Fumin - Valle d'Aosta, Italy

Even though the Valle d'Aosta is Italy's smallest region by area and even though it ranks dead last in total vineyard area and in total wine production, it has proven to be full of unusual wines to write about.  Today marks our seventh foray into this region, which will place it in second place among Italian wine regions in terms of number of posts I've written (Piemonte is first with a whopping 14 posts).  In the past, we've taken a look at Prié Blanc, Cornalin, Prëmetta, Petit Rouge, Petite Arvine and a blended red wine made from a handful of local grapes.  Many of these grapes are found only in the Valle d'Aosta and to some extent just over the border in Switzerland, but pretty much nowhere else.  This means that there isn't very much of any of them planted and when you couple this with the strong demand for the wines from thirsty skiers and Alpine sightseers, you end up with very little left over for the rest of the world.  Finding wines from the Valle d'Aosta is a rare treat, and today I'd like to talk about Fumin, one of my recent finds from the area.

There isn't much information available about Fumin (see Wikipedia's embarrassingly paltry entry, for example).  There has been a surprising amount of DNA research about the indigenous grapes of the Valle d'Aosta (cited in several of the posts linked above for those curious), though, and it turns out that many of them appear to be related to one another (see this prior post from me, where we discover that Petit Rouge and Mayolet are the grandparents of Cornalin and this paper that shows that Prié and Prëmetta are closely related), but to date Fumin has not been identified in any of the immediate pedigrees for any of the other Valle d'Aosta grapes (though in the paper linked in the prior parenthetical statement, it does seem to have more in common with Cornalin du Valais, the Swiss Cornalin that is parent to the Cornalin d'Aoste and offspring of Petit Rouge and Mayolet, than with any of the other grapes in the region).  It is probably related to the other native grapes somehow, but the exact link just hasn't been discovered yet.

Many sources indicate that Fumin was on its way to extinction on the early 1980's before being rescued and propagated by local growers, but I can't seem to find any primary source that can confirm that story.  It does seem like Fumin's reputation has changed very recently, though.  In her 1996 Guide to Wine Grapes, Jancis Robinson's entry on Fumin reads in full: "tough Valle d'Aosta speciality that is usually blended."  Her opinion has survived essentially intact into the newest edition of the Oxford Companion to Wine (print and online version), which reads: "dark-berried vine speciality of the Valle d'Aosta whose produce is usually used for blending."  In their 2005 Vino Italiano, however, Joseph Bastianich and David Lynch describe Fumin as a "native grape on the rise," and they compare it favorably to Syrah.  In 2010, the New York Times' Eric Asimov featured Fumin in a column about unusual grapes, and by 2011, Ian D'Agata was writing in Decanter that Fumin "only existed in blends as recently as 15 years ago.  Today it is considered the red grape of greatest breeding among the region’s natives [...]"  Fumin has seemingly risen from being at the very least a minor blending component (and at the very worst being essentially extinct) to challenging Petit Rouge for the titles of most widely esteemed and widely planted indigenous red grape in the region.

Despite its recent rise in stature, varietal Fumin wines are still not that easy to find.  The Valle d'Aosta only has just over 500 hectares devoted to viticulture throughout the entire region, and that total is split between a a lot of different grapes (I know I've put this statistic in pretty much everything that I've written about this region, but I just find it fascinating: 90% of the production in the very Alpine Valle d'Aosta is red wine).  I can't find any exact figures for plantings of Fumin, but you can do the preliminary math in your head to figure that there probably isn't  a lot of it.  As far as I know, it isn't planted anywhere else in the world, either.  When you combine scarcity, hot press, and a lively local market, you get a recipe for very few exports and what exports there are tend to be priced high.

This was certainly the case with the bottle of Fumin that I was able to find.  I picked up the last bottle that The Spirited Gourmet had in stock of the 2006 Grosjean Fumin "Vigne Merletta," which I understand is about 90% Fumin and 10% Petit Rouge.  The price tag was a hefty $40, but they only make around 8,000 bottles of this per year (about 666 cases, for you superstitious types).  In the glass the wine was a deep, opaque purple-ruby color with a narrow crimson rim.  The nose was moderately intense with wild black cherry, blackberry and meat aromas along with its signature notes of smoke (the name Fumin comes from fumo, the Italian word for smoke, because of the smoky character of wines made from it).  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with fairly high acid and fairly soft tannins.  There were dark, brooding flavors of blackberry, blackcurrant, smoke, tar, wild blueberry, black-strap molasses and char.  The dark fruits and earthy smoke are all held up wonderfully by the bright Alpine acidity, though, and this wine never gets overwhelming or dull.  Fans of smoky Rhone-style Syrahs will find a lot to like here, though not necessarily at a value price.  I enjoyed it a lot, though, and felt like $40 was a fair price to pay for a rare wine that was very well done.

Prié Blanc - Blanc de Morgex, Valle d'Aosta, Italy

We've covered some extreme climates on this blog, from the wind-swept desert conditions of Santorini to the frigid coast of New England, but we've never dealt with anything quite like the village of Morgex in the Valle d'Aosta.  Sure, we've dealt with other villages within the Valle d'Aosta and have taken a look at quite a few grapes grown here (such as Cornalin, Prëmetta, Petit Rouge and Petite Arvine), but Prié Blanc and Morgex are in a class by themselves.

If you've read any of the other posts I've written about wines from the Valle d'Aosta, you may remember that one of my favorite bits of trivia about this region is that despite the altitude of the vineyards and the overall cool climate, almost 90% of the wine production here is devoted to red wines.  When most people think about the Alpine wines of France or Switzerland, they tend to think of white wines like the Jacquère of Savoie or the Chasselas of Switzerland.  The Valle d'Aosta doesn't really follow that mold and white wines from this region can be difficult to find.  White wines made from grapes that are indigenous to the region are even tougher since there's only one: Prié Blanc.  White wines are made from a handful of other grapes like Pinot Gris, Chardonnay and Petit Arvine, but all of those grapes are imports from the surrounding countries.  Prié Blanc is the only known white grape from the Valle d'Aosta and its history in the region can be traced back at least into the early 19th Century.

In a book about the grapes and wines of the Valle d'Aosta published in 1838, an Italian by the name of Gatta mentions Prié and indicates that the grape is synonymous with Premetta, but the two grapes we know by those names today are clearly very different.  For starters, Prëmetta is a red grape while Prié Blanc is white.  Most sources actually refer to Prié Blanc simply as Prié, so I wonder if at some point it was thought that Prié Blanc and Prëmetta were mutations like Pinot Noir and Pinot Blanc and the Blanc was added on to distinguish it.  There is a Prié Rouge which has Premetta as a synonym, but I don't know anything else about it.  A study published in 2002 indicates that Prëmetta and Prié Blanc share a lot of the same genetic material, but are definitely distinct cultivars.  For some reason, the VIVC lists Prié Blanc under the prime name of Agostenga, which is generally used as a synonym for Vermentino, but which in this case is a distinct variety.   I haven't seen Agostenga pop up anywhere else in reference to Prié Blanc so I'm not quite sure what to make of that.

To add to the naming confusion, many people refer to the grape as Blanc de Morgex, which is actually the geographical designation for where the wines are made.  To be even more precise, the region is called Blanc de Morgex et de La Salle, as it encompasses both the Morgex and the La Salle villages.  There are 54 acres of land between these two villages which are registered for DOC production and most of them are planted to the Prié grape (the Blanc de Morgex DOC only allows the Prié grape but if a grower within the Blanc de Morgex zone planted Pinot Gris, for instance, they could use the Valle d'Aosta Pinot Gris DOC designation but not the Blanc de Morgex one).  These vineyards are the highest in Europe, standing at over 4000 feet (1200 meters) above sea level.  As a result of the elevation of the region and its seclusion from other wine making regions, phylloxera never arrived in Morgex and La Salle so all the vines are still planted on their original rootstock.  The elevation also limits what grapes could even be planted here as the cool temperatures mean that grapes that need a long ripening season aren't going to get enough warmth and sunlight to make it.  Luckily, Prié Blanc is an early ripener that thrives in this shortened growing season (the grapes that don't quite make it are used for sparkling wine production).  Wind is also a problem this high up so the vines are trained low to the ground to minimize their exposure.  Many of the the vineyards are also located very near the snow line for the mountains and picking is often done in snowy conditions for both table wine and ice wine production.

Wines made from the Prié Blanc grape can be a challenge to find outside of the Valle d'Aosta but I was recently fortunate enough to pick up a bottle (2008 vintage) from my friends at the Wine Bottega for about $20.  The producer is 4000 Metres which is a consortium that sources its grapes from the Cave du Vin Blanc de Morgex et de La Salle, which is itself a cooperative of about 90 growers who all farm their own small patches of Prié Blanc.  The grapes are all hand picked and only native yeasts are used for fermentation.  The wine is lightly filtered, aged for a brief time on the lees and then aged six months in bottle prior to release.  In the glass the wine was a medium lemon gold color.  The nose was very aromatic with lemons, ripe pears and apple juice fruits with a slightly leesy and slightly chalky kind of edge to it. On the palate the wine was on the lighter side of medium with very high acidity.  There were flavors of lemons, green apple, apple juice, and lime with a chalky, stony minerality on the finish.  The fruits were vibrant, electric and intense but stayed nicely grounded by the strong minerality at the end.  This is one of the better white wines I've had in awhile and really has everything that I'm looking for in a white wine.  Excellent acid, intense fruit and a clean, refreshing finish.  For those of you who are allergic to wines at the $20 price point and above, I'd advise you to put that prejudice aside for this wine and give it a shot.  It's unique, well structured and very delicious.

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

Mayolet Grapes

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

Vien de Nus Grapes

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

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

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

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

Petite Arvine - Valle d'Aosta, Italy and Vétroz, Switzerland

Today's post is hardest kind of post to write.  I've this really cool, rare grape to write about and my research keeps coming up with nothing.  Sure, there's a sentence here or there about Petite Arvine, but there isn't all that much of substance.  Sometimes I get lucky with these things and find out that there's some kind of controversy or interesting mystery about a grape, but with Petite Arvine, there just doesn't seem to be anything like that. I could, of course, just ignore the grape and move on, but I bought two bottles of this stuff and am going to find some way to make use of them.  So, without further ado, here's what I was able to find about Petite Arvine.

Petite Arvine's origins are mysterious, but unfortunately that's all they are.  The grape is thought to be native to Switzerland and one source claims that it has been grown in the Valais regions of Switzerland since 1602, while another source dates it to 1878.  The 1878 date is important, as it is when the International Ampelographic Society met in Geneva and decided that Petite Arvine was a unique grape not found anywhere else in the Valais or in the world.  It is this article that people point to when trying to establish a Swiss origin for the grape, but without knowing exactly how thorough their search was, it's hard to say how credible their statement is.  The grape is also known today in the Valle d'Aosta of Italy and some source say that the grape is actually named for the Arve valley around Savoy where the grape is thought to have entered the Valais region, possibly from the Valle d'Aosta.  In either case, the grape almost certainly has Alpine origins and today is found virtually nowhere other than the Valais and the Valle d'Aosta.

The grape's parentage is a mystery as well.  Petite Arvine was thought to be closely related to Amigne for some time, but recent DNA testing has shown that they may not be that closely related after all.  It does seem to be distantly related to Prié Blanc, Premetta and possibly Chasselas.  The grape is commonly known as Arvine these days, though the Petite Arvine name was necessary for many years to differentiate it from another grape known as Grosse Arvine (or sometimes Arvine Grande) which has larger berries and which makes wine of a much lower quality.  Today, Grosse Arvine is practically extinct (it does not exist in cultivation but only in grape collections) so the distinction isn't as important. The two grapes are related, but not as closely as their names might have you believe.  Confusingly, both Arvine and Arvine Grande are synonyms for Silvaner, which is not related to either Petite Arvine or Grosse Arvine.

Viticulturally, Petite Arvine is a very late ripener, sometimes ripening a full month later than Chasselas.  As a result, the vine needs a lot of sun to ensure that it gets completely ripe and it also needs to be protected from the wind as the clusters can be fragile.  Wines made from the grape are highly esteemed, and though the Oxford Companion to Wine doesn't have much to say about Petite Arvine, it does say that it is "the finest of the grape specialties of Valais."  Despite it's high critical esteem, Petite Arvine is not very widely grown, occupying only about 150 hectares of land in Switzerland, though this figure is up significantly from the 65 hectares planted in the year 2000.  I couldn't find any numbers on the Italian acreage devoted to the grape, but you can be sure that it is extraordinarily small.  Wines made from the grape run the gamut from bone dry to sticky sweet.

I was fortunate enough to find a bottle of Petite Arvine from both Switzerland and Italy.  The first bottle I found was the 2007 Romain Papilloud Cave du Vieux Moulin Petite Arvine from the Vétroz region of Switzerland (home to our old friend Amigne).  The wine came in a 500 mL bottle and I picked it up for about $39.  In the glass, the wine was a fairly deep lemon gold color.  The nose was very shy with a little bit of peaches and honey and something a little flowery, but it was mostly a blank and never really opened up.  On the palate, the wine was medium bodied with fairly low acidity and was surprisingly dry.  Given the size of the bottle, I was expecting something a little sweet, but this wasn't it.  There were flavors of honeysuckle flower and under ripe peaches, but it was mostly metallic and hollow tasting.  I don't say this very often, but this was an awful bottle of wine.  It tasted like chemicals and was just bitter and mean.  It was so bad, I was only able to get through one glass and had to pour the rest down the sink, which I almost never do.  I don't know if this was just a bad bottle or if this wine always tastes this way, but for $39, I won't be running the experiment twice.

The second bottle that I picked up was the 2005 Grosjean Petite Arvine which I got from my friends at Curtis Liquors for about $30.  In the glass the wine was a yellow gold color that was so vibrant it almost had a kind of neon tinge to it.  The nose was very aromatic with ripe apple, butterscotch, pineapple tropical fruit, lees and a biscuitty, pastry-like kind of thing going on.  On the palate, the wine was on the lighter side of medium with high acidity.  There were flavors of ripe apple and pear, pastry dough, and a distinctive leesy, cheesy kind of flavor to it (the wine is fermented and held on its lees, which are stirred, for a month).  I thought I was picking up some oak, but this wine is stainless steel fermented, so it was probably just from the lees contact.  The wine not all that fleshy, but the flavors seem very decadent and rich.  Nearly everything I've read about Petite Arvine says that the wines characteristically taste like grapefruits with a touch of salinity, but that wasn't my experience with these two bottles.  While I wasn't a fan at all of the Swiss bottle, the Italian bottle was excellent and very enjoyable.  The price is pretty high here, but the quality is too.  I'd especially be interested in a more recent bottling from this producer, as I got the impression that this may have been starting to fade, though it wasn't dead yet.

Prëmetta - Valle d'Aosta, Italy

Last week, we took a look at a little known grape from the Valle d'Aosta called Cornalin.  Today I'd like to look at yet another unusual grape from this region, Prëmetta.

Unlike Cornalin, there is very little information available about the Prëmetta grape.  Belfrage makes little mention of it in his book Barolo to Valpolicella, Wikipedia (the English version) has no entry on it (there is an entry in the German Wikipedia, though not in the Italian one), it is only mentioned in passing in The Oxford Companion to Wine, and it is mentioned only in its connection to rosé wine production in Bastianich and Lynch's Vino Italiano.  As mentioned in my post on Petit Rouge, another native red grape from the Valle d'Aosta, 90% of production in this cool, Alpine region, surprisingly, is red wine.  Prëmetta could be considered a borderline case, as the wines that are made from this grape tend to resemble rosé wines more so than red wines.  In fact, the grape is called rosato naturale in its native land because of the light wines made from it.

If you look closely at the picture of the grape cluster above, you can get a sense for why these wines may come out this way.  The skins aren't very dark, first of all, which means that there isn't much pigmentation available to color the wines.  Further, the skins themselves are very thin so not only is there not much pigmentation in the skins, but there isn't that much skin available for the pigmentation to leech from.  In addition to the thin, lightly colored skins, the grapes themselves tend to be large and very juicy, meaning the skin to juice ratio is very low.  Add all of these together and the result is generally a pale colored wine that is nevertheless strongly strawberryish on the nose and palate.

The grape is sometimes called Prie Rouge (actually, the VIVC indicates that Prie Rouge is in fact the correct cultivar name and Prëmetta is merely a synonym) in the Valle d'Aosta and those who are well-versed in other grapes of the region may recognize part of that name.  One of the better known white grapes from the Valle d'Aosta is called Blanc de Morgex, or Prie Blanc.  The two grapes are related, but then again, nearly all the grapes in the Valle d'Aosta (as well as some of the grapes just over the border in Switzlerand) are related to one another somehow.  There's a really cool article in the journal Vitis that shows how the various grapes in the Valle d'Aosta relate to one another that you can check out here if you're so inclined.

Science is fun, but we're really here to talk about the wine.  I was able to find a bottle of the 2006 Prëmetta from the Institut Agricole Regional at Curtis Liquors for about $20.  In the glass, the wine was a pale, brickish ruby color.  The nose was reserved with some plummy, floral scents.  On the palate, the wine was on the lighter side of medium with high acid and a touch of stringy tannin.  There were tart cherry and wild strawberry fruits with a bit of wild raspberry as well.  The wine had a steely, metallic edge to it that really stuck around on the finish.  This is a grape that is best drunk young, so it's definitely possible that my bottle was slightly past its prime, but it paired fairly well with a bacon-wrapped pork tenderloin.  I generally find these lighter, high acid, berryish red wines to be much more food friendly than heavier, more extracted wines which only seem to work with thick meat stews or heavily charred meats.  If you're a fan of lighter reds like Schiava then Premetta is definitely worth a shot.  If you're only into hulking blockbusters, then give this wine a wide berth.

Cornalin - Valle d'Aosta, Italy

Cornalin is a more complicated grape that you might think at first.  If you just stick to the books on Italian wine, you might be led to believe that Cornalin is downright uninteresting, as there is hardly a mention of the grape in any of the Italian wine books that I have.  I was prepared to do a lot of digging for a little information and then try to stretch that into a whole blog post, but the real world has alternate plans for me today it would seem.

To start with, there are two different grapes called Cornalin.  In Switzerland, there's a grape called Rouge de Pays which is also known as Cornalin du Valais.  This grape is actually an offspring of Petite Rouge and Mayolet, two red grapes thought to be native to the Valle d'Aosta region of Italy.  It is grown in the Valais region of Switzerland (where they have about 116 hectares under vine) and is one of the better regarded red grapes within Switzerland.

And then there's Cornalin d'Aoste, which is an offspring of Cornalin du Valais.  Cornalin d'Aoste is also known as Humagne Rouge and is also grown in the Valais region of Switzerland, where they have about 128 hectares under vine.  It becomes a little clearer at this point to see why my Italian wine books breeze right over any mention of either Cornalin, as they seem to be specialties of Switzerland at this point, though there is obviously some connection to the Valle d'Aosta region of Italy in the genetic lineage as well as the naming of one of the grapes.  Switzerland does, of course, share a border with the Valle d'Aosta so the movement of grapes between the two areas isn't a particularly mysterious or rare phenomenon.

The problem that I now have is that it isn't clear at all which Cornalin I actually tasted.  My bottle came from the Institut Agricole Regional in the Valle d'Aosta and is labeled merely "Cornalin" with no additional information on the back label.  Both varieties have "Cornalin" as an acceptable synonym, so that's no real help.  I was able to track down the paper discussing the genetic work done on the two cultivars where it becomes clearer that Rouge de Pays (Cornalin du Valais) was not called Cornalin until 1972 and that the name was specifically borrowed from the grape called Cornalin within the Valle d'Aosta.  The Italian grape was first referred to as Cornalin in 1837, giving it historical precedence.  So the grape grown in the Valle d'Aosta is Cornalin d'Aoste, also known as Humagne Rouge in Switzerland.  Furthermore, the paper informs me that the Intitut Agricole Regional is the keeper of the "standard" version of Cornalin, meaning they possess the vines that are used in all of the genetic research as being the "true" or "original" Cornalin vine.  For those interested in reading more about it, the article is in the August 2003 issue of Theoretical and Applied Genetics, pages 448-454 (the authors of the paper are J. Vouillamoz, D. Maigre, and C.P. Meredith and the paper is caled "Microsatellite analysis of ancient alpine grape cultivars: pedigree reconstruction of Vitis vinifera L. "Cornalin du Valais").

Ok, so on to the wine.  As mentioned above, I was able to find a bottle of the 2007 Cornalin from the Institut Agricole Regional at Curtis Liquors for about $18.  In the glass, the wine was a lightish purple ruby color.  The nose was medium intensity with aromas of wild strawberry and strawberry jam with some raspberry and red cherry notes.  On the palate, the wine was on the fuller side of medium with fairly high acidity and low tannins.  There were flavors of red cherry and bitter cherry pit along with some plummy red fruit.  The wine had a definite bitter herbal or medicinal edge to it that tasted like anise or black licorice.  Pinot Noir is the most obvious comparison here with a lot of red fruits on the nose and palate, but it was a little fuller and had that serious bitter edge to it. If you think about trying to drink Trousseau through a black licorice straw, you probably wouldn't be too far off.  The wine was slightly improved on day two of tasting after being open all night, but it wasn't a significant change.  The bitterness was a little too much for me and prevented me from being able to fully enjoy this, but it was definitely cool and interesting and is something I'd give another shot if another ever crosses my path.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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