Anoothi Vishal visits Vinitaly, the world’s largest wine exhibition, and comes back with an unusual list of finds, including a Lamborghini wine and a descendant of Mona Lisa!
Fifty and I am done. This is the first time that I have had to walk out of a tasting. But after smelling, swirling and sipping on (but not spitting out) close to 50 wines from the Piedmonte region, in under two hours, I really cannot take it any more. The organisers have been ambitious; close to 120 wines, mostly by small producers, are to be tasted (or that’s what our waiter promises) making for an afternoon of some very hard work indeed. My companion, an international marketing manager from one of India’s leading wine companies, has been diligently going through all that comes our way, ostensibly selecting what she may buy, pronouncing periodically, “hmm, too young”, or seeking my opinion in a neighbourly sort of way. But after 50 — more or less, if I’ve got my math right — she too decides that that is as far as we’ll get that afternoon with the Barolos, Barberas and Barbarescos. Jealous?
| LESSER KNOWN ITALIAN WINES
Custoza: Soave is the most popular when it comes to the whites but try this small production as apperitif ¤ 6-8 (retail, Italy) Bardolina Chaiaretto: The rose has a beautiful cherry nose; an ideal sumer wine with Indian food Valpolicella: The Masi Amarone from this region is gorgeous and expensive but there are other fresh, less heavy wines deemed trendy with the young for ¤ 7-9 Grillo-Inzolia: Old grapes-new wines from Sicily; ¤ 8-10. Planeta is in India DOCG Vermentino di Gallura: From Sardinia, for ¤ 7-30 |
One of three main Italian winemaking regions, Piedmonte is home to the Nebbiolo that produces wines with high tannin and spicy aromas. The Barolo (“wine of kings and king of wines”) is one of the most famous to emerge from here, robust red and aged in oak barrels. Similarly, Barbaresco, the most famous of which is produced by the small but legendary Gaja, is also made from Nebbiolo and a favoured export.
But these great reds fall in an exalted price range with bottles going for $ 60 upwards. In India, where wine attracts as much as 150 per cent import duty, the prices stack up. At the Imperial in New Delhi, for instance, a bottle of 2004 Gaja will cost you Rs 14,000 plus tax. After my marathon tasting, one lesson that I do come back with (apart from a temporary craving for Diet Coke) is that there are enough versions you can pick up for a fraction of the price — may be not as good as Gaja, nevertheless...
While the world grapples with economic turmoil, Italian wine has surprisingly held its own: Exports, for instance, improved last year by 2 per cent to about ¤ 3.6 billion. And at Vinitaly, the world’s biggest wine show held in Verona, the picturesque setting for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet amongst other things, recession is a word that you don’t hear very often. As producer after producer expresses satisfaction — and surprise-— at the turnout (4,200 exhibitors, crowds that haven’t been quantified yet but would beat the trade fair rush hollow at our own Pragati Maidan), what emerges is the fact that Italian wine-making at the moment is very much focused on price-sensitive wines made from indigenous grape varieties (there are 500 of these). It’s a strategy to beat competition from both the old — think French — and new worlds — think mass-assembled chardonnay. Like someone points out, “In Italy, even a wine for ¤3-4 can be good.”
So if you were to discount the major Italian wines — Brunello di Montalcino, the revered Sassicaia, even Soave, the most favoured white wine — there are still interesting (and cheaper) wines that you may like. Here’s a pick from the exhibition:
Amongst the whites, Custoza (from Veneto) that is five times smaller in terms of production than Soave from the same region, can make for an excellent aperitif. Recommended for its bouquet of local grapes, the wine is pleasant and sweetly aromatic and makes for a “ladies drink”, for ¤6-8 (retail in Italy). Then, there is the rose Bardolina Chaiaretto from the same area, with a beautiful nose and minerality, recommended for summer, with seafood and spicy Indian food. Valpolicella, north of Verona, known for its light red table wines but also for the superb Amarone, my own all-time favourite, made from a technique of drying grapes, is a region that is “in” with young drinkers at the moment because it offers wines with less alcohol, “but character”.
Till the 1990s, the accent for Italian wine was more on international grapes. These wines were easier to sell, but conversely, also meant more competition from the new world that used these same varietals. So the “new age” of Italian wine as it is called now focuses on all the old, local varieties, sometimes going back to Roman times.
Southern Italian wines are deemed trendy and if you go down to Sicily, one of the oldest grapes-new wine is Grillo-Inzolia. (The company Planeta is in India). From Sardinia, there’s Vermentino, expressing the “aromas of the isle”, good with spicy food.
Each wine, you learn soon enough, has a story to tell. Earlier in the week, I have met Tonino Lamborghini with the famous last name, who no longer, alas, owns the car company. He has a range of pastas and olive oils instead and has just launched a “luxury” wine from Sicily, Nero d’ Avola. But my last story begins with Mona Lisa.
“Princess” Natalia Strozzi is present at one of the black-tie dinners that go hand-in-hand with the fair. At the age of 30-something, she runs the family’s wine business, one of the oldest in Italy. The prime estate is Cusona in San Gimignano, traced back to 994. Strozzi also claims to be the direct descendant of Mona Lisa or Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florence merchant, said to be the subject of the painting. An Italian genealogist traced Strozzi and brought out this fact. She dutifully hands me copies of published interviews where she also claims acquaintance with everyone from Gregory Peck to Tony Blair. You may or may not like her wine. But what’s in that glass, after all , is also a sip of mystique!
(The author was at Vinitaly on the invitation of Veronafiere)
