Viticulturalism

Hasn't everyone arrived at a destination - which could be the next town off your interstate, or a country halfway around the world - and asked: what's the thing they're most known for? Chicken statues? A museum dedicated to all things Spam? Some concoction that the rest of the world wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole?

A thing I would totally touch withOUT a ten foot pole.

WINE?

Arguably, this could be the thing for which Italy is best known.

If that is THE thing, then how do you know what is good and what isn't?  

We all know that price does not necessarily dictate quality.

Fancy labeling can attract a buyer, certainly, but that doesn't indicate the caliber of the contents.

Where you buy that thing is not a guarantee of quality either.  And given that every grocery store here - no matter how small - still dedicates anywhere from a quarter to a fifth of the whole space to selling wine, you know that it's a serious business, but you don't know if any of *that* wine is, well, good. The far less prevalent enoteca (wine shop/bar...which may in fact be more prevalent when everyone decides to return from their extended August vacations...*sigh*) should be trusted to issue quality only, but that is no guarantee either. 

Although I can happily report that this neighborhood enoteca has not been a disappointment.

So what IS a guarantee of quality? 

While I know that how you apprehend wine through your senses is supposed to be the true indicator of quality - I have to admit that mine are largely untrained for the task, especially here.  

They need an education.  I need to 'train my nose.' 

Enter the wine class.

First up, the wines of the Lazio region.  Local Master Sommelier Marco Lori schooled us in 5 different wines of the region that encompasses Rome.

He had a lot to say about Italian viticulture in general.  Here are some interesting tidbits.

When we think of wine's historical beginnings in what we now call Italy, we need to imagine the Etruscans (the culture that preceded Rome) cultivating grapes, and we also need to imagine Roman soldiers carrying grape vines from Gaul (what they called the region of modern-day France, Germany and Switzerland) and back to Rome.*  

This is the Fountain of the Amphorae...it actually dates from the 1920s.  But the motif is an ancient one.  It commemorates a region of Rome known as Testaccio, which happens to have a sizable hill made of broken amphorae - the two-handled ceramic wine and oil vessels of the ancient Mediterranean world.  Essentially, the hill is an old trash heap.  

*My Greek friends might hastily remind us all that ancient Greece had already mastered wine-making - and just as the Romans admired so many other things that were Greek in origin, they placed a higher value on Greek wine than they did their own. 

Back to Marco:

Today, Italy makes more wine than anyone else.  France (which takes 2nd place in wine production) makes more money off of their wines than Italy does.  I don't know about you, but I draw some interesting conclusions from that. 

Italy has over 2000 varieties of wine-producing grapes.  There are over 350 chemical compounds in one bottle of wine.  That's complicated!

Italy makes wine more quickly than France. (which explains, for instance, the rationale of prosecco, the sweeter cousin of champagne) 

Italy has been making wine a lot longer than France. (I'm sensing a competitive theme here)

And on every land mass and formation that is considered Italian, wine is made.  This would include Sardinia, Sicily and Calabria. 

(It's probably not wise to ask a Sicilian if they're Italian, though.  You can ask someone from Rome if they're Italian, and their answer will be "I'm Roman.")

(I should also acknowledge here that I have experienced another, different wine tasting since this post was authored, and, as one might generally surmise with Italian experiences and 'authority,' conflicting information emerges.  Let's just accept that this unique reality is much like the veritable Redwood forest of pieces of the true cross relics strung across so many churches:  what matters is your enthusiasm for believing in it right then and there.  All things are apt to change, save for your faith in someone's sincerity.)

Marco gave us a range of types and colors to experience, from a bubbly prosecco (my favorite) to white (Frascati - a worthy Roman white, also a favorite...if you don't like the aftertaste of chardonnay or even some pinot grigios, seek out Frascati, which I know is tough to locate in many parts of the States <holler at me if you are struggling to find it in Atlanta, because I eventually did>) to rose to red. 

He did not talk much about what a particular wine should be used for or with (meal or specific food), and intriguingly enough, the Italian wine tasting experience is not about targeting you as a buyer right then and there.  There was no wine for sale.  

And there went the last of my Americanized expectations about this event.  Happily.

This means, of course, that I have to explore, explore, explore. 

It's clearly part of my education.

Second class:  the wines of summer. 

Hosted by 'wine ambassador' Tony Polzer, this class was probably intended to encourage students to scoop up the remaining wines of summer from their enotecas...because by late September, early October, arrivederci.  They're done. 

A very organized layout. 

In this case, we tasted two whites, a couple of roses and a red or two.  

What I was reminded of by Tony:

Italian wines are meant to go with food. As I lectured both high school and college students countless times, you don't drink just to drink in Italy.  Wine is much more like another food group.  If you visit a bar or enoteca and have wine, your server will typically provide a small bowl of savory nibbles with your drink - because wine should not hit an empty stomach.  This is not to say that some more civilized institutions in the States won't do this too.  It's just not nearly as prevalent as it is in European countries like Italy. 

Also, it's worth visiting these bars during happy hour, because many of them will set out trays and dishes of appetizer items along the literal bar or on a dedicated table nearby.  These are provided as part of the service with your drink.  Some might charge a small flat fee for this provision, but it's usually quite worth it.  Go for happy hour, have wine or some other aperitivo and these little sammies and antipasti, and you're set until dinner, which is far later in the evening than it is for non-Mediterraneans.  

We discussed wine and food pairings - a lot! - in this class.  And this wasn't about just pairing Italian wines with Italian cuisine (although the range of options was more itemized that I expected:  not just pasta, but risotto...not just fish, but sardines...not just vegetables, but artichokes, etc).  Liberal mentions were made of pair-worthy wines for Indian food, for instance.  

What I learned from Tony:

Fans of aerating wines (pouring them into a special carafe and/or allowing the bottle to sit open for a specified time before consumption) should not aerate an old wine for very long. Get into to that bottle of Brunello you've been saving for (as I did once) 11 years, stat! 

A lot of these summer wines, in particular, shouldn't be kept for longer than three years. (But other wines - very good ones - in my limited experience <see Brunello above>, can be kept for far longer). 

In class, we played the 'what other things do you smell/taste when you try this wine' kind of game, and I'll admit that because so many people called out different things...and because I tended to think, 'oh yes, I DO smell/taste that' after someone had called out something in particular, like grapefruit or honey...I'm not yet sold on the idea that there is much universality of smell or taste among the corpus of humanity. The power of suggestion is strong, when it comes to taste/smell.

To my lightly trained nose and taste, these were all superb. Donna Fugata ("women in flight," which stems from a legend about a woman fleeing Napoleonic forces all the way to Sicily) is a Sicilian vintner.  They take pride in the fact that they make their wines on or very near the site of the grape's harvest, so they maintain several locations.  The range of prices for the central bottle (the only one I've seen in a Roman shop so far...so far!) have been between 9 and 13 euros. And with the current exchange rate, you can bump up the number by 1 or 2 and be close in American dollars.  Note the D.O.C. distinction.  I'll explain a little (but that link can do a better job)...

Wines are classified not just by color and grape varieties/mixtures, but also by drinking quality, which is bound up in production methods as well as source. These classifications are tightly regulated, or so you are told. You are then told (remember:  you make a law, we make a loophole!) that those regulations can be lax in some places and times.
The classifications are indicated on the labels, and they go up on hierarchical order, beginning with the least distinctive and therefore, the least expensive:

VGT - vino for the tavola.  Wine for the table and comes from Italy - and that's about all the information you're going to get.  You won't find this much in the States.  Instead, when you are interested in just having a wine from the area when you're IN the area, and you're on a budget, you ask for the 'vino de casa' - the house wine.  VGT is the most likely the house wine.
IGT - wine that is typical of a geographical region.  There are wines known as 'super Tuscans' and 'super Umbrians' - and this is their distinction.  This is also known as table wine, but it is a step up from the VGT status.
DOC - a much more highly controlled (that's the 'C') wine that is often named for the grape and/or the place that the wine comes from.  If you're a fan of a particular wine from, say, Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, then look on that label for the D.O.C. distinction.  Still and all, D.O.C. can have different meanings in different places in Italy, so the 'control' is a little loose.
DOCG - 'G' for guarantee.  STRICTLY controlled and observed wine-making rules go into these wines.  If you've ever peeled away an official looking slip of paper stamped with typed information that lays across the cork and rim of the bottle - before opening it - you have handled a DOCG wine. Fans of the higher end Chiantis or Brunellos (mmm, my favorite reds) are spending top dollar for them.

That said, the wines here are, overall, remarkably affordable. And consider that if people are producing wines on all four levels - and drinking them! - then all are worth a try.  In this case, information is power, but it does not have to induce snobbery.

Rose....not your parents' cheap, boxed wine of yesteryear.  

A little color comparison between two reds.

Also, perhaps most interestingly, Tony was mindful about having us taste a bottle of wine that had gone off, as soon as he discovered it.

Given that he doesn't represent a particular vineyard, I suppose that this didn't take so much courage, but I still appreciated that he was a thorough instructor in that sense.  

Because if you don't necessarily know what's good, you also may not know what's bad.

I've included these shots in part so that you can see if these items are available where you live.  The U.S. imports a lot of good Italian wine...but it is also true that Italy chooses not to export all of it.  The two bottles that the tourist is legally permitted to bring home (in their suitcase) from here seem like a measly allowance when you consider how much wine is created here. And if you'd like to ship yourself a case, then you can make those arrangements, as long as you aren't in the state of Georgia, where that is illegal.  I'm already penning the letter to Mom and Dad in Virginia, asking about room in their basement, in case you were wondering...

To close, a wine from the Bolzano region of Italy...extreme north.  Close enough to - according to those who've visited - hear as much or more German spoken in town as you may hear Italian.  But oddly enough, temperature-wise for the sake of the grapes, it is on par with...Palermo, Sicily!

So, there's my introduction to Italian wine.  Just enough to know that I don't know a whole lot.

Yet.