After French and Australian wines, Italian wines are the most-sold imported wines in India today. And while they are neither as expensive as the French, nor as ubiquitous as the Aussies, they have a dedicated number of aficionados here.
Wine has been produced in Italy at least since the time of the Greeks (1000 BC), so there’s some history there. Today, Italy produces the highest quantity of wine grapes worldwide (8.7 billion tons) and ranks no 2 in almost every other respect (wine production 5.3 billion litres, wine exports 1.44 billion litres, per capita wine consumption 50 litres) and every one of their 20 districts produces wine. Since it’s a cottage industry there, the number of wine producers are arguably some 250,000, so there would be at least one million different Italian wines available!
Luckily for us consumers, the vast majority are sold locally, often without any labels, so the actual number of wineries in Italy would probably be nearer 15,000 — that’s still a huge number to track, and even Gambero Rosso listed 2,256 producers in 2008.
So what are the top-rated Italian wines presently available here? Let’s start with wines from just one region: Tuscany — home of Chianti, Brunello, and the “Super Tuscans”.
Once Chianti was the only Italian wine known to most people — an echo of the time when this was widely sold as a cheap tannic red wine in straw-covered bottles called the “fiasco” (Italian for “flask” —nothing to do with either “utter and complete failure” or the book about the Iraq War of the same title). Chiantis are still a lot more tannic than many other reds, but the wines’ quality has completely changed (for the better) with better vineyard management and regulations now permitting up to 20 per cent “other” red grapes in the blend (the rest being, of course, Sangiovese) — the best Chianti Classico wines (with the distinctive black rooster logo) are just fabulous!
Brunello di Montalcino (to give the wine its complete name — not to be confused with wines from the neighbouring Montepulciano area) has to be made from 100 per cent Sangiovese and aged for 4-5 years — which results in an inky black, fruity but somewhat austere wine (Brunello means “nice dark one” in the local dialect). A scandal breaking in March 2008 due to use of some grapes other than Sangiovese resulted in wines from five leading winemakers (including Antinori and Frescobaldi) being seized, which hasn’t helped the wines image.
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“Super Tuscans” was a term coined in the ’80s to describe very high-quality wines being produced by blending Sangiovese grapes with non-approved varieties (like Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cab Franc) that did not meet the then-prescribed rules to a maximum 10 per cent non-local grapes. Piero Antinori released Tignanello in 1978, and others soon followed with wines like Solaia, Brancaia, Querciabella, Sassicaia and Ornellaia — all wines at 95 points or more, silky, superbly complex and long-lived.
The best Tuscan winemakers include Antinori, Ricasoli, Brancaia, Casanova di Neri, Fonterutoli, Fetsina, Fontodi, Frescobaldi, Melini, Querciabella, Ruffino and San Guido. Pick up the wines from any of these producers and you can’t go wrong — most will have a range of wines for every pocket and taste, and there’s a broad corelation between price and quality.
My favourite Tuscan is still the Brancaia IL BLU 04 (96 points, Rs 5,350 in Bangalore) which has an aroma of roses and lilacs followed by blackberries, full-bodied but well-balanced with velvety tannins and a nice long finish.
Cin Cin! n