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Winter 2010/2011
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Another year has started...
… the older we get, the faster a year goes by, it seems. One day we
celebrate Christmas, the next Easter, in between a couple of birthdays and
then it is Christmas again, the last day of the year and the first of the
next and then it is starting right from the beginning…
We are so busy that time flies. Our lives are filled
with obligations, expectations, goals,
challenges, appointments, conferences,
objectives, lives on the fast lane, full of stress, no time for anything.
Perhaps it is time to rethink and to slow down, to enjoy the moment, with
the people that we love, carpe diem
to all of you and a truly happy new year!
Bruno, Carlo and Giorgio Rivetti and the La Spinetta Team
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A word from Giorgio
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The future of Barolo and Barbaresco….
For many years Piedmont producers found themselves in a
“heavenly” market situation. The world demand on Barolo and
Barbaresco was higher than the production. I remember the
years 2000 to 2004, where we sometimes didn’t want to answer
the winery phone anymore. We did not want to turn down
people as we were sold out on our Barbaresco and Barolo
production.
Selling those wines was all about allocating quantities to
existing customers.
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To La Spinetta it was always fairly clear that this market situation
was only temporary. But unfortunately the wisdom was not shared by
most of the other producers. While we continued to make our Crus,
the total Barolo and Barbaresco production in Piedmont almost
tripled in less than ten years, while the demand on these high-end
wines decreased.
Today the “Barolo and Barbaresco heaven” has turned into a fierce
competition. While there is only a market for so many bottles of
these high-end wines, there is much more wine still being produced.
Many winery cellars in Piedmont are stocked with multiple vintages
of Barolo and Barbaresco, especially the ones of the small
producers, who never really had a chance or missed out to build up a
brand and a solid clientele. These producers now try to discount
their wine and give special deals, doing great damage the reputation
and image of top Piedmont reds.
As a true-blooded Italian it is hard for me to admit, but the French
wine producers have handled the decrease in demand of high-end wines
much better. For example in Champagne, where the producers
rigorously decide on the annual production quantity of all Champagne
according to world demand. This secures a fair price and the
reputation of the wine.
I have had many discussion with producer colleagues in Piedmont
regarding this problem. My advice, which I have expressed in several
newspaper interviews, is that we increase the quality of Barolo and
Barbaresco, while decreasing the production. A very smart way could
be to change the DOCG and include a regulation regarding the age of
vines, not allowing Nebbiolo vines younger than 20 years to be used
for Barolo and Barbaresco production. This would at once eliminate
all the “new” Barolos and Barbaresco that were created during the
past ten years. Certainly these wines can still be sold as Langhe
Nebbiolo for a price that is in relation to their quality.
So far my idea has found only a few supporters, but I will
continue to fight for what I believe is right: an increase of
quality, a decrease of production and a justified “high-end” wine
image for Barolo and Barbaresco. After all, Barolo was always
considered to be the king of Italian reds, and should continue to be
received as such!
Giorgio, the farmer
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Interview:
speaking with Jean Pierre Giraud from French barrel maker
Taransaud
In 1672, an ancestor of the Taransaud
cooper family began to make his first barrels. Originally
based in Cognac, and dedicated to producing barrels for the
local brandy distilleries, the company today supplies wine
barrels to the finest châteaux in Bordeaux and the great
domains of Burgundy, and their excellent products are sought
after by top wineries all over the world.
Jean-Pierre Giraud is the Managing Director of Taransaud, in
our opinion one of the most if not the most prestigious
maker of French barrels. Jean-Pierre’s work brings him to
all the wine regions in the world. Imagining him to be very
busy businessman, we appreciate that he is taking the time
to answer questions for our OLC newsletter.
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Jean-Pierre, not wanting to bore you, but could you just in a couple
of words explain the steps of making a barrel?
I have a great passion for wine. So
I love to compare wine and barrels because they are very similar. To
make wine, there is a recipe, a process, which you can learn at the
university. But to make GREAT wines, there is no recipe – just
attention to detail and years and years and sometimes many
generations of experience. To make great barrels, it is exactly the
same.
You need
great wood - selected by the best purchasers, exclusively in France;
the best splitters to optimize the wood and make the best stave wood
as possible; the best seasoning: 100 % in open air; the best cooper
team, selecting the tightest grain; full control of the bending for
the strength of the barrels, and the best possible toasting to
optimize the exchange between wood and wine.
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To realize these objectives, we
first prepare the wood, then build
the barrels – bend the barrels over
an open wood fire, toast the barrels
over a different open wood fire,
check the inside to be sure there
are no blisters, make the chime and
bung hole with a crozing machine.
Then we put the two heads in place
and finally put on the galvanized
hoops. We control the watertightness
with fully analysed water, and
lastly we clean the barrels with
sand paper just before making a
final quality control and shipping
them to wineries. |
How long have you been with Taransaud? What exactly is your role in
the company? What do you love and dislike the most about your job?
I started 35 years ago. At that
time we were only 24 at Taransaud – including 4 in the office, Jean
and Gisèle Taransaud, a secretary and myself. At the time, Taransaud
was only making barrels for the Cognac industry. In 1977-78, there
was a big crisis in Cognac, and we decided in 1978 to diversify our
sales and make barrels for wines. I was in charge of the sales
department and I started selling barrels in California, then in
Bordeaux in 1982 – thank you Mr Parker! I developed the sales in
many countries (over 24 today) including, of course, Italy. starting
in 1992 with Piedmont - one of my best memories!
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Today, I am
the commercial director of Chene &
Cie, which is an umbrella company
grouping Taransaud – 100 % French
oak barrels, Canton - 100 % US oak
barrels, and Kadar – 100 % Hungarian
oak barrels. I am still travelling a
lot
to
help, supervise and motivate the
sales force, and more importantly
for me, to continue visiting
wineries in order to better
understand the wine and alcohol
industries and their evolution.I
do not like meetings and
administrative tasks. I love to
taste wine and exchange ideas with
winemakers in order to better
understand them and to be able to
provide them with the appropriate
barrels for their wine. A quick
story: one day in 1987, a winemaker
of St Emilion – classified growth -
asked me to come and taste his wine
with the prospect of him buying 100
barrels. |
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After the
tasting I recommended to him…not buy any barrels, because it would
have been too much for his wine. I lost the barrels of course but I
won his confidence, which was much more important for me!
Is it true that it is getting more and more difficult to source
high-quality French oak? Has the world demand on French oak barrique
increased over the past 10 years? If so, how do you see the sourcing
problem and demand development for the future?
Yes, it is
true that the available quantity of top-class French oak is limited
in France and as the demand remains high, the prices of the best
wood are always increasing.
By coincidence we had your Sales Representative for the US West
Coast visit us two weeks ago. Moke told me, when strolling through
our barrique cellar, that more and more US wineries have changed
from American to French oak. Why, in your opinion, is the refining
of wine in French oak so much superior than the aging in American or
Eastern European oak?
No, there is no bad wood or second
quality wood. What is important is
to use the right wood for the right
purpose. The price segment, aging
time and final blend are important
criteria together with, perhaps most
importantly, the type of the wine
you want to make.
For example, we prove with
Canton, our American oak barrel
producer, that when the wood is
perfectly seasoned and used with the
right variety of wine, it gives
fantastic results! And Canton is
still establishing itself. One of
the best examples is Ridge
Montebello - a great wine - which is
predominantly made in with American
oak barrels. |
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From experience we know that you are a fantastic taster. Do you
believe you have learned to taste or do you think that some of it is
a talent that you have been given ?
I have met, and now know very well Olivier
Poussier who won Best sommelier of the world 2000, Michel Bethane -
one of the best wine writers, and Robert Parker, and
I feel very very humble and small
compared to these great and fantastic
tasters – they are fantastic tasters! – I am not. My luck has been
to have had the possibility to travel all around the world for over
25 years and meet the winemakers of greatest wineries and taste the
greatest wines with them – it was a unique and fantastic experience…
and yes, I believe that you learn by tasting.
When did you start getting familiar with Nebbiolo and Barbera? Do
you think these two red Piedmont varieties are very different from
the French red varieties, which we assume you were familiar with
first?
I discovered Nebbiolo and Barbera in 1992, and
I have to say thank you very much to Giorgio who welcomed me one
evening in a restaurant in Barolo where I discovered the fantastic
wines of Piedmont … in magnum! Yes, I do think that the varieties of
Piedmont are different from the French, and thank God for that! My
wish today is to see winemakers in Piedmont, like Giorgio,
continuing and working hard to give an
identity to their wines and particularly to their terroir and
region. Today, in a globalized world, if we want to survive we must
be unique. The barrels must enhance the character of the terroir -
that is the way we work…and certainly not overhelm it with a taste
of wood!
Giorgio likes to have representatives from barrel producers taste
the same wine from different barrique, made by different French
coopers, blind. Do you think that this is a good exercise to better
understand the right combination of wine, type of wood, toasting,
etc? Do you mind being confronted with your competitors in such a
way?
I love it. I have done that many times, for
the first time 25 years ago with Robert Mondavi himself - it was
great. I really think it is very
important, for two reasons: one, because the barrel is an expensive
product, and the most expensive is a bad barrel. Why? Because it can
ruin and destroy all the work done before by the winemaker, and
there is no return – I mean you cannot start again the wine aging –
what is done is done! Secondly, because it shows the coopers that
the barrels are evaluated, compared, tested and tasted, and are an
important product for the owner.
Taransaud has a very long tradition and generally, when people
think about barrel-making, they think about one of the most
traditional handcrafts. Where today in Taransaud and your profession
do we find modern technology and developments? And in the fast-paced
world of wine trends…what are the values you are sticking to?
Yes, more
and more the work of the cooper is less and less tough, with the
help of machines, and this is a positive development. At Taransaud
for example we introduced some robots a few years ago. Most of the
time, a robot replaces the work of the man - at Taransaud, it is
optimizing the work of the workers. Why? Because instead of
transferring barrels from spot to spot for different operations this
is now done by the robot and it optimizes the work of the cooper who
spends less time walking around! Other machines used to croze [cut
grooves], sandpaper and so on relieve the cooper from difficult and
physically hard work and give him more time to spend on quality
control.
Many times we receive e-mails from people that would like to buy
used barrique. Their aim is not to make wine, but for example to cut
the barrel in half and use them to plant flowers and vegetables.
Sometimes used barrique end up as bar furniture. We even have a
small company in Italy that makes all kinds of furniture from used
barrique staves. What is the most bizarre use of barrique that you
have come across?
One day I was visiting Sacred Hill, which is a
very good winery in New Zealand, and in front of the office there
was a beautiful CAR made from
an old 225 L barrel! I am sure it is
still there!
Do you ever drink red wines that have not
aged in wood?
Yes of
course. But most of the time, when the wood is perfectly integrated,
superb and a part of the complexity of the wine, when it enhances
the unique characters of the wine, it is a better wine than one with
no wood-aging. Be careful, I am talking about wood in general – new
and second-hand barrels and casks, round or oval, upright tanks –
they all are fantastic tools for talented winemakers. For the me the
best compliment to the barrels is…when we don’t talk about them!
And the last question, that we always have to ask: what wine
will you take with you, if you have to stay a year on an isolated
island?
Very tough
question because I tasted and love all the best wines, wherever they
come from. I particularly like great Bordeaux and Burgundies, and
great Italian wines. I would take several cases of wines – one year
is very long - the choice is very difficult !!!!
- one or 2
cases of Petrus 1989
- one or 2
cases of Haut Brion 1989 – my two favorite wines!
- one or 2
cases of La Romanée-Conti 2005
and many cases of wines from Italy –
sincerely! - especially from
Piedmont, and La Spinetta of course. I
am a fan of PIN (a wine with a real identity). I love the style, and
I know the story and…the owner! In the wine industry, when you know
the story of the wine, and you can put a face on the name of the
owner and winemaker - the taste of the wine is very different!
CHEERS !
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One Liter Club events in 2011…
Two “Hands On Days” instead of one
While the 2011 events are still in a rough planning stage, we would already
like to announce that we have decided to hold two "Hands On Days" in
Piedmont in 2011. One will be held on
Saturday, May 7th, 2011,
when we trim the vines and thin out leaves, and one at the beginning of
July, when we reduce grape yields by "green harvesting". Of course both
events will again be accompanied by great food and wine and lots of
"hands-on" experience.
For each event we would like to invite 20 to 25 One Liter Club members.
Places are given away on a first come first serve basis. Just like last year
a 250,00 Euro deposit is needed to secure a reservation. The deposit will be
returned to each participants on the day of the event. We will again arrange
for special rates at one of our local top hotels and of course just like
last year all wine and food will be on us.
We promise two very exciting, fun and educating “Hands On Days” with Giorgio
Rivetti and the entire La Spinetta Team.
To sign up for the May event or to receive further information, please send
an e-mail to
anke@la-spinetta.com.
We look forward to having you and teaching more “behind the wine” knowledge.
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The orto “Italian vegetable garden”
Taking a regional train through town and country gives you
a sort of backstage glimpse of life, not of the representative front doors
and welcoming patios but the back of the houses, with the laundry drying on
the line and the children’s toys scattered on the lawn. Residents along the
train lines naturally turn their back to their noisy neighbor and, if they
can, add an extra buffer between them and the tracks with their gardens. In
Italy, rather than a manicured lawn it is more likely to see an
orto or kitchen garden behind the house, with tomatoes and beans
ranking up cross-legged bamboo stalks, round cabbages growing next to whispy
heads of fennel, and a table and a few chairs set in the shade of a fruit
tree, or under a bower ranked over by vines.
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The orto
is an important part in
the Italian culture. Every family lucky enough to have a patch of earth to
themselves will use it to plant their own vegetables and herbs. City
dwellers often resort to allotments scattered around the urban outskirts, or
at the very least, try to grow their own fresh herbs in pots on the
balconies and window sills.
The food trends of the 1970s and 1980s, when modern convenience food
including canned and frozen vegetables became popular and trendy, also took
hold in Italy. But as in many other countries, the recent decade has seen a
return to fresh, unprocessed flavors – and there is nothing fresher than
herbs and vegetables picked outside your kitchen door.
The Italian cuisine abounds with the use of fresh herbs –
basil, sage, parsley, rosemary and even thyme and oregano are preferably
used fresh rather than dried. |
Vegetables play also an important role in
Italian cooking, fresh or cooked, baked, fried, stuffed, braised or boiled,
and not least in the now ubiquitous tomato sauce. It is very common still
that families preserve their own tomatoes and tomato sauce, as long with a
great variety of other vegetables
sott’olio or sott’aceto –
pickled in olive oil or vinegar. In the Winter, these will be used for
antipasti or as an ingredient for
other dishes, from pasta to meat sauces.
All around town, little shops and also the larger supermarkets follow the
horticultural calendar: with the first warmer days of Spring, houseware and
garden shops put racks of seed envelopes outside, a little later also trays
with tender young seedlings ready for planting. As the summer draws to a
close, the supermarkets offer pickling jars, pickling tongs, funnels and
vacuum seals at their changing display section, between the fresh produce
and the dairy fridge. Many food magazines and the weekend sections of the
newspapers offer tips for how to preserve the homegrown bounty.
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Tomatoes are certainly one of the most common crops of the
orto, as well as lettuce. Other
favorites – according to season, region, and available space – range from
peas and beans, carrots and cauliflower to pumpkins and potatoes. For many
Italians, the link to growing most of their own food is only perhaps a
generation away – the great waves of urbanization and internal migration
from the poorer South to the industrialized North happened in the 1950s and
1960s, and usually, part of the extended family stayed behind in the
countryside, supplying the migrants with their home foods and keeping alive
a desire for the flavors of the home garden.
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Tending a garden is rewarding, and educational in the best sense: That is
why there are also popular school garden programs in Italy, as a way of
teaching children about seasonality and the dynamics of Nature, as well as
responsibility and prudence – and all efforts are rewarded with flavorful
produce.
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A homegrown vegetable may look smaller, more unshapely and
less shiny than its colleagues in the grocery store, but it will most
certainly taste better. Why? Because a homegrown vegetable can be left to
ripen to full maturity, getting the most out of sun and soil, and developing
its flavor to the maximum. Many vegetables in the grocery stores on the
other hand have to travel several, if not hundreds or
thousands
of kilometers from the
field to their point-of-sale. It follows logically that they will have been
picked before their peak of ripeness, so that they do not spoil before they
arrive. Besides, slightly underripe produce is less fragile and travels
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Home gardeners are also less likely to use great amounts of chemicals on
their plants. And not to forget the sweet taste of eating, literally, the
fruits of your own efforts!
We at La Spinetta love our ortos and among the Rivetti siblings we hold
competitions of who has the best orto with the bigger melons, cauliflowers,
egg plants and the better tasting tomatoes or broccoli.
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From food to literature:
Peasants and partisans: literary portraits of the Langhe…
A
contemporary traveller through the Langhe will certainly enjoy the
picturesque surroundings. The roads wind through pretty hills,
striped with vineyards and dotted with wineries. Little towns nestle
on the hilltops, their brick church steeples visible from afar. The
terraces of La Morra, Serralunga d’Alba and Dogliani offer stunning
views over the undulating landscape, serpentine roads and
vine-covered slopes, and on clear days, to the majestic snow-topped
Alps encircling the panorama on three sides. In the Fall, the fog
wraps its soft fingers around the neat rows of vines, giving its
name to their most famous fruit, the nebbiolo. It’s a pleasant
afternoon’s drive through the wine towns of the area, stopping off
for tastings at one’s favourite wineries, and maybe a lunch of fresh
pasta and truffles, when the season is right.
The wine and culinary treasures, and not least the diligent
work and dedication of the people of the Langhe, have brought
material wealth to the region, mainly through wine business and
tourism. It is easy, for today’s motorized visitor, to overlook what
this geography and climate meant before the economic boom of the
1960s, which brought widespread access to cars and modern technology.
Wine, so the saying goes, has to ‘work’ – it often does better in
difficult climates, on poor soils and steep slopes, as it develops
character and doesn’t ripen too quickly, giving in to the easy
temptations of sugar and alcohol. Yet poor soils, steep hillsides,
and frequent fog, rain and snow made for harsh living as little as
two generations ago. The story of the Langhe in the old days has
been described by two important Italian writers, both native sons of
the region: Cesare Pavese (1908-1950) of Santo Stefano Belbo, and
Beppe Fenoglio (1922-1963) of Alba.
Pavese and Fenoglio are considered part of the Italian Realist
literary and artistic movement, which is internationally most widely
known through the neorealist cinema – films such as Roberto
Rossellini’s Rome, Open City (1945), Vittorio de Sica’s Bicycle
Thieves (1948) and Giuseppe Santi’s Bitter Rice (1949). Among the
best-known Realist writers of Italy are Carlo Levi (Christ stopped
at Eboli, 1945) and Giovanni Verga of Sicily, whose book I
Malavoglia (1881) was made into the film La Terra Trema (The Earth
Trembles, 1948) by Luchino Visconti.
The defining characteristic of Realism in both literature and cinema
is a preoccupation with the everyday and banal, an attempt to show
life and society as they are, without romanticizing or stylizing
them. Realist writers and artists were particularly interested in
the life of those people for whom living meant a continual struggle
– against destiny and the hardships of life, but also against social
circumstances. Thus, the Italian Realists portrayed the peasants of
Southern Italy, the working poor of Rome and Florence, and the
sharecroppers of Piemonte. To make their depictions even more
life-like, their characters often spoke in the local dialect.
A strong influence on Italian Realism was certainly the
contemporary American literature. William Faulkner, John Steinbeck
and John Dos Passos wrote about the lives of ordinary, hard-working
people, sketching such famous heart-rending portraits as Steinbeck’s
The Grapes of Wrath (1939). Both Pavese and Fenoglio studied English
literature at the University of Turin and worked as literary
translators, and so were intimately familiar with these authors.
The two writers found ample material for this theme of a simple,
harsh existence in their native land. Daily struggle was not a
strange concept to the peasants of the Langhe in the first decades
of the twentieth century. Rather than growing wine, the land was
divided among many sharecroppers trying to grow their own food and
to eke a living out of the difficult soil. At that time, without
motorized transport, the villages that now overlook the best
vineyard sites in the heart of the Langhe were quite isolated, a
long walk away from Alba over the hills and through the woods, even
more difficult in the fog and snow of the bitter winters here at the
foot of the mountains. Cesare Pavese tells about these everyday
hardships in his first two books Lavora stanca (Hard Labor, 1936)
and Paesi tuoi (Your Villages, 1941).
Compounded by their geographic isolation, social life in the
Langhe villages was strictly governed by the old customs and
traditions of inheritance, marriage and servitude. Younger sons who
could not inherit a share of their father’s land, as there was not
enough to support several families, had to work as farm-hands on
other farms, unless they were smart enough to enter the seminary at
Alba to become priests. Daughters that were not lucky enough to be
married with a good dowry spent their lives as servants. Fenoglio
paints a vivid portrait of this life in his first two books: I
ventitrè giorni della città di Alba (The twenty-three days of the
city of Alba, 1952) and La Malora (Ruin, 1954).
The turning point for the social and economic situation came
with the upheavals of the Second World War. In his book La luna e il
falò (The Moon and the Bonfire, 1950), Pavese captures the zeitgeist
through the story of an emigrant returning from America to his
native village in the Langhe, where he grew up as an orphan with a
poor farmer.
The war added another chapter to the history of the Langhe: due to
their isolation and difficult terrain, the hills became an ideal
hiding spot for the anti-fascist partisans. Beppe Fenoglio, who
himself spent some years as a partisan, took this experience as the
starting point for several of his books, among them his most famous:
Il partigiano Johnny (Johnny the Partisan, 1968). Incidentally, the
book was received with mixed responses by his contemporaries, as
Fenoglio refuses to simply glorify the partisans. Instead, true to
his Realist forebears, he shows also these local heroes in their
banal existence and everyday humanity.
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Cooking Piemontese with Giovanna Rivetti
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Bunet-
Piemontese Chocolate Pudding
Giovanna Rivetti was born in 1947.
She is our "vineyard manager" and our "in-house chef". She
learned the work in the vineyard from her father and the
work in the kitchen from her mother. Both parents taught
Giovanna skills which until today are great assets to La
Spinetta.
In each newsletter Giovanna will share
one of her secret recipes with us. Today she is teaching us
how to make a typical, yet very simple Piemontese chocolate
dessert, called Bunet.
A delicious treat that makes any chocolate mouse or cake
look like diet food.
You will need:
2x50g of sugar, 100g of Amaretti cookies, 3 eggs, 30g of
dark cocoa powder, 10ml of good rum, 400ml whole milk, 100ml
cream. Baking dishes rectangular or round (be careful not to
use a springform, because the pudding is cooked in a water
bath), larger roasting pan.
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First you need to caramelize 50g of sugar in a Teflon pan. While the
sugar is liquid, fill the sugar into the baking dish so that it
generously covers the bottom of the dish.
Then crush the Amaretti cookies into little
crumbles. Beat the eggs with the other 50g of sugar. Add the cocoa
powder, the Amaretti crumbles and the rum. After thorough mixing add
milk and cream and stir once more.
Fill the mass into the baking dish with the caramel and heat the
oven to 160 degrees Celsius (320 Fahrenheit).
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Cook the pudding dish in a hot water bath until the pudding turns solid. A
good way to prepare a water bath is to put your baking dish with the pudding
into a bigger roasting pan, place the pan into the oven, and add enough hot
water to reach halfway up the dish. Do not overheat the oven, the pudding
should at no time rise and make bubbles. After removing from the oven, let
the Bunet cool off and afterwards refrigerate for a minimum of 6 hours
before turning the dish over on a large plate and serving.
A Bunet goes very well with a chilled glass of Moscato.
Buon appetito!
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Anything new at La Spinetta
Two new releases: Piedmont Barolo Garretti 2006 and Tuscany Chianti
Riserva 2007…
We expanded further our line of wines in Tuscany and Piedmont. With
the 2007 vintage La Spinetta releases its first Chianti Riserva.
With 100% estate-grown Sangiovese fruit from Casanova, this
delicious and exciting full-bodied red will make people redefine
their idea about Chianti. This is a definite must-try for any
Brunello and Sangiovese lover. Quality and price speak for
themselves as this wine retails around 18,00 Euro and 20,00 – 22,00
$.
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The second new release is Barolo Garretti, a Barolo that
equals in quality and price our Barberasco Bordini. Whereas
for Bordini we actually bought a new vineyard, for Garretti
we simply divided our Barolo Campe production.
Garretti is made of “younger vine” Nebbiolo (average age 30
years). These grapes used to go into Campe, now they go into
Garretti, which gives us the possibility to offer a middle
market priced Barolo and at the same time increase the
quality of Campe. Garretti is the younger brother of Campe,
that overwhelms with structure, length and pure fruit class.
Don’t miss to try.
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Your opinion on…
A traditional wine cellar is something of the past?
A lot of people are getting used to buying wine to drink immediately,
especially since the New World Wines have become so popular and widely
available. Is the traditional wine cellar
becoming a thing of the past?
If you like to
share your thoughts and opinion with us and would like to have them
published in our next newsletter, please write to
myopinion@la-spinetta.com
Your comments to our
question in the last Newsletter:
Many people say, that Burgundy and Piedmont have as much in common as
Bordeaux and Tuscany and they are referring to single vineyard, single grape
wines for the first two and blends for the second.
What is your opinion, which region makes the greater wines? The one that
stays with the single vineyard, single variety? Or the one that aims for a
perfect blend?
Am I the only one who wonders how much of a blended wine is manipulation
versus nature? Making wine from a single vineyard involves substantial
trust in nature. In Piedmont, without the hierarchies of Burgundy – which
are already complicated - the consumer must rely even more on knowledge of
the area and the vintage as well, of course, as the wine maker. But what a
thrill it is to learn such things through trial and error, experience and
education. A blended wine has more to fall back on – Too hot? Less Merlot.
Too Cold? More Cabernet Sauvignon. Unsure? Some Cabernet Franc to enhance
the perfume. When you compare a Barolo from Cannubi against one from Campe
you are comparing soils, elevation, localised weather as well as the wine
maker; when you compare Lafite versus Latour you are, perhaps, comparing
those same things but in reverse order. There is, of course, pleasure in
all wine, whether single vineyard or blend, but something in me relates more
to the idea of being transported to a place – the very place the wine has
come from – when I drink a single vineyard wine, especially if I have been
there, if I have walked the hills, surveyed the scenery and sampled the
grapes. What greater pleasure could there be?
Alan Mather, UK
I’m in favor of single vineyard, single grape wines. My love and enthusiasm
for Italian wines originally triggered by the vast variety of indigenous
grape varieties and the unique areas in which they were grown. This gives us
an endless voyage to discover the characters of the grape and the soil that
vary by the vintage and the climate conditions. The perfect blend idea, in
my opinion, gets its driving force from creating a consistent and same level
quality each year and is thus less intriguing to me. There are sides to back
up both arguments but to me perfect wine has a life and a personality, and
this personality becomes more evident in one variety vines.
And, if you’d ask for an opinion on Burgundy versus Piedmont – naturally
Piedmont!
Rikkka Sukula, Finland
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