Between the vines
Zak discovers bewildering choice on an Italian wine trip
Another exciting couple of weeks - how long can this go on, I wonder? We have a pair of new recruits to the fold
- and not a moment too soon
as last week I was spirited off to Italy for a few days by Liberty Wines. As a group of nine people, we toured wineries around Verona
and pushed north east into Friuli. It was an interesting trip, for a variety of reasons, so I'd like to share some of the more printable findings here.
It probably won't come as a surprise to anyone, but Italy has a bewildering variety of grapes
and an even more fiddly system of rules as to what you can do with them. In some cases, grape varieties are also used as denominations
and even apparently familiar grape varieties are
not what they seem.
Humble Trebbiano may be suffixed with a regional qualifier to distinguish it from another similar (but
always inferior) variety grown elsewhere.
The producers
display a splendid set of eccentricities .
One thought nothing of taking the coach on a short cut through a vineyard.
The precipitous scree road
petered out into nothing, leaving us
driving between rows of vines. Thank Bacchus
the plantings weren't more dense, or we
would have been in trouble.
The trip took in a wide variety of producers, from the world-class to the humble co-operative. Thrilling as it was to shake hands with the producer of one of the best Soaves in the world, it was equally exciting to see trailer-loads of grapes being pitchforked into a huge steel hopper at the nearby co-operative. It was easy to see how the Pieropan estate's patience, skill and devotion produced a Soave of unusual intensity and finesse. What was perhaps more surprising is that at the co-operative, despite leaves, stems and goodness knows what else being dumped in at one end, the resulting product was
actually pretty good.
The issue of bottle closures is also a hot topic. Liberty
managing director David Gleave
is a fanatic advocate of screwcaps
- and wherever possible encourages producers to forsake unpredictable cork.
In some cases, for example at renowned producers Allegrini, this has meant
they have had to declassify their wines from "classico" status to use the screwcap
-
a sacrifice
they
see as worthwhile.
Many
are moving over, despite having to negotiate
with local, regional and national government
to do so.
Indeed, one estate was in the process of making the change, but not quickly enough to prevent them pouring an array of corked wines at lunch. The cork lottery continued to show its influence later that day at dinner. Three bottles of
wine from a reputed estate were opened, not as an extravagance, but because our host felt that the first two weren't quite right. He was right: the final bottle was intense, complex and plush, the previous two seeming dull and flat by comparison.
Low level TCA? Some sort of "flavour scalping"? Given that this
wine retails for about £30, I know which closure I'd be happier putting my money behind.
A fascinating trip , but let me share a
secret . If you
accept hospitality from two Italian wine producers in one day, you'll need hollow legs and elasticated trousers.
