bit tarry.  There wasn't a great deal of depth to the wine but the flavors were pure and intense.  $75 is a lot of money to pay for wine but this was so unique and so tasty that I wouldn't have any problem at all paying that amount again for another bottle.  It's really just a fantastic wine.

Groppello - Garda, Lombardy, Italy

The last time I counted the number of entries on my Wine Century Club application, I had over 350 different grapes crossed off, so it isn't all that often that I come across something completely new to me.  Such was the case, though, when Paul Turina, of Turina Italian Wines, emailed me a few weeks ago.  Paul had read my posts on Marzemino and Turbiana and was wondering if I'd ever tried any wines made from the Groppello or the Vespaiola grapes.  I informed him that I had not, and so Paul made the trek down from Portland, Maine, to bring me a half case sampler of wines that he imports from various regions in Italy.  I wrote about his Grechetto a few days ago and will be writing about the Vespaiola and the Sagrantino he brought me in a few days, but today I'd like to take a look at the Groppello grape, three wines made from it, and the man who brought them to me.

Paul Turina became a wine importer pretty much by accident.  He'd always enjoyed having a glass of wine with dinner (he is Italian, after all), but he wasn't too fussy about what he drank and didn't spend too much time thinking about it.  About ten years ago, he and his family decided to take a trip to Italy to visit a set of his cousins.  Paul had never been to Italy before and had never met this particular branch of his family tree.  He and his relations struck up a fast acquaintance and began traveling back and forth across the Atlantic on a somewhat regular basis to visit with one another.  On one of Paul's trips, he and his relations stepped into a local restaurant for dinner.  Paul's habit was to order the house wine at Italian eateries, which is usually a fairly anonymous wine made by the proprietor or one of his associates, but on this visit, he decided to take a look at the wine list to see what kinds of things they had to offer.  As he scanned the list, he noticed his own last name, Turina, next to one of the listings.  Curious, he asked the server about the producer and was informed that it was a local family winery which was located just a few doors down the road.

Paul went to investigate the winery and discovered that the proprietors were distant relatives (3rd cousins or so) of his who were fairly well known in the Garda Bresciano region of Lombardy, which is on the western bank of Lake Garda.  The winery is run by Luigi, Dario and Paolo Turina, three brothers who are the latest proprietors of a family winery that goes back a few generations.  The Turina winery is the largest producer in the Brescia region and is quite well known there (one of their rosé wines won an award for best rosé in Italy at one point), but they had no American importer and so their wines were unavailable and unknown in the USA.  Paul decided to change that.

Paul and his awesome Vespa Ape

For sixteen years, Paul had been a chemical importer and distributor.  If he could do it with chemical products, why not wine, he thought to himself, so he procured an importer's license from the Federal Government and began to import his family's wines more as a hobby in order to, as he put it in an email to me, supply his brother with a wine that had his own name on the label.  Over time, his wine-making relatives began to introduce him to other producers who were looking to move into the American market, so Paul would visit with them and, if things went well, he would buy a few cases from them to bring into the US.  He currently represents about 10 different producers who are scattered across nothern Italy and who, together, put out about 40 different labels.  He is frequently traveling back to Italy to find new producers to add to his portfolio and is thinking about branching out more into southern Italy in the near future.  Most of the wineries he represents are small family owned operations that don't produce a ton of wine (the exception is the Turina winery, which produces about 150,000 bottles per year from about 18 hectares of land).  Many of them farm organically and nearly all of them have invested heavily over the past decade or so in their own wineries in order to raise the quality of their wines, which was certainly evident in the wines that I was able to try from his portfolio.

Paul is passionate about the wines that he imports and his enthusiasm for his products is infectious.  He met with me because he is trying to catch the attention of distributors outside of Maine, particularly in Massachusetts, so that he can offer the wines in his portfolio to a larger set of consumers.  The current laws in Massachusetts stipulate that Paul cannot sell his wines directly to retailers, restaurants or individuals within Massachusetts because his business is located in Maine and direct shipping from any out of state producer is prohibited (for the purpose of the law, Paul is considered a producer despite the fact that he is an importer).  He can only sell to a distributor located within Massachusetts who can then apply their markup and sell the wine to Massachusetts retailers who can then apply their markup and then sell it to us, the consumers.  It's a complicated and ridiculous system that is insanely cumbersome, outdated, and unfair, but it is the system we live in and its rules are the rules we have to abide by (those who are interested in changing those laws should check out Free the Grapes and contact their local elected officials to express their displeasure).  I really do encourage any retailers who may be interested in his wines to contact Paul through his website or to contact one of their local distributors to try and urge them to pick up some of Paul's wines.  There are some products he has, like the three different Groppello's I'll take a look at below, that are currently not available in Massachusetts and which are good and interesting enough that wine drinkers will want to seek them out.  I've had the opportunity to sample all six wines he brought to me by now and all of them were unique and tasty while some of them, like the Grechetto, bordered on exceptional.  Paul hasn't paid me a dime for anything I've written and I don't stand to profit at all if his business takes off.  I'm merely a fan of the wines he brought me and hate that more people may not be able to try them because we live in a system that is designed, set up and maintained out of greed rather than out of a genuine concern for quality or consumer choice.

With that out of the way, we can now take a look at one of the grapes grown by Paul's family on the western bank of Lake Garda.  That grape is called Groppello (they also grow "Lugana," aka Turbiana, though I've not had the opportunity to taste any of their wines made from it), and there isn't a lot of information available on it.  The Oxford Companion to Wine's entry reads in full: "red grape variety grown to a limited extent in the Italian wine region of Lombardia."  There seem to be at least three different subspecies of Groppello:  Groppello Gentile and Groppello di Mocasina, which are red grapes, and Groppello Bianco, which is obviously white.  Groppello di Santo Stefano is mentioned as a sub-variety in some places but is probably just a synonym for Groppello di Mocasina according to the VIVC.  The German Wikipedia site does have a page for it (and is, remarkably, the source of nearly all the info I could find on Groppello), though, and they indicate that it is planted on less than 30 hectares of land on the western shore of Lake Garda.  The VIVC does have separate listings for Groppello di Mocasina and Groppello Gentile so it is possible that they're completely different grapes, but most other sites treat them as sub-varieties of the same grape, so I'm following suit.  It doesn't appear that anyone has done any genetic research on these two varieties, but it is probably the case that they're mutations of the same grape or are very very closely related.

The Mocasina subvariety is the lesser planted of the two, covering only about 47 hectares of land, and is so named because it is found primarily in the Mocasina area around Lake Garda.  Groppello Gentile is planted on just under 500 hectares of land, and, like its compatriots, is planted almost exclusively on the western shore of Lake Garda.  Groppello Bianco is generally a synonym for the Nosiola grape, but there does appear to be a white grape called simply Groppello in the VIVC that appears to be distinct from the Nosiola grape.  I'm unsure what its relation is to the other grapes and, further, am unsure what Nosiola's relationship is to any of the other Groppello grapes.  What I do know is the name Groppello comes from the Italian word grop, which means "knot" and refers to the knot-like appearance of the berry clusters on the vine.  Luigi Turina, grandfather to the three brothers currently running the winery, began his Turina Winery because of his belief in the quality of the Groppello grape, and the winery currently offers four different wines that depend on Groppello to some degree.

The first wine that I tried was the Fontanamora Chiaretto, which is at least 50% Groppello (by law), 30% Marzemino and the rest Barbera, though the exact percentages vary from year to year.  The winery also has a wine that is just called "Chiaretto," which I wasn't able to try.  The difference, I think, is that the grapes for this wine come from a prized vineyard site called Fontanamora (and that Sangiovese is used more than Barbera in the final blend for the basic Chiaretto).  For some reason the Turina winery doesn't list this wine on their website, though they do have a page for the regular Chiaretto bottling.  When Paul was telling me about this wine, I thought it was interesting that the final blend of grapes is actually determined prior to pressing.  For most blended wines, each grape variety is pressed and vinified separately and then the finished lots of wine are blended together.  For this wine, all the different grapes are crushed together, left on the skins for less than 24 hours (by law; the actual timing for this bottling was more like 8 hours Paul tells me), pressed, and then the combined juice is all fermented together.  It's a tough way to make wine since if you're off at all, there's no chance to adjust prior to bottling.  You have to make your blending decision based on the grapes themselves and just live with it.


All three of the wines reviewed below were given to me as samples directly from Paul.  I have not been compensated in any way other than receipt of the bottle and I do not have any business affiliation with Paul Turina or any of his associates.  The vintage for this bottle was 2011 and the price that he lists on his website for those interested in purchasing directly from him (if you are fortunate enough to live in a state where that is possible) is $13.  In the glass this wine was a vibrant pink color with perhaps just a hint of onion skin orange around the edges.  The nose was nicely aromatic with tart cherry, strawberry, abd crushed fresh red berry fruit with something slightly floral as well.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity.  It was bone dry with bright, juicy tart cherry, maraschino cherry, watermelon, strawberry and fresh raspberry fruit.  It was a bit like drinking a fresh red berry fruit cocktail.  It was clean and refreshing with lovely pure fruit flavors.  This would be a great thing to open up after mowing the lawn on a hot summer day or just to sit on the porch with to watch a July sunset.

The next wine that I tried was the 2010 entry level Groppello which Paul has listed for $12 on his site.  The grapes are hand sorted prior to crushing and are left on their skins for five days.  Once the fermentation is complete, they are racked into oak barrels (some new but I'm not sure what percentage) and aged for six months prior to bottling.  In the glass this wine was a medium purple ruby color.  The nose was fairly intense with dusky red cherry and raspberry fruit with tea leaves and spice.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity and low tannins.  There were juicy fresh cherry and red berry fruits with black tea and black pepper on the spicy finish.  The Turina winery website suggests beef or lamb with this, but I don't think it's quite big enough to handle that.  It actually reminded me more of a cross between a nice cool climate Pinot Noir and a Cru Beaujolais.  I actually think this might be nicely refreshing with a slight chill on it, thought it was quite nice at room temperature as well.  It would go with a wide variety of foods and would be an ideal match for almost anything in a tomato sauce.  Fans of bright, juicy, fruit-forward wines with nice acid and soft tannins will find a lot to like here.

The last wine that I tried was a reserve bottling of Groppello sourced from the Seselle vineyard which, according to the Turina winery website, is an ideal location for Groppello.  Groppello is fairly thin-skinned and so is very vulnerable to fungal diseases and moist conditions.  This particular site is situated so that the winds sweeping off of Lake Garda keep the air circulating and prevent any moisture from accumulating on the grapes as they ripen.  As a result, the grapes can hang on the vine a little longer and get a bit riper than in other places.  This wine is aged for two years in oak (some new) before bottling without any filtration.  The wine I tried was the 2007 and Paul lists the price for it on his site at $18.  In the glass this wine was a medium purple ruby color.  The nose was very aromatic with spicy black cherry, plum, charcoal, smoke and black pepper.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with fairly high acidity and medium tannins.  There were flavors of red and black cherry, raspberry, smoke, black pepper, baking spice, cola and a hint of brown sugar.  Some of the smoke blows off a bit as this opens up and the red berry fruits step a bit more into the forefront.  The baking spice and cola notes are very pronounced and the wine has a nice spicy complexity that the basic Groppello bottling lacks.  It reminded me quite a bit of the Cesanese I had a few months back.  This wine has a bit more stuffing than the basic Groppello, but I'd probably stick with the same kinds of foods.  I'd be more inclined to open this with grilled meats because of the smoky notes that I picked up in it, but I still think tomato sauces are probably this bottle's best friend.

If any of these wines interest you, please visit Paul's website and send him an email.  He's a fascinating guy who is absolutely in love with what he does.  He's one of the good guys and I really hope someone agrees to pick up the distribution for some of his wines in Massachusetts soon.

Marzemino - Garda, Lombardy, Italy

Let's go ahead and get this out of the way: yes, Marzemino was mentioned in Mozart's opera Don Giovanni.  Just before being sent to Hell, Don Giovanni says, "Versa il vino! Eccellente Marzemino!"  Which means something like, "Pour the wine!  Excellent Marzemino!"  Every single source that has anything to say about the grape relates that little vignette (including the blurb on the back of today's bottle), so in that grand tradition, there you go.  You have to wonder about a wine who's major claim to fame is a throwaway line in a 300 year old opera.  Marzemino is certainly not held in that kind of esteem these days, as the most enthusiasm that The Oxford Companion to Wine can muster is to call the grape "interesting," while Nicolas Belfrage (in his Barolo to Valpolicella), in a colossal feat of back-handed complimenting, says "there is no producer today, as far as I am aware, whose wine may be described as 'eccellente,' but then even a hamburger might be delicious if your next stop is Hell."  I happen to think that hamburgers are delicious in all sorts of circumstances, so I was very curious to check out Marzemino for myself.

Marzemino is a fairly old grape, known in northeastern Italy since at least the 16th Century.  It is thought to be native to this area, but solid evidence was lacking until recently (there's an alternate theory that it may originally be from around the Marzemin village in Austria, but I can't find any corroboration for that).  DNA testing has shown that Marzemino has a parent-offspring relationship with both Teroldego and Refosco dal Pedunculo Rosso, both of which are indigenous to northeastern Italy.  It is also a full sibling of Lagrein, meaning that both grapes share the same set of parents.  In my Refosco post, I was confused about the exact nature of the Marzemino-Refosco relationship, but a family tree on this page was most helpful in sorting that out.  What's going on is that Teroldego and an unidentified grape are the parents of both Marzemino and Lagrein, while Marzemino and another unidentified grape are the parents of Refosco.

Marzemino can be a high yielding vine, which may explain why it is still around despite its many problems in the vineyard.  It ripens late, which can be an issue in the some of the cooler areas of northeastern Italy (and which may explain the high occurrence of grassy and herbaceous notes that litter many descriptions of wines made from the grape).  It is also highly susceptible to a large number of fungal diseases which can make it a challenge to grow in wetter regions.  Yield control and proper planting are needed to produce quality wines from the grape since, as mentioned above, it can yield very large crops and suffers badly if planted at very high densities.  All of this adds up to a very high maintenance vine for quality production.

As Mozart's mention of the grape indicates, there was a time when Marzemino was rather in fashion.  It was a big deal in Austria for awhile, and still enjoys a certain popularity there to this day, but on the whole, Marzemino's star has fallen in more recent centuries and the grape has become more of a local phenomenon than an international player.  These days, most Marzemino is grown in the Trentino region of Italy, though there are also plantings in Lombardia, Friulia and the Veneto.  There may well be plantings in other countries, but you'd be hard pressed to find a varietal Marzemino outside of northern Italy.

I was able to pick up a bottle of the 2009 Costaripa "Mazane"  Marzemino for about $20 from my friends at Curtis Liquors.  The wine is from the Garda DOC (named for Lake Garda) which straddles both the Veneto and Lombardia, but this estate is located in Brescia, which I believe is on the Lombardy side of the border.  All the grapes for this wine come from a single vineyard on the hillsides bordering Lake Garda.  The yields are kept low and the wine sees very little oak with most of it fermented and matured in stainless steel.  In the glass, the wine had a medium ruby color.  The nose was medium intensity with red cherry, strawberry and stewed raspberry fruit aromas.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity and medium tannins.  There were flavors of sour cherry and wild strawberry fruit with a touch of leather and a little funk on the finish.  If someone asked you to describe a typical Italian food wine, you'd probably come up with something that very closely resembled this. The fruit flavors here are straightforward without being Kool-Aid simple and there's just enough tannic grip and acidic bite to complement a wide variety of foods, but especially tomato sauce based foods.  You can drink this on its own, but you'll get so much more out of it with something on your plate.  It's definitely not the kind of bottle that I'd reach for before being sent to my ultimate demise, but it's nice and is especially worth checking out for Chianti fans.

Sangue di Giuda - Oltrepò Pavese, Italy

Croatina Grapes

I don't want to alarm anyone, but we're going to brush up against our old friend Bonarda again in this post, so let's all put our serious faces on and buckle up once again.

The wine in question today is called Sangue di Giuda (or "Blood of Judas" in English) and it's made in the Oltrepò Pavese region of Lombardy in north-central Italy. Lombardy is bounded to the north by the Alps, to the west by Piedmont, to the east by the Veneto and Trentino-Alto Adige and to the south by Emilia-Romagna. Oltrepò Pavese is in the southwest of Lombardy, touching the boundaries of both Piedmont and Emilia-Romagna. It is thought to be the first region in Italy where Pinot Noir was planted. Quality here is very variable: the region is a big time producer of bulk wines, turning out production figures comparable to production powerhouse Soave in the Veneto. Oltrepò Pavese has two offical subzones: Buttafuoco (which apparently means "sparks"...who knew?) and Sangue di Giuda.

Sangue di Giuda wines can be comprised of the following varieties: Barbera 25-65%, Croatina 25-65%, Uva Rara, Vespolina and/or Pinot Noir 45% max. The bottle I was able to find, the Bruno Verdi Paradiso 2009 ($17.50), is made up of 65% Croatina, 20% Uva Rara and 15% Barbera. Barbera is widely grown throughout Italy (it is the second most planted red grape behind Sangiovese), so I'm not really going to write much about it here, but Croatina and Uva Rara are, as the latter's name might suggest, a little more obscure.

Uva Rara

Croatina (which you can read much more about in this post) is grown mostly in northern Italy where, unfortunately, one of its many synonyms includes Bonarda. Croatina is unrelated to the grape previously featured in a post on this website concerning the Argentinian Bonarda (which, as helpfully pointed out in the comments to that article, seems to be actually related to the French grape Corbeau rather than an Italian variety, as I had surmised). It is also unrelated to Bonarda Piemontese, which Joseph Bastianich and David Lynch refer to as the "real Bonarda." It's kind of tricky. If you're in Oltrepò Pavese or Colli Piacentini (in Emilia-Romagna), then Bonarda means Croatina. If you're in northern Piedmont, what's called Bonarda Novarese is actually Uva Rara. If you find something labeled "Bonarda Piemontese," buy it for me and I'll reimburse you for it, because it's apparently pretty rare even though it's the "true" variety for the name in Italy. To add to the confusion here, when you try to look up Uva Rara on Wikipedia, it automatically redirects you to the page for Vespolina, but I believe that these are two different grapes (especially given that they are listed separately in the DOC regulations and because they are given separate entries in Oz Clarke's book, Bastianich and Lynch's book and on winecountry.it). To sum up, Croatina and Uva Rara are distinct grapes that are unrelated not only to each other, but to other grapes that, like them, march under the Bonarda banner in any of the many places that something called "Bonarda" is planted.

So, let's just pretend for a minute that we've got the grapes straight and move on. As a final twist, the DOC Oltrepò Pavese Sangue di Giuda doesn't necessarily tell you anything about the style of wine in the bottle. Sure, we know what the grape varieties are, but the wine can be made in a variety of styles ranging from dry and still to sweet and frizzante. There is no restriction on the wine style in this DOC, only restrictions on the grape varieties that can be used. How do you know what's in the bottle? Well, the alcohol content is a pretty good indicator as to the sugar content of the wine. Lower alcohol contents (under 9-10%) mean that there's probably some residual sugar that wasn't fully fermented. Something in the 12-14% range almost certainly mean the wine was fermented to dryness. As to whether the wine is still or frizzante, I'm not sure if there are any dead giveaways. I would guess the sweeter wines are more likely to be a little bubbly while the dryer wines are more likely to be still, but if you aren't sure, you either have to roll the dice or ask someone at the shop to let you know.

The Bruno Verdi Paradiso bottling clocks in at 7.5% alcohol and is slightly sweet. In the glass, the wine had a dark mulberry color with slight but visible bubbling. The nose was thick with crushed berries, dark plums and black cherry. It has a very alluring fruity smell to it. In the mouth, the wine is slightly fizzy and just a touch sweet. It is very grapey and fruity. It makes think about what grape soda would taste like if they took about half the sugar out. It has a rich texture and good acid with luscious purple and black fruits. Stylistically, I would say that this is right between a bone dry Lambrusco (a real one, not Riunite) and a sweet Brachetto D'Acqui. The sugar in this isn't so heavy that it must be relegated to the dessert table and I think it would be very interesting with a spicy barbecue meal, though it would be equally at home with a light dessert as well.