Malvasia Nera - Umbria, Italy

It is often the case when you are talking about grapes that you are actually talking about families of grapes that are all very closely related.  Sometimes all of the individual variants are grouped together under a single grape heading and the differences are chalked up to clonal variation.  Sangiovese is a good example of this kind of grape.   There are a large number of different "strains" of Sangiovese grown, but virtually everywhere you go, people consider the grape to be Sangiovese, even though the wines made from the grapes can be very different from one another.  One only has to think of the difference between the wines of Chianti and of Brunello di Montalcino to see the effect that clonal variation and selection can have.  Pinot Noir is another good example, but we have made allowances for a few Pinot variants to be recognized as individual grapes.  Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris and Pinot Meunier are known to be mutations of Pinot Noir (as all clonal variants are), but are considered distinctive enough to warrant consideration on their own.

What's never been clear to me, and isn't fully clear even now, is when exactly a clonal variant or mutation is significant enough to consider the new grape on its own.  Skin color is obviously a major factor, and we have no problem accepting that Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc and Pinot Noir are different enough from one another that we should consider them separately and on their own merits, even though most modern genetic marker testing for grapes would be unable to tell that the three grapes are different at all.  In other words, if you ran the genetic testing that is done to test for grape parentage on those three grapes, the test would come back that all three were in fact the very same grape.  This says more about the limits of modern genetic testing than it says about the similarities between the grapes, but it has always struck me as interesting.

The issue gets really tricky when you start to look at very old grapes and the families that have sprung up around them.  Some grapes mutate more quickly than others, but virtually all of them do mutate and when you look at those grapes over a long enough period of time and over a fairly large geographical distribution, you inevitably end up with some confusion.  With these grapes, the geographic dispersal seems to be one major key.  What it seems like may have happened is that as the grapes spread out geographically, the local growers began to select clonal variants that were more appropriate for their terroir (or, perhaps that just sold better in that particular region) and these variants spawned their own variants until, over time, you end up with enough genetic diversity to merit consideration as individual grapes, but these grapes are still closely related enough that they can fall under the same family banner.  Consider the Muscat grape, for example.  The Wine Century Club, while not an official mediator of these kinds of disputes, is interesting in that they accept three different white Muscat grapes as distinct and eligible for reaching 100, though Sangiovese and Brunello are not listed separately and, one assumes, would not be counted twice if one were to write Brunello in.

The Malvasia "family" is similar in many ways to the Muscat "family."  Both are extremely old and are grown in many different wine regions, though members both can be traced back with relative certainty to Greece.  There are two competing theories for Malvasia's origin.  The first is that the grape's name comes from the Monemvasia fortress off the Peloponnese coast that was controlled by Venice through the Middle Ages (there is a grape known as monemvasia in Greece today which is apparently unrelated to Malvasia).  The Venetians were heavy traders of wine and became so heavily involved in the Malvasia game that their shops in Venice were known as malvasie.  The other theory maintains that the grape's name comes from the district of Malevizi on the island of Crete.  Whatever the case, Malvasia spread through the ancient world and has retained an impressive presence today.  While many of the grapes that have the name Malvasia are related to one another in some way, many of them are not related at all, so to speak of a Malvasia "family" isn't entirely accurate.  Malvasia is more of naming group and it isn't altogether clear how or why many of the grapes called Malvasia got tagged with that particular name.

Most Malvasia grapes are white, but there are a handful of red ones as well.  The most common variety, and the one this wine is mostly likely made from, is called Malvasia Nera di Brindisi.  It is grown in a few regions in Italy, though it is most often used as a blending grape as the wines produced from the grape tend to be deeply colored, powerfully aromatic and softly textured.  It was once a major blending grape in Tuscany, but is being supplanted there by Cabernet Sauvignon more and more these days. It is perhaps easiest to find in the Negroamaro based wines of Puglia in southern Italy (especially Salice Salento, where it typically comprises 10-15% of the blend), and in fact, Negroamaro is one of the parents of Malvasia Nera (the other is Malvasia Bianca Lunga, which is the most common white-skinned variety of Malvasia in Tuscany).  There are two DOC zones within Italy (both in Piemonte) that allow for varietal bottlings of Malvasia Nera, but the total area covered by these zones is less than 100 hectares, and the specific variety of Malvasia Nera is different there (Malvasia di Casorzo is used in the Casorzo region of Piemonte while Malvasia Nera Lunga is primarily used in Asti).

The grape is also apparently grown to some extent in Umbria, as I was able to find a bottle of the 2008 I Girasoli di Sant'Andrea Malvasia Nera for about $15 from Bauer Wine and Spirits in Boston.  The wine was bottled as an IGT since there is no DOC zone that allows 100% Malvasia Nera within Umbria.  In the glass, this wine was a medium purple ruby color.  The nose was fairly aromatic with candied red cherry fruit, chocolate and flowers.  It smelled a bit like chocolate covered dried cherries.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with medium acidity and medium tannins.  There were flavors of cocoa and espresso with a touch of dried cherry and black fruit, but on the whole, there was very little fruit to this wine.  It was dominated by bitter, earthy chocolate and coffee flavors with a sawdust or pencil shavings character to it as well.  The wine tasted lean and austere, despite the fairly weighty body on it, since there was virtually no fruit to fill it out.  It's hard for me to imagine the kind of person who would take pleasure in a wine like this, to be perfectly honest.  You'd probably be better off throwing a shot of Bailey's in your hot cocoa if you're in the mood for those kinds of flavors with an alcoholic kick to them.

For a further discussion on grape families and the distinction between clones and individual varieties, see my Roter Traminer post published the day after I wrote this piece.

Espadeiro - Vinho Verde, Portugal

I'm currently on vacation for the Thanksgiving holiday, but while visiting my in-laws in Pittsburgh, I came across this wine that I just had to pick up and write about.  I have a few other wines from the Vinho Verde region back home that I'll be writing about in the near future, but this wine was made completely from Espadeiro grapes, which was completely new to me, and I decided to do something I've never done before: I'll be writing today's post while I'm drinking the wine in question.  I usually record my notes in a little book I have and have written about some wines up to several months after I actually drank them, but since these Vinho Verde wines are best enjoyed fresh, I thought it would be interesting to write about it while it was fresh in my mind as well.

Espadeiro is not just one grape, but rather a small family of grapes that are all, as far as I know, related to one another.  The two main varieties are Espadeira Tinto and Espadeira Mole, which I'm guessing are distinguished based on the color of the grape skins, though I'm not completely sure.  There are some sources that will have you believe that Espadeiro is the same as the Port grape Tinta Amarela, but this is only true for what is called Espadeiro in the area around Lisbon.  In the Vinho Verde region, Espadeiro is a distinct variety that is unrelated to Tinta Amarela.  There are a handful of synonyms for the grape, but most of them seem to be very geographically specific and don't really concern us here. The grape is considered a high quality variety on the Vinho Verde website, though the Oxford Companion to wine is slightly less enthusiastic about and really only references the grapes ability to yield profusely and ripen to low sugar levels.

This wine is from the Vinho Verde region of Portugal which is located in the extreme northern part of the country, just under the overhanging Spanish region of Galicia (Espadeira is also grown in Galicia, and surprisingly goes by the same name in both countries).  It's easy to forget that Vinho Verde is the name of a wine region and not just the name of a style of wine, as most of the wines here are white and made from slightly underripe grapes with a hint of residual CO2, which can give them the "green" character alluded to in the name of the region and wine.  There is a proportion of still red wine and rosé wine produced in the region, though they are definitely a little tougher to track down than their white counterparts.  Vinho Verde is subdivided into nine different sub-regions, and Espadeiro is recommended for cultivation in eight of them, with Monção being the only exception.

I picked up a bottle of the 2010 Quinta de Gomariz Espadeira Colheita Seleccionada from one of the state stores here around Pittsburgh, PA, for about $10.  As mentioned above, in an unusual move for the site, I've been writing about the wine as I've been drinking it.  For those interested in the micro-terroirs of the Vinho Verde region, this wine is from the Ave region and the grapes are grown on primarily granitic soils.  In the glass, the wine has a medium salmon pink color with a little bit of orange to it and some very tiny bubbles flying around.  The nose is very aromatic with strawberry and watermelon fruits and a leesy, cheesy kind of funk to it.  Right out the bottle, there were orange citrus aromas and flavors, but as the wine sat and developed into glass number two, these orange citrus notes moved over towards pink grapefruit and have stayed pretty firmly put.  On the palate, the wine is medium bodied with acidity just slightly on the higher side of medium and is just off-dry (there is nearly 8 g/l of residual sugar, but the wine tastes much more dry than sweet).  There is a prickle of residual CO2 as well.  There are flavors of strawberry and grapefruit citrus with a sort of tropical fruit component to it that tastes a bit like pineapple to me.  There's a bitter grapefruit pith flavor that persists through the finish.  Overall, I like this quite a bit. It's developing in interesting ways right in front of me and has enough going on to keep me interested.  It's also delicious and is the kind of thing I wish I had found when I was down here in June rather than now in November.  The price here is phenomenal and this wine way over-delivers at the $10 price point.  It also would have been a good starter wine for our Thanksgiving meal a few days ago, but I don't like to force others to go on these vinous expeditions with me, so I held this bottle back for myself.

UPDATE - I recently wrote about another Vinho Verde wine made from a grape called Padeiro, and in that post, I take another look at the Espadeiro grape and clear up some confusions.  That post can be read here.

St. Laurent - Burgenland, Austria

Today we head back into Austria to take a look at the St. Laurent grape.  Like seemingly every grape that we take a look at here, St. Laurent's past is somewhat murky and a little controversial, though recent research has helped to shed some light on certain parts of its parentage and history.

The biggest question for St. Laurent has always been trying to figure out just what its relationship is to Pinot Noir.  One of the accepted synonyms for St. Laurent is Pinot St. Laurent, which naturally led some people to conclude that the two grapes were related.  Some people believed that St. Laurent was actually a seedling of Pinot Noir, meaning that both parents are Pinot Noir and that St. Laurent was grown from a seed within a Pinot Noir grape.  Other sources, most notably the inimitable French ampelographer Pierre Galet, believed that St. Laurent was completely unrelated to Pinot Noir and was some bizarre import from Alsace.  Genetic testing was done and in a paper published in 2000 in the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture, the researchers concluded that it was very likely that St. Laurent is actually a crossing between Pinot Noir and some other unidentified vine.  Like its parent, St. Laurent mutates very easily, so the fact that the researchers were able to pin down a relationship between two very unstable DNA sets is pretty amazing, especially considering that some sources believe that St. Laurent has existed for nearly 400 years, which is a lot of time for mutations to happen.

Galet did have part of the story right, though, as he surmised that the grape came into Germany and Austria via Alsace.  The evidence seems to bear this out, as there are references to the St. Laurent grape in southern Alsace dating back to 1850, and the grape's entry into Germany can be traced precisely to 1870 when a German grower purchased some St. Laurent vines from a viticulturist in Alsace.  Some sources presume that the grape is named St. Laurent for the town of the same name near Bordeaux, but since there isn't really any Pinot Noir or Pinot offspring grown in the region, that explanation doesn't make a lot of sense.  It is more likely that the grape is named for St. Laurentius Day on August 10, which is approximately when the grapes go through veraison.  This is significant because it is between 10 and 12 days sooner than Pinot Noir goes through the same process, meaning that St. Laurent ripens sooner than Pinot Noir and is thus more suited to cooler regions with shorter growing seasons, like Germany and parts of Austria.

St. Laurent isn't grown in enormous quantities anywhere, but it has found a home in a few different places.  The vine covers about 600 hectares of land in Germany with the best examples coming from the Pfalz region. In Austria, which is perhaps St. Laurent's best known area of cultivation, the vine covers about 800 hectares of land.  Perhaps more importantly for Austria, though, is that St. Laurent is one of the parents of Zweigelt, Austria's signature red grape (the other parent is Blaufränkish).  Interestingly, St. Laurent is the most widely grown red grape in the Czech Republic, covering almost 10% of their total vineyard area (just over 1700 hectares in total).  There are smaller plantings in New Zealand and Canada as well.  The grape is finicky in the vineyard, as it buds very early making early spring frosts especially dangerous, and is susceptible to coulure (poor berry set) and rot (despite the grapes' thick skins, the bunches are very compact and moisture that gets into the bunch has a hard time getting back out, leading to rot).

I was able to pick up a bottle of the 2008 Zantho St. Laurent from my friends at Curtis Liquors for about $15.  In the glass, the wine was a deep purple ruby color that was nearly opaque at the core with a narrow crimson rim.  The nose was nicely aromatic with savory, meaty aromas, sweaty leather, Asian spice and plummy fruit.  On the palate, the wine was on the fuller side of medium with fairly high acidity and low tannins.  There were earthy meat and wet leather flavors with black plum and stewed cherry fruit.  There were also notes of Asian spice and black pepper.  As the wine opens up, the meaty, savory aromas dissipate a bit and the fruit flavors step more into the forefront and the fruit character shifts to more towards the cherry end of the spectrum.  Therry Theise, in one of his wine catalogs, describes St. Laurent as "Pinot Noir with a 'sauvage' touch," and John Schriener writes that "it comes across as a Pinot Noir wearing hiking boots," both of which pretty much sum up my feeling on the wine as well.  I had actually written in my notes that the wine was like a brooding, meaty Pinot Noir but denser and darker.  For fans of gamier, meatier Pinot Noirs, St. Laurent is a can't miss, especially considering the price that most of them sell for.

Mostosa (Pagadebit) - Pagadebit di Romagna, Italy

Last week we took a look at the Bombino Bianco grape and noted that one of its synonyms was Pagadebit, or "debt-payer."  In that post, I alluded to a grape grown in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy that is also known as Pagadebit and is thought to be the same as Bombino Bianco.  It turns out that most of what is known as Pagadebit in Emilia-Romagna may actually be Bombino, but some of it is actually a rarer, much less well-known grape called Mostosa, which is what we'll be taking a look at today.

Figuring out exactly what Mostosa is isn't an easy task.  Most sources, if they mention the grape at all, only mention that it is a rare white grape used primarily for blending in the Lazio and southern Emilia-Romagna regions of Italy.  Some sources also indicate that Mostosa may be the same as the Biancone grape, and it is here, in the area of accepted synonyms for the grape, that the trouble really starts.  All grapes that are grown anywhere in the world have several different names that they are known by, generally as a result of their movement through different regions (Chasselas, for example, has over 200 synonyms).  Before the days of the internet and the world-wide wine scene, grape growers from different regions weren't necessarily in very close contact with one another, so as new grapes arrived and settled in, they tended to pick up names from the local dialect or they picked up colorful descriptive names that the local farmers may have just liked more than whatever the grape had been called when it first arrived.  In Europe especially, the names of the grapes weren't that important because the wines were (and for the most part still are) labeled geographically and not varietally, so as long as a vine grew well and made decent wine, it wasn't really all that important what you called it or, to some extent, even what it was.  In many countries, Appellation Control laws have changed that by specifying the specific grape types that can be grown in a given region, but remember that these laws are less than 100 years old, while the history of grape growing and wine making goes back thousands of years.

It is also important to note that since there was no centralized place for information about what a vine actually was, mistakes were often made either by growers or people selling vines either due to mislabeling or misidentification both of the accidental and of the malicious sort.  When vines are very young, they all look pretty much the same.  Even when they grow up, it takes a skilled eye to differentiate between the thousands of different grape types, and mistakes often happened.  There is the famous story about how most of what was grown in Chile and called Merlot actually turned out to be Carmenere.  As information about grapes becomes more centralized, and as genetic testing becomes more sophisticated and accessible, it is becoming easier to correct these mistakes and to figure out exactly what is going on in many of these vineyards.

With today's grape, I suspect that the issue is more with the local naming of grapes than with a case of pure mistaken identity from mislabeled vines.  In my opinion, it is the colloquial "Pagadebit" name that is the source of all of the confusion.  According to the VIVC, there are four different Italian grapes that have Pagadebit (or some variation) as an accepted synonym (and one Croatian grape, Plavac Mali).  Those four grapes are Pagadebito, Bombino Bianco, Mostosa and Biancone.  Of those four, Biancone is an accepted synonym for Mostosa, but not the other way around, while Pagadebito has both Mostosa and Biancone as accepted synonyms.  Bombino fits in because it has Pagadebit as an accepted synonym, but is not itself an accepted synonym for any of the other three grapes.  All four of the grapes mentioned above have their own VIVC variety numbers, which I believe means that they are distinct cultivars (parent information is only available for Pagadebito and Mostosa, which have different parents and are thus clearly different grapes).  Further, Nicolas Belfrage, in his Brunello to Zibibbo, quotes Salvatore del Gaudio and Domenico Giusto's Principali Vitigni as saying: "the descriptions of Trebbiano Abruzzese, of Caccio (another name for Mostosa), and of Pagadebito (almost certainly Bombino Bianco in this context)...differentiate themselves from one another in several respects, so that in the last analysis it seems possible definitely to state that the three are different varieties."  There is no mention of Biancone in this analysis, so it's hard to say what their opinion of its relation to Mostosa is.  It is worth mentioning, though, that in their Wine Grape Varieties, George Kerridge and A.J. Antcliff note that Biancone is native to Corsica, indicating that it probably isn't related to any of the grapes mentioned above.  Further, they note that it is the highest yielding vine currently planted in Australia, clearly showing how it earned its "Pagadebiti" nickname in Corsica.

What I think may have happened is that the Pagadebit name was attached to one of the grapes and then was either picked up by other growers in other regions who decided that the name was an apt descriptor of grapes they were growing.  It is certainly possible that the growers in each different region came up with the name independently of one another, but it seems unlikely.  I imagine that a grower traveling into a different region may have heard the locals refer to one of their grapes with that name and thought to himself, "I have a vine just like that back home," and may have started referring to his own crop with that name.  Over time, the name got entrenched and when people scan the vinous landscape today, they want to believe that grapes that share synonyms are related in some way, possibly even identical.  I don't believe that these grapes are related any more than I believe that all people with the last name Smith are related, though I would be very interested to see someone do the DNA analysis to see what the story really is.

All of that colloquialism is well and good, but we live in an official world and when we are dealing with wine that crosses international borders, some arm of officialdom inevitably steps in.  My journey down this road began when I picked up a bottle of the 2010 Trere Pagadebit di Romagna frizzante from my friends at the Wine Bottega for about $12.  The wine is from the Pagadebit di Romagna DOC, which requires a minimum of 85% Bombino Bianco.  The back label on the bottle, however, indicated that this wine is made from 85% Mostosa and 15% Chardonnay grapes.  I emailed the winery to ask whether Mostosa and Bombino were the same grape or, if not, how they were able to bottle a DOC wine from Mostosa grapes, but received no response.  Their website also clearly indicates that Mostosa is the primary grape here, as does the Wine Bottega's site, and the research that I've done seems to indicate that Bombino and Mostosa are definitely two distinct grapes.  I'm not sure what's going on with all the official stuff, but it's really between Trere and the Italian government, I suppose.

In the glass, this wine was a pale greenish silvery lemon color with a little fizz to it.  The nose was nicely aromatic with candied green apple (or sour apple candy or something like that) and a touch of flowers.  On the palate the wine was on the lighter side of medium with medium acidity and a light, fizzy texture.  It was somewhere between dry and off-dry with flavors of candied green apple, a touch of apricot/stone fruit and just a little bit of toastiness.  There was also a distinctive apple peel character that almost verged on cider.  Overall, the wine was light and fruit and very similar to Prosecco, though a little less bubbly and slightly more complex.  It's a fun little wine that's very enjoyable for the money and is probably best on its own or with light snacks.

Bombino Bianco - Puglia, Italy

Today's grape has one of my very favorite grape names of all time.  Bombino Bianco is so fun to say and makes me picture these little white bombs growing on grapevines.  Sadly (for me anyway) the name has nothing to do with bombs, but exactly where it comes from isn't totally clear.  One story has it that the grape bunches look a child with its arms outstretched, so the name Bombino comes from the word Bambino, meaning baby.  It would take a Herculean effort of imagination to picture a baby with arms outstretched in any of the images for Bombino that I've seen, so I'm extremely dubious about this particular story.

There is a slightly more believable story that relies on the grape's purported heritage for its explanatory power.  It thought that the grape may have come over from Spain, though no one offers any evidence (ampelographical or genetic) that I can find to support this hypothesis, and I'm not aware of any vine currently planted in Spain that may be Bombino in disguise.  In any case, the story goes that the Spanish name for the grape was Bonvino (meaning "good wine"), but since the Spanish "v" is pronounced like the Italian "b," the name got corrupted to Bombino once it took hold in Italy.  This story is convincing only to the extent that you buy that the grape is from Spain, and I find myself wondering if perhaps this origin story was concocted because of its linguistic convenience and is itself ultimately the source for the purported Spanish connection.

Wherever the name's origins truly lie, the grape is today known as Bombino Bianco, except when it isn't.  Bombino has a wide variety of synonyms, and these synonyms get us into trouble as we move from region to region within Italy.  The grape is known as Pagadebit or Pagadebito in some places, but this is a relatively common synonym for many different grape.  The name means "debt-payer" and is commonly used for several grapes that give very high yields and produce a lot of juice for the grower.  In particular, there is a grape in Emilia-Romagna known as Pagadebit that was (and, for the most part still is) thought to be the same as Bombino, and a lot of it may be Bombino, but at least some of it is another grape altogether (see my post on Mostosa for info on this grape and on the Pagadebit name more generally).  Some sources also indicate that Bombino and Trebbiano d'Abruzzo are one and the same grape, though this also may turn out to be untrue.  While Wikipedia lists Trebbiano d'Abruzzo as an accepted synonym for Bombino Bianco, The Oxford Companion to wine indicates that they are distinct grapes, and Nicolas Belfrage, in his Brunello to Zibibbo concurs.  Belfrage quotes two Italian writers, Salvatore del Gaudio and Domenico Giusto, who, in their Principali Vitigni, examined the ampelographical characteristics of the two vines and concluded unequivocally that the two grapes are distinct.

So our current situation is essentially this: we find ourselves in Puglia with a grape called Bombino Bianco, which is sometimes called Pagadebit, but which is different from the Pagadebit in Emilia-Romagna, or is at least different from some of the grapes called Pagadebit there, and which was also thought to be identical to Trebbiano d'Abruzzo, but is not.  Our Bombino is, as the Pagadebit synonym (and the more colorful Stracchia Cambiale synonym, meaning "tear up the invoices") suggests, a cash crop, grown primarily because it yields explosively and reliably.  Few producers bother with bottling the wine, and a great deal of it is shipped to Germany, where it is bottled as ordinary, anonymous EU Table Wine.  Nicolas Belfrage's assessment of the potential quality of the grape is summed up when he says "Bombino Bianco can make as dull and tasteless a wine as you could hope to find."  He mentions that some producers are experimenting with lower yields in an effort to coax some character from the grape, but ultimately says the wines produced even from these estates are "more for the drinker than the thinker."

Despite that lackluster endorsement, I picked up a bottle of the 2009 Cantele "Telero" Bombino Bianco from my friends at Curtis Liquors for about $8.  In the glass, the wine was a pale silvery greenish lemon color.  The nose was moderately aromatic with crisp apple, pear, and grapefruit peel aromas.  On the palate, the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity.  There were flavors of pear and lemon with a grapefruit/lemon citrus peel sort of thing lurking in the background.  There was something vaguely floral about it, but it wasn't really strong enough to pin down to anything more specific than that.  It finished with a chalky kind of minerality that I wasn't particularly crazy about.  Overall, it was pretty generic, though I wouldn't go so far as to say it was the most dull or tasteless wine I've ever had.  There's nothing here to offend anyone unless you're offended by mediocrity.  I will say that if you open this bottle, finish it the same day as it went sharply downhill on day two and became nearly undrinkable.  For people who are fans of inexpensive, mild white wines, there's probably a lot here to enjoy. It could sub in very well for some of the high volume Pinot Grigio or Garganega based wines made in northern Italy so if you just feel like switching it up a little bit geographically, give this a shot.