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.

Maceratino - Colli Maceratesi, Marche, Italy

What the heck is Maceratino?  The more I researched this grape, the more I found myself asking that particular question.  There are a lot of suggestions out there for what Maceratino could be, but very few answers as to what it really is.  I did a little bit of digging and found some interesting stuff in the scientific literature that may help to shed a little light on the situation.

A lot of the confusion with Maceratino has to do with synonyms.  Maceratino has 21 synonyms listed in the VIVC, and, confusingly, eight of those synonyms include the word Greco while four include the word Verdicchio.  Many sources (including the OCW, Wikipedia and this Italian source) indicate that there may be some kind of relationship between Maceratino and Greco and/or Verdicchio, and some of them use the overlapping synonyms as an argument for that.  There are some ampelographic similarities between the vines that has led to the grapes sharing some synonyms, but it hasn't ever really been clear whether there's a serious genetic relationship between Maceratino, Greco and/or Verdicchio.  While I didn't find any studies that answered the question directly, I think I was able to find some answers by linking the findings from a few different studies together.

Before taking a look at Maceratino, I first wanted to take a look at the relationship between Greco and Verdicchio.  The OCW indicates that Maceratino could be related to either Greco or Verdicchio, but Wikipedia indicated that it was related to both, which naturally implies some sort of relationship between Greco and Verdicchio themselves.  The Wikipedia article on Verdicchio makes this a bit more explicit, as they say that with Verdicchio, there "appears to be a genetic relation to Trebbiano and the Grecogrape varieties."  We explored the relationship between Trebbiano and Verdicchio in the post on Turbiana, but this was the first that I had heard about an alleged relationship between Verdicchio and Greco.  The source for this claim is Bastianich and Lynch's Vino Italiano, which refers to Greco as a family of grapes with the Umbrian Grechetto as a subvariety and the Sicilian Grecanico as either a synonym for Greco proper or merely an offshoot of the family.  The authors further maintain that "greco may well have been the progenitor of most of the white varieties in Italy, including trebbiano, verdicchio, and the garganega of Soave in the Veneto," according to "some historians and scientists."

I took a look at a paper that I used for researching my Turbiana post, and pretty much all of the evidence that I needed was right there.  The authors of this paper didn't test Maceratino, but they did test Greco Bianco and Verdicchio and found that there was only 20% similarity between the two cultivars genetically, meaning that if they were related to one another, it would be very distantly.  Furthermore, Grechetto and Grecanico themselves had a similarity rating of 20% between them and both had a similarity rating of about 10% to Greco and Verdicchio, meaning that there isn't any really good reason to believe that these four grapes are closely related to one another at all.

So now that we know that Greco and Verdicchio aren't related to one another, we also know that if Maceratino is related to either of them, it can really only be related to one and not to both.  Maceratino isn't a very common grape and I wasn't sure if I could find a study with any genetic information on it, but, fortunately, I not only found one, but I found one that also tested Verdicchio as well (citation below).  This study was designed to test the discriminatory power of various microsatellite sites, which means basically that they were testing to see which areas of DNA differed the most across various grape varieties, so that those sites could be targeted in future studies.  The results indicated that Verdicchio and Maceratino matched exactly at three sites, matched for one allele at two other sites and didn't match at all on the sixth site.  This means that the two grapes are definitely distinct cultivars and are not a parent-offspring match, but there could be a more distant but still relatively close familial relationship between them.  The similarity of Maceratino to Verdicchio also means that it is very unlikely that Maceratino is related to Greco Bianco.

Geographically, this makes a lot of sense.  Verdicchio is thought to be native to the Marche region of Italy, where Maceratino is also found.  The name Maceratino doesn't have anything to with the word "maceration," but rather with the fact that the grape is thought to be from the town of Macerata in the Marche (though two of its other synonyms, Montecchiesse, meaning from Montecchio, and Matelicano, meaning from Matelica indicate that this bit of information isn't necessarily 100% controversy-free either).  Most Italian sources indicate that it has been grown in the Marche for hundreds of years, but plantings have been falling recently.   The reasons for its decline aren't 100% clear, as the vine yields generously and is relatively hardy in the vineyard while still producing quality wine.  This is usually the recipe for increased plantings, but some believe that Verdicchio's commercial success in international markets has led to many producers tearing up vines in order to plant more Verdicchio to meet consumer demand.  Most of the Maceratino that is still grown is found in the Colli Maceratesi DOC, where the white wines must be at least 85% Maceratino.

I was able to pick up a bottle of the 2009 Andrea Baccius La Murola Q Maceratino from my friends at Curtis Liquors for about $10.  In the glass the wine was a pale silvery lemon color with greenish tints.  The nose was moderately intense with green apple, pear and lime citrus aromas.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity.  Right out of the bottle the wine was bright and zippy with pineapple, lime and green apple fruits.  As it opens up, the flavor palette gets a little broader with some white peach fruits and a bit of chalky minerality.  I much preferred it early in the evening when it was tart and refreshing, but I found that I liked it less and less as the night wore on.  It does represent a very nice value at only $10 and is versatile enough to complement a wide variety of foods.  I would definitely recommend giving it a shot if you run across it, as it seems to be getting harder and harder to find.

CITATION

Filippetti, I., Silvestroni, O., Thomas, M.R., and Intrieri, C.  2001.  Genetic characterisation of Italian wine grape cultivars by microsatellite analysis.  Acta Horta. 546.  pp. 395-399.

Turbiana (Trebbiano di Lugana) - Veneto, Italy

It isn't often the case that I end up more confused after researching a grape than I was when I started, but that's almost what has happened in researching today's grape, Turbiana. The confusion that I had to sort through in order to figure out just what Turbiana actually is has steeled my resolve to provide citations in any blog post where I refer to published results.  In the past, I've tried to provide links whenever the articles are freely available online, and when they aren't, I've tried to either provide a citation or give enough information so that an interested reader can pursue the article themselves, but from now on, any research that I consult, I will be sure to cite.

It all started today when Nick over at the Spirited Gourmet sent me an email letting me know he had just gotten a wine made from the Turbiana grape in his shop.  By chance, I had recently had a different wine made from the Turbiana grape and was working my way through my notes to post about it.  Nick's email spurred me on, so I started to do some digging.  The Oxford Companion to Wine had no listing for Turbiana, but, in the entry on Lugana, did mention that Trebbiano di Lugana, the former name for Turbiana, was the same as Trebbiano di Soave, which is similar to Verdicchio.  When you search for Turbiana in Wikipedia, it automatically redirects you to the entry on Verdicchio.  The VIVC takes you directly to the entry on Verdicchio when you search for Turbiana as well.  Once you get past those three frontline sources, though, all hell starts to break loose.

As mentioned above, Turbiana was traditionally known as Trebbiano di Lugana and was thought to be just another member of the vast and varied Trebbiano family.  Several websites that I found point to "DNA research" that proves that what was known as Trebbiano di Lugana is actually genetically distinct from the Trebbiano family and is now known as Turbiana.  Other sites imply that Turbiana and Trebbiano di Lugana still coexist and are actually two distinct grapes.  Yet another site maintains that Trebbiano di Lugana is merely the local name for Trebbiano di Soave and that "recent research" has found that this grape, now called Turbiana, is not related to Trebbiano Veronese, whatever that is, and, further, is not related to Verdicchio.  The winery's website still refers to the grape as Trebbiano di Lugana with no mention of Turbiana at all.

What nearly all of the sites (except for the winery's) are trying to get at is that Turbiana is an independent grape variety that sciences has recently freed from the Trebbiano family.  Nearly every site linked above refers vaguely to "research" but none of them give a direct citation. I've noticed that The Oxford Companion to Wine does this constantly, which drives me a little bit crazy.  When I see a reference to "DNA research" and I know the person making the reference isn't a scientist or geneticist themselves, I always like to try to find the paper myself to be sure that the paper is actually saying the things that the writer is attributing to it.  It took a few hours of really creative googling, but I believe that the paper that is being referred to is actually this one from 2001.  In that paper, the researchers perform microsatellite analysis on 7 different Trebbiano subvarieties and 17 other grape varieties that look similar to Trebbiano.  What they found was that there was a lot of genetic diversity among the samples that they tested, but the samples that were the most similar were Trebbiano di Soave and Verdicchio (which, it turns out, are the same grape [additional source]) and Trebbiano di Soave and Trebbiano di Lugana.  The researchers are clear that Trebbiano di Soave and Verdicchio are synonyms, but it is a little less clear what the relationship is between Trebbiano di Soave and Trebbiano di Lugana.  The two grapes were 97% similar in the sections of their genetic code that the scientists tested for, but the only conclusions that the researchers draw is that the grapes are "genetically similar."

The more interesting thing that the study found is that the various members of the Trebbiano family are genetically dissimilar enough from one another for the researchers to conclude that they probably do not share a common ancestor.  Which not only means that they are all different grapes, but, further, that they probably aren't even related to one another!  The experiment examined Trebbiano Toscano, Trebbiano d'Abruzzo, Trebbiano Spoletino, Trebbiano di Spagna and Trebiano Romagnolo in addition to Trebbiano di Soave and Trebiano di Lugana and found that only the latter two were similar enough to be considered related.  So even though all of the grapes above are considered under the same banner of "Trebbiano," and, though they certainly have many of the same kinds of physical characteristics, genetically speaking, they're as different as they can be.

At this point, it's reasonable to ask why they all have the same name if they aren't related to one another.  Most theories about the origin of the name Trebbiano posit some geographical origin like the name of an ancient town in Tuscany or the Trebbia river in  Liguria.  That kind of origin story makes sense only if all of the grapes known as Trebbiano are the same grape or if they all can be traced back to a common ancestor located in that geographical area.  Since we know that isn't the case, the researchers conclude that the name probably comes from the word "draibio" which means "vigorous shoot" in Frankonian.  I don't know about the details (it has something to do with Charlemagne, I think) since the paper that they cite for that theory is in German, but the crux of the matter is that name Trebbiano comes from a description of how the vine grows rather than a location, which would explain the genetic diversity of the multitude of grapes with that name.

The story doesn't quite end there, though.  Another research group in Verona did another type of genetic experiment on Trebbiano di Lugana, Trebbiano di Soave and Verdicchio (among others), and found that those three grapes were essentially the same.  So, essentially, Turbiana is Trebbiano di Lugana which is the same as Trebbiano di Soave, both of which are different from Trebbiano Toscano or any other kind of Trebbiano, but which are the same as Verdicchio.  The slight differences in the DNA of Trebbiano di Lugana and Trebbiano di Soave found in the previous study are here attributed to slight differences in the soil and microclimate where the grapes are found, which, it turns out, can cause slight changes in a vine's genetic expression.

I was able to find a bottle of the 2009 Ottella "Lugana," which is grown near Lake Garda in the Veneto region of Italy.  In the glass the wine had a medium silvery lemon color.  The nose was nicely aromatic with lemony citrus, white peach and a kind of clean, stony river water sort of smell.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity.  There were flavors of white peach and lemon peel with that same stony kind of minerality on the finish.  It was a little flat and could have used a bit more acidity.  The nose was more enjoyable than the palate was, but it was still and pretty good wine for around $15.  It wasn't all that complex or deep, but it was crisp and refreshing and sometimes that's just the sort of thing you need.  I prefer Verdicchio from the Marche, but this is an interesting wine with a really crazy story you can tell to your friends while drinking it.  Or you can just enjoy it.

I've also reviewed a sparkling Turbiana in this post.

Sparkling Verdicchio - Marche, Italy

It can be difficult, at times, to decide what exactly constitutes a "fringe wine." There are definitely no-brainers on each side of the line: it's highly unlikely that Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay will ever find a home on this site, while grapes like Rkatsiteli and Grignolino are obvious candidates. Verdicchio falls into a grey zone for me. It is geographically limited to a small region, but that region is able to pump out a relatively high volume of wine. In that respect, it resembles Garganega (Soave), a grape I probably will not write about due to its high production volume and ubiquity. I was leaning towards excluding it until I came across a sparkling version.

Verdicchio is widely grown in the Marche region of Italy on the eastern coast (we've paid a brief visit to Marche here before). The most prolific zone for Verdicchio production is the DOC Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi which is responsible for one-half of all DOC production in the Marche region. For many years, Verdicchio from the Marche was a mass-market item, creating thin, oxidized wines due to over-cropping and poor winery management. Several decades ago, Verdicchio had much the same reputation as modern day Pinot Grigio or mass market Soave wines. There has been more of a concentration on quality from many producers, though, and as a result, the wines from this region have been steadily improving.

The grape itself is thought to be native to the Marche region. As you can see from the picture above, the grapes are very green, or verde in Italian, and this coloration provides the root for the name Verdicchio. It appears to be related to Greco and also several different subtypes of Trebbiano. It is late-ripening and a prolific yielder, requiring a diligent, heavy hand in the vineyards to prune excess grapes during the summer months. It is also naturally very high in acidity, a trait that lends itself very well to sparkling wine production.

Sparkling wine production in the Marche dates back to the 19th century where spumanti made from Verdicchio grapes were among the first sparkling wines produced in all of Italy. Sparkling Verdicchio is not uncommon within the Marche region, but it is unusual to find a bottle landing stateside, as very little of the production is exported to the US. I was able to find a bottle from Fontezoppa called Voile Blanche Brut for about $12 from my friends at Bin Ends (like many sparkling wines, this was a non-vintage bottling though their website indicates the most recent bottling is a 2009). In the glass the wine was a pale, silvery straw color with a steady bead. The nose was fairly neutral with some crisp apple and baked pear notes. This wine was vinified using the Charmat method, so there wasn't any of that toasty yeastiness like you might get in a Champagne. In the mouth, the wine was medium bodied high acid and a soft and creamy mousse. There were green apples, bitter almonds and a kind of herbaceousness lingering around. The finish is clean and a little minerally. This is more Cava than Champagne and makes for a nice refreshing drink either as an aperitif or as an accompaniment to lighter seafood dishes.