Quantity and Quality don't Mix
Dateline: 01/22/97
The Italian State Television network transmits a weekly program on wine making; this week, after visiting a barrel factory in Northern Italy, everyone gathered in the cellars of a producer of Vino Nobile di Montepulciano (a Tuscan red wine, similar to Chianti Classico) to discuss the industry. The host asked one of the producers how Italian and French wines differ. "We've been making wine for about as long as they have, but they turned their attention to quality a couple hundred years before we did," he replied. "But in Tuscany we're catching up fast."
This simple statement says a great deal about the history of Italian wines, and also the direction they're headed in. As the producer noted, the French began selecting their truly great wines more than a century ago. Not that the Italians were completely inactive; in the 1850s Baron Bettino Ricasoli won gold medals at the Paris expositions with his Chianti, thus proving that Italian wines could match their French cousins. However, the nobility preferred French wines (When Florence was Italy's capital, the wine list at Court was all French). Italian wines were mostly produced by farmers, who were not interested in making something refined: They were producing food, a liquid form of calories that was an indispensable component of their diets. Obviously, the more wine they produced, the better.
For quality, on the other hand, one wants to produce less wine
per hectare. The reason for this is simple: If the vines in the vineyard
produce just a few grapes, say 3-5 pounds per vine, they will concentrate
everything they have in those grapes, thus producing a high-quality must
that will probably yield an excellent wine.
How does one reduce the yield of a vine? Primarily through a
judicious pruning during the winter, when the vines are dormant. Ideally,
it is this pruning that determines how much a vine will produce. "You
can also strip out excess bunches of grapes at the beginning of the
summer," says Isole
e Olena's Paolo de Marchi.
"However, if you find yourself doing it every year, you're doing
something wrong." (I might note that he is speaking for Tuscany. A
Barolo producer told me that Nebbiolo vines put out two bunches of grapes
per shoot, and he strips out one (usually the one farthest from the
ground) in July so that the shoot will concentrate on fewer grapes).
To offset the diminished production of the individual vines, the vintner then plants more vines - generally 5 to 6000 per hectare (2.4 acres), though some experimental vineyards have more, up to 10,000. Thus, the individual vines concentrate everything they have into just a few grapes, and the large number of vines insures that vineyard will produce enough wine to make the whole process worthwhile. The strategy is anything but secret: "I recently bought an antique wine-making treatise," Fontodi's Giovanni Manetti told me. "Fascinating reading - it recommends reducing the yield of the individual vines and increasing their density in the vineyards, which is exactly what we're doing to increase the quality of our wines."
In terms of numbers, what does this mean? While the many of the disciplinari (the rules governing Italy's various DOC and DOCG wines) allow productions of 90 or even more quintals of grapes per hectare (1 quintal = 100 kilos), with a yield into wine of 70% (the grapes yield 70% of their weight in must), most of the better producers aim for considerably lower yields - 50 to 60 quintals per hectare, or even less, in some cases as little as 30 (for example, with merlot, which produces low yields to begin with). Why do the disciplinari allow higher yields? Because not all producers are interested in producing the highest quality wines. However, you can taste the difference. Quality and quantity don't mix in the vineyard.
Good Food & Drink,
Elisabetta
