The first comment in the thread, authored by winemaker Stefano Menti, was a preview of the many observations and handwringing that would follow: “Dear Franco, I believe that with this step, the credibility of our DOC and DOCG [system] will be eroded.”

Why was such a humble expression of rosé wine elevated to the highest status in the hierarchy of the Italian appellation system? asks Franco in his post. As he points out, there are many more famous and perhaps more historically significant appellations for rosé in nearby Salento, where Negroamaro is used to produce some of Apulia’s most famous wines — both red and rosé. Furthermore, Franco observes, the current appellation is, in fact, a multivarietal appellation and allows for the inclusion of:

Bombino Nero and/or Aglianico and/or Uva di Troia from 65-100%. Other grapes allowed in the production of this wine, by themselves or blended, include non-aromatic grape varieties recommended and/or authorized by the Province of Bari, provided they are grown locally, [for] up to 35% of the blend. (translation by VinoWire)

Franco proposes three theories as to why Italy’s National Wine Commission would condone such an abomination of the Italian appellation system:

1) The local presence of wineries who wield considerable weight, like Torrevento, Tormaresca (aka Marchesi Antinori), and Rivera, whose enologist Leonardo Palumbo is the president of the enologists association of Apulia and Calabria.
2) It’s impossible to identify any thread of logic in decisions made by Italy’s National Wine Commission. Had logic been their guide, legislators would have focused on the many other more-deserving appellations.
3) The true “blame” for this DOCG is not to be placed with the ministry-appointed bureaucrats but rather with the directors and leading players in appellations more renowned for their rosé than the newly minted DOCG Castel del Monte Bombino Nero.

For the most up-to-date list of Italian DOCGs, please see Alfonso Cevola’s blog, On the Wine Trail in Italy.

I am well aware that, according to EU legislation, “green harvesting means the total destruction or removal of grape bunches while still in their immature stage, thereby reducing the yield of the relevant area to zero.”

I am also aware that “support for green harvesting shall contribute to restoring the balance of supply and demand in the market in wine in the Community in order to prevent market crises” [the final phase of EU Common Market Organisation reforms that include voluntary grubbing-up incentives to be distributed to and applied by EU members at their discretion, subsidies intended to reduce the number of vineyards that may have never produced wines but were planted rather to reap distillation subsidies in years of reckless EU promotion of growth].

Frankly, I just can’t understand this means of regulation and “balancing” production to aid producers during the market crisis. Honestly, I find it hard to swallow.

In my view, such regulation seems more suited to industries like iron and steel or car manufacturing — not for such a wondrous thing as wine.

Perhaps I’m a stubborn old enophilic Don Quixote who views wine romantically, as an expression of the earth, a modality of rustic knowledge, and the fruit of artisan culture. It is not a simple product that can be financed and manufactured when the market is “up” and then discarded when things get difficult.

Strange things have been happening in the world of wine today.

—Franco Ziliani

Raise your hand, please. Send up a signal. If you take seriously such an unserious thing as the “Italian Unity Bottle,” please show yourself. If you have the courage (and the gall) to show yourself with such an unseemly package (as in the photo above), please let your presence be known.

[translator's note: please see the Wiki entry for Italian Unification for historical background.]

And please state your name and step forward! That is, if you have survived the orgy of patriotard rhetoric (the result of a diabetic or perhaps alcoholic coma?) reported in the press release. It informs us of the presentation of the bottle celebrating 150 years of Italian Unity (conceived by Veronafiere-Vinitaly) to the President of the Italian Republic Giorgio Napolitano the other day in New York.

Ettore Riello, Giovanni Mantovani, and Nicola Moscardo (Veronafiere president, director, and administrative counsel, respectively) were all on hand in the Big Apple to present the head of state with “Bottle Numero Uno.”

It is described as a “bottle celebrating 150 years [of Italian unification]. After being presented to President Napoitano, it will be given to the greatest international authorities. Only a small number of bottles were produced and the wine is not available for sale. It embodies great symbolic value and it is intended to promote and raise international awareness of the uniqueness of Italian viticulture, winemaking, and the classic cultural values of the Belpaese that it represents.”

“Conceived and created especially by Aldo Cibic and Riccardo Facci, the content of the bottles was born through the union of forty indigenous grape varieties (twenty white, twenty red), presented in a box set containing a ‘Vino Rosso d’Italia’ and a ‘Vino Bianco d’Italia’ intended as the sum of the 20 regions of the Belpaese. Two wines that officially represent the anniversary of the foundation Italian State, at home and abroad.”

“Assoenologi was consulted for the creation of the blend and the wines were chose by the Superintendents of the 20 regions [of Italy].”

Buck up! Don’t give in! And don’t fall victim to a combination of laughter and tears as you read that “the project — ‘The Italian Unity Bottle’ — which was presented last year during Vinitaly when the President of the Italian Republic was visiting the fair — finds itself at the center of an important celebratory moment here in New York,” in the words of Ettore Riello (president, Veronafiere), with his tricolor pocket square in his jacket. He gave “the Italian Unity Bottle, ‘UNA,’” as it is called, to Napolitano. “Our project was greatly appreciated by the President of the Republic and we have been asked, by the president himself, to give it the greatest exposure possible through different media, including the 2011 Vinitaly fair in Verona, Vinitaly in the World in markets all over the world, helping simultaneously to bolster the national identity and to promote awareness of our Country’s many fields of excellence.”

And if you actually manage to read the entire press release without smashing your computer against the wall, you will discover that the “Italian Unity Bottle, ‘UNA,’ expresses the authentic spirit of italianità [historic Italianeity], a never-tiring testament to [Italy's] love of the land, of skill, of art, and the industriousness of its people.”

It’s all thanks to Vinitaly and its top authorities who traveled to New York to present the bottle because it’s always better to award prizes abroad.

And if you make it that far into the press release, tell me this: what can we say about a red wine where Barbera strides arm-in-arm with Sangiovese, Teroldego, Montepulciano, Negroamaro, Aglianico, Nero d’Avola, Croatina, and Sagrantino, and a white that indiscriminately mixes Cortese, Vermentino, Trebbiano, Garganega, Verdicchio, Falanghina, Fiano, Greco, Friulano e Pignoletto, Vernaccia di San Gimignano, and Grillo? The only thing to do is blow a hardy raspberry!

—Franco Ziliani

With all respect for the long and illustrious career of the man who is being celebrated as the “father of Italian wine,” is it permissible to harbor some reservations — however gentle — not only regarding the question of whether or not Tachis is “the guiding light behind the renaissance of Italian wine in the 1970s and 80s,” but also regarding the role he has played in Italian wine in recent decades?

There is no doubt, as the editors of Decanter wrote, that “in five decades at the forefront of Italian winemaking, the Piedmont-born Tachis has been instrumental in the introduction of practices that are now standard at the top end of Italian wine production: clonal selection, high-density, low-yielding vineyards, and refinements in malolactic fermention and oak ageing.”

And it’s equally true that “it is for the introduction of Cabernet Sauvignon and other Bordeaux varietals in the original ‘SuperTuscans,’ Sassicaia, Tignanello and Solaia, that Tachis is most renowned.” Such an observation certainly does not warm my spirit. In fact, it sends a chill down my spine when I consider that just other day someone published the following statement on a popular blog: “Giacomo Neri has brought prestige and fame to Montalcino and to all of Italian enology.”

Without going as far as to call him an ill-intended teacher, can we be sure that his loss of identity in the name of fatuous internationalization did not lead degenerative phenomena like Brunellogate? Did his style as the “architect of blending” (as another celebrated enologist has called him) contribute to the current lack of direction in Italian wine? I’d much rather remember him for his wonderful book on Tuscan Vin Santo.

Personally, I don’t feel right celebrating the man who declared: “It’s time to open our minds because the appellations [of the Italian DOC system] are a load of bollocks concocted by people who don’t know a thing about wine.”

A team of psychologists and anthropologists and scholars should be commissioned to study the human behavior of enologists like Giacomo Tachis and Ezio Rivella. These two Piedmontese found their success in Tuscany and yet they openly attack the very same appellation system that — whether they like it or not — defines the past, present, and future of Italian wine.

Consider the many names of those who have received the Decanter Men and Women of the Year award from 1984 until the present: Prof. Émile Peynaud, Aubert de Villaine, Marcel Guigal, Ernst Loosen, Miguel Torres, Jancis Robinson, Hugh Johnson, José Ignacio Domecq, May-Eliane de Lencquesaing, Michael Broadbent, Max Schubert, Angelo Gaja. They are all true giants of the world of wine. I can’t honestly consider the current choice as one of the most inspired. There are many figures that I’d rather call “fathers” of Italian wine. Tachis isn’t one of them.

—Franco Ziliani

We thank you for the invitation to participate in the tastings, from February 15 to 19, of the new releases of your wines.

It is always a pleasure, for those of us who do not live in Tuscany, to return there from all parts of the world, and for those of us who do live there to attend these by now classic tastings.

We look forward to several tiring but rewarding days of tasting, days to which we undertake to devote our full commitment and professionalism. However, the number of samples to be tasted are many (even though, most regrettably, a growing number of important producers decline to submit their wines), and the time available for tasting is much reduced compared with previous years.

In Florence, for example, during the second day of the Chianti Classico tasting, it will no longer be possible to taste the samples seated, with sommelier service, but we will be obliged to tour round the producers’ tables.

In Montalcino, indeed, we are asked to sacrifice a substantial section of the time available to attend an interesting meeting on “150 years of Italy, 150 years of Brunello”, in which “many protagonists of the production of wine in Italy and in Montalcino” will be participating.

We are thus constrained to make a choice between tasting (which after all is the principal motive for our presence in Montalcino) and the presentation. The same dilemma presents itself on Saturday 19th, when at 11:00 we will have to interrupt our tasting (in which we will have been engaged only since 9:30) to attend the Teatro degli Astrusi for “an indepth examination of the 2010 vintage”.

What can be done about this? It will obviously be difficult (though not impossible), now that the programmes have been printed, to make changes, such as delaying the Montalcino presentations until later in the afternoon, or, in Florence, or to allow us to continue tasting seated at tables during the second day of the Chianti Classico Collection.
We the undersigned, however, without wishing to create problems, would like to hope that you will succeed in finding some solution.

Juancho Asenjo, Nicolas Belfrage, Riccardo Farchioni, Roberto Giuliani, Carlo Macchi, Gian Luca Mazzella, Kyle Phillips, Eckhard Supp, Stefano Tesi, Franco Ziliani.

I was at the assemblea [assembly]. There was little discussion about the IGT wines at the Anteprima [the annual debut of the new Chianti Classico vintage, held in Florence each year in February] at all. A few criticized it, but that’s it. The main topic was the reorganization of the C[hianti] C[lassico] appellation, and the one thing that came out very strongly was the rejection of the proposal of a “light young C. Classico” to help in this difficult economic time. The majority (but there where no votes) spoke in favor of reviving the riservas, and re-qualifying [re-classifying] the whole appellation. Also a mostly favorable opinion on the idea of sub-appellations by comune [township], but with very differentiated ideas about how to do it.My opinion about IGT at the Anteprima: why not? Many are pure Sangiovese. And unfortunately some Chianti Classicos are Bordeaux-like.

As a C[hianti] Classico producer that has always worked only with Sangiovese, I’m not scandalized by the proposal to present IGT’s at the Anteprima. After all many are entirely from Sangiovese grapes.

I find a lot more questionable that the rules have gradually increased the amount of non-traditional grapes allowed in the blend (now that’s a slippery slope to me).

The Chianti “Bordelais” lobby keeps pushing to increase this percentage, the last proposal was to allow up to 40%. (It failed for now.)

I need to make clear that I’m not at all against growing other varietals in Chianti; quite the opposite, I think that the Classico appellation should allow wines from other varietals to be called Chianti Classico, with a varietal appellation added.

It’s just that CC alone shouldn’t be fattened by Merlot or Cab. It would be nice if things were more transparent, with things clearly stated on the label.

I love CC from Sangiovese for its elegance, finesse, food friendliness, and for how the light penetrates it and gives it brilliance.

What really bugs me is when an overly concentrated and heavily oaked muscular wine pretends to be a Sangiovese.

—Roberto Stucchi

In an interview published on Friday at WineNews.it, Italy’s recently installed agricultural minister Giancarlo Galan told a journalist that there was no real crisis in the Italian wine industry.

When asked whether or not the Italian government would “intervene,” he responded:

I was the president of the Veneto Region for 15 years and I never heard hotel owners or merchants in Venice say that things were going well. The same is true, in my view, for wine producers. I’m not denying that are difficulties in this sector. But let’s not get carried away! If any industry has grown and proven successful in international markets, it’s the wine industry. Before we start complaining, let’s at least wait for the end of harvest!

When asked whether or not the government was considering subsidies for the Italian wine industry, he answered dryly:

It’s the farmers who need to change. They need to abandon their low-end products and let other people make those. Let me give you an example. Twenty years ago, the wines made in the Colli Euganei [the Euganean Hills near Padua] were unpresentable. In recent years, instead, wineries have converted over to quality and today they make excellent products that have no problem on the market.

Ristorante da Felicin in Monforte d’Alba is one of my favorite restaurants, a place where I always feel at home (and maybe even better than at home) and I experience the flavors of a kitchen that I’d like to taste every single day, confident that I’d never get bored. The setting is magnificent, elegant but still warm. The hosts are splendid: my dear friends Silvia and Nino Rocca and his wonderful parents. The service is perfect. But the cellar… the cellar is a true Holy of the Holies.

Bottles jealously and painstakingly preserved, bottles that report vintages on their labels that date back to the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. Once uncorked, these bottles reveal an incredible, miraculous treasure of precious nuance and reward the guest with ineffable emotion. These bottles are hard to find elsewhere. They often sport names that the younger among us have forgotten or are entirely unaware of. Sometimes, the names are those of wineries that do not exist anymore, producers about whom very little is known, winemakers who will not appear in Google search engine results.

Nino reserved one of these names for me, a slam dunk that he surprised me with: the winery was Franco Fiorina (Alba), which enjoyed great notoriety and prestige in the 1970s and 80s, and the wine was its 1982 Barolo.

It was the 15th of May, Saturday evening, the last time I visited Nino and Silvia, who cast yet another spell on me by decanting this bottle and bringing it to me blind at my table.

I was able to find some information about this wine by asking one of the persons who contributed to the miracle contained in this bottle: Armando Cordero, now in his 80s, one of Langa’s most memorable figures and a man who was much more than just a simple enologist. He served as Franco Fiorina’s enologist and his indelible memories of the winery are invaluable.

Franco Fiorina 1982 Barolo

As told by Armando, the 1982 Barolo by Franco Fiorina was an obstinately old-school wine.

“As long as I worked there, all of Franco Fiorina’s bottlings of Barolo were made from a blend of Nebbiolo Michet grown in Serralunga — [vineyards] Baudana and Vigna Riunda [sic] — and Castiglione Falletto, La Morra, and Monforte d’Alba. A blend of grapes from different villages, in keeping with the teachings of my father, the old cellar master at Calissano until 1965.”

“The grapes were pressed with partial destemming and then fermented in glass-lined cement vats. Punching of the cap in the evenings using a pump but none of the modern contraptions used today.”

“Submerged-cap fermentation for about 15 days and aging of the new wine on its lees until Christmas, more or less… Aging for two years in cement and then in large Slavonian oak casks, very old but healthy, until we would decide to bottle the wine, after about 2 years. The wine was then bottled with out fining or filtration and the bottles were stacked on their sides until they were sold.”

“This is the story of great Barolo! What a pity that certain traditionalists have forgotten this story. But let’s not talk about that.”

So that’s the history of this wine. But what did it taste like?

A perfect, marvelous wine, with deep, seamless ruby red color, bright, full of energy, with a light, brilliant simmer of garnet, as if to quiet all those who say that Nebbiolo is colorless and needs “help” to achieve color using concentrators or “other” techniques. This wine was a shining example of how old-school Barolo, made from grapes sourced from different villages, can obtain astonishing balance, perhaps greater than that obtained from a single cru. A wine that — 28 years after its harvest — dazzles the drinker.

An intriguing, seductive nose, with continuous evolution in the wide-mouthed glassed, autumnal, with notes of chiaroscuro, half-shaded aromas, an essense of dried rose, earth, leaves and dried mushrooms. Candied hints of amaretto and cinnamon, tobacco and subtle, nuanced truffle, rhubarb, dried prune, with gamey and wild notes. Very fresh, alive, and savory.

The nose was magnificent. But on the palate… my goodness, the palate! A pure, earthy texture with seductive tannin, lively and profound acidity, but balanced and never aggressive. I was surprised by the wine’s juiciness and its sweet fruit, its indomitable energy, and its persistent, velvety flavor and minerality.

This wine was fresh, gorgeous, and aristocratic. It had an ability to speak to the drinker, as if it were expanding on your palate like a caress, like a kiss. It left me absolutely breathless, thankful and awestruck.

This, too, is part of what makes Barolo so fascinating, what makes it unique and inimitable. And it is how Langa bewitches us…

—Franco Ziliani

Nebbiolo Prima, the reconstituted annual anteprima event formerly known as the Alba Wines Exhibition, is easily one of the most engaging Italian wine tastings that I’ve attended. It’s also certainly the most gruesome: four days, 75-85 new nebbiolo wines each day, and only three or so hours in a single sitting to taste them all. Still, it’s a fantastic opportunity to taste most of the new releases from the following appellations: Roero, Barbaresco and Barolo. And as an invited (and hosted*) journalist, I got to taste everything blind, broken out by vintage and commune.

I’m still typing up my notes, so it’s a little premature to comment on individual wines. Actually, typed notes or no, I think it’s impossible to offer accurate impressions of the 330 or so wines tasted at Nebbiolo Prima. To be sure, I had some favorites — wines that, to me at least, gave a balanced impression of how nebbiolo performs in a particular zone, whether the Roero, Nieve, or Castiglione Falletto.

Large, comprehensive tastings like Nebbiolo Prima, however, do have their advantages, namely providing an opportunity to play generalist and look for underlying trends or profiles within communes and, most importantly, within the vintage.

So speaking generally, I came away from this tasting uninspired by many of the ’07s from the Roero (a region that I tend to like under normal circumstances) and frustrated by the bulk (literally and figuratively, but not all) of ’07 Barbarescos, especially those from Treiso which, marked as they were by jammy tannins and high alcohols, didn’t seem to handle the warm, dry conditions of 2007.

(Above: Two sides to every tasting, and every rental car. I had rented a new – and adorable – Fiat 500 to make getting around much easier. Unfortunately a tight alleyway and an obscured bench in the medieval town of Serralunga decided to make things a little more difficult. Thankfully, a quick thinking winemaker reattached the bumper with tape.)

Barolo 2006 was a different matter. And at least to judge from my experiences during both Nebbiolo Prima and during visits with several producers both before, during and after the event, 2006 is looking like it will be a very good, possibly classic, vintage for Barolo, especially among producers in Castiglione Falletto, Barolo/Novello, Monforte, Serralunga and Verduno. La Morra was the odd man out here, with too many wines that felt pushed in the cellar, whether through overworked tannins or excessive oak flavors.

Which brings up another point about 2006, and perhaps why I think this vintage shows real promise for Barolo: it’s a tough year to hide behind. In other words, it’s not a year in which warm, ideal ripening conditions can hide bad winemaking, nor is it a year in which the more obviously modern and international styles tended to show their best. If you dig brighter acidity, earthy, firm tannins and purity of expression over technique, then 2006 Barolo is your thing.

A few more posts, including some producer visits in Liguria and Valtellina in addition to Piedmont, to follow…

NB: I had the great pleasure of spending a good amount of time tasting (and eating) with David McDuff, who has also posted informed observations about Nebbiolo Prima. Definitely worth a visit.

*As noted before, but worth pointing out again, I was an invited journalist at Nebbiolo Prima, and have the organizers to thank for logistical support, airfare, some meals, etc. The rental car, in all its taped, bashed-up glory, was my own responsibility.

—Wolgang Weber

During the four days devoted to tastings blind and otherwise, the favorite sport of nearly everyone who attended Barbera Meeting — journalists, bloggers, and buyers — was that of mercilessly searching out and mocking public enemy number one: barrique. Until not so long ago, if you dared to challenge the trilogy of new wood, black tar color, and sweet, overflowing super fruit, they would call you crazy. Today, if you don’t dare to question its wisdom, they’ll tell you that you don’t know a thing about wine. The thought of pondering the wine, attempting to move beyond the wood to understand whether or not the overall architecture of the wine makes sense, seems to have become a futile exercise.

…

Barbera is out of style, at least in Italy. And it’s been this way for a few years now. And my impression is that this is the case even more so, after tasting nearly 200 wines at Barbera Meeting and pretending that such a number is sufficient to evaluate three enormous appellations as large as the townships they cover. Over the course of four days of tasting, there were plenty of dark, tight, and (we might as well say it) woody wines. Sometimes the wines were simply boring. But in many cases, luckily, the wines were reasonable and some were genuinely good. There was once a time, not so long ago, when people looked for wines you could spread on toast. Today, it appears that everything has changed. Barbera, the color of tar, with vanilla flavors and powerful alcohol, seems to be out, outdated, and passé. As a result, Barbera continues to fall behind the times. Pretty much everywhere, something has changed and continues to change but they don’t seem to have figure this out around here, at least not in significant numbers as in other Italian appellations recently sampled. An analysis of the reasons behind this swerve will surely fill thick volumes on the subject of marketing and will be the subject of intense debate. But we’ll just have to wait to understand what has happened.

But there is also the risk of falling into extremism here. I heard some of my colleagues ask, angered to the point that you’d think their questions were a matter of personal injury, why is that certain Barberas had 14% alcohol? Such questions are senseless. There’s no point in underlining the fact that alcohol is simply one component of wine, a fundamental element, no doubt, but not the only one. There are wines with 15% alcohol but when they are well balanced they can be just as stunning. At the same rate, wines with 11% alcohol can be annoyingly pungent on the nose. Certain colleagues of mine asked, but why are you aging this wine for two years in barrique? This is another senseless question. Why? Just try the wines of Iuli, a young producer form Monferrato. Many of his Barberas are aged for more than two years in small cask. But they show no pointless toasty notes on the nose? Nada, zip. Why is this? How do we explain this? The answer lies in the fact that we are talking about the container and not the contents. Such conversations are as boring as wines devastated by wood.

—Alessandro Franceschini