Snippets from the Italian Scene
Wine Journalism, Pro &
Con
Returning to the topic of this newsletter, I have been thinking about the influence of the Italian wine press on vintners of late. Why? I purchased this year's Gambero Rosso guide and began leafing through it, seeing who they give awards to, and which wines produced by the various wineries garner the highest acclaim. In many ways the results were disappointing.
Anyone who reads Italian wine literature will come across discussions of the fabled vintages, which include 1947, 1958, and 1971. Nobody mentions the vintages in between, and with good reason: Yields were high, fermentation was empiric, cellaring techniques were primitive -- when the Gods failed to smile, most of the wine wasn't that good, and to make matters worse the rules governing production kept vintners from making many improvements (I examine how this situation developed in Chianti). Things changed dramatically in the 1970s, when Antinori broke with the Chianti Classico Consorzio and began producing Supertuscan table wines that caught the world's attention; soon Chianti producers were putting most of their energy into table wines, which were superb. There was obviously something wrong with this picture, and at long last the rules governing the production of Chianti have been changed to allow most of these great table wines back into the fold. In the meantime the table wine bug has spread, and now producers throughout the Peninsula are making interesting, frequently excellent blends that fail to qualify for the local DOC/DOCG (Barolo, Valpolicella, Verdicchio, etc).
These high-end table wines have had a tremendous, and very positive impact on Italian enology: they have allowed vintners to experiment and learn; and as a whole Italian wines (including DOC wines) are much better than they were 20 years ago. However, table wines also represent a break with tradition, and a loss of that special something that makes a wine the unique expression of local conditions -- a Cabernet-Merlot blend made in Tuscany will be extremely good, but will likely resemble Californian, French or Australian Cabernet-Merlot blends as much if not more than it resembles traditional Tuscan wines made with Sangiovese, the great Tuscan grape. Likewise, a barrel fermented Chardonnay from San Gimignano will probably have more in common with one from Australia than it will with a pure Vernaccia fermented in steel.
What, you wonder, does this have to do with Gambero Rosso's wine ratings? Gambero consistently gives its highest ratings to the most innovative wines, the ones that break most with tradition. For example, Castello di Brolio makes an excellent Chianti Classico Riserva, with pure Sangiovese aged in botti, the large oak casks of Tuscan tradition. They also take the same wine and put it in barriques; it emerges heavily laced with vanilla and spice, and is labeled Casalferro (a table wine). According to Gambero Rosso, Casalferro is the "best pure Sangiovese made in Tuscany in 1995."
This is it the best Sangiovese? The wood overshadows the more delicate nuances typical of the Sangiovese bouquet, and the slight burr one expects of Sangiovese tannins has been completely rounded over, again by the wood. It is extremely good, I agree, but it could just as well be a fine California Sangiovese for all the ties it has to the land. Looking elsewhere in Chianti, Fonterutoli, which makes superb Chianti Classico, gets higher scores for its Cabernet-Sangiovese (Concerto) and Sangiovese-Merlot (Le Siepi) blends than it does for its Chianti Classico. And La Massa's Giorgio Primo, which contains a healthy dose of Cabernet (to judge from the nose; this is, by the way, permitted) consistently outscores excellent wines made from just Sangiovese, for example Riecine's.
The same pattern holds true in Piemonte and other areas, and the message to the winemakers is unfortunately very clear: Be innovative, break with tradition, and produce things similar to French/Californian/Australian wines. Equally unfortunately, many vintners are listening, because good ratings mean good sales; Massimo Martinelli, president of the Barolo & Barbaresco Consorzio, says some producers go so far as to tailor their wines to suit the taste of the journalistic luminary of the moment.
Obviously, this means that when the luminary changes so do the wines, which makes it difficult for consumers to know what they are getting and thus creates image problems in the long run. Also, many traditional wines and traditional wine-making styles are at risk of vanishing. This would be just sad if Italy were a closed system. It is not, however, and this makes the situation dangerous: Given Italian labor costs, high end wines such as Casalferro are expensive to produce, and therefore expensive to buy. If someone in Chile makes an excellent Sangiovese and barriques it, he could end up with a very similar wine at a fraction of the cost. Brolio is fortunate to have other wines that nobody can produce outside of Tuscany, beginning with their Chianti Classico. But many of the vintners who are hurrying in the direction Gambero is pointing do *not* have this sort of safety net to fall back on, and could suddenly find themselves in hot water.
The only way Italian vintners can hope to compete, survive, and shine in the increasingly global wine market is to take advantage of the treasures they have -- the Italian grapes (Aglianico, Sangiovese, Nebbiolo, etc) and the terroirs that these grapes have adapted to over the centuries to produce superb uniquely Italian wines that nobody will be able to imitate elsewhere. This is not the direction Gambero and other Italian wine journals point, but it is very significant that Antinori, which launched the table wine revolution in the 1970s, is now headed this way.
A note: When I sent this as a newsletter, a friend who produces wines in France replied that he recently ran into a friend of his, who was in Bordeaux, revising a book on the wines for the second edition. It turns out that many of the wineries are now tailoring some if not all of their wines to appeal to Robert Parker. A sorry state of affairs indeed.
A presto,
Kyle Phillips
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