Wine Tasting in Piemonte
Sorry about the delay in posting this column, but I just got back from a week spent in the Langhe, the region of Piemonte that produces Barolo, Barbaresco, Barbera, Dolcetto, and a host of other interesting but almost unknown wines such as Freisa. I went with a couple of friends, one an importer and the other the sommelier of a restaurant in Delaware.
When I say I work with wines, people usually say something along the lines of, "Aren't you lucky." So, I thought you might want to know what a wine tasting trip is like.
The average day begins at 8:00, running down the list of producers to visit that day, usually four, and sometimes more. Each appointment begins with a tour of the cellars, which is extremely important, for a number of reasons. First, you can tell a lot about a winery from how clean the cellars are - if they're spotless, tubing neatly coiled, tanks shiny, chances are that equal care is given to making the wine. If, on the other hand, the fermentation tanks are still encrusted with grape skins long after the wine has been transferred into wood, the possibility that an entire lot of wine will be ruined by a dirty tube or some such is very real.
The visit to the cellar also gives you a chance to learn about the wine-maker's philosophy. Does he ferment his reds in steel? If so, vertical tanks, or the newer horizontal macerators, which allow very brief fermentations at high temperatures, which in turn require the use of new wood to stabilize the wine's color? Does he instead use glass-lined cement tanks? (They're rare, nowadays.) Or does he ferment in wood? (Very rare for reds, because it's expensive and requires great care, but gives superb results if done right. Common enough, on the other hand, for whites.) After the fermentation, what happens to the red wine? Does it go into botti, the huge traditional casks made from Slavonian oak, which allow oxygen to filter into the wine, helping it to mature, without loading it down with wood tannins? Or does it go into tonneaux, 500-700 liter barrels that surrender some tannins to the wine? Or does it go into barriques, the 225 liter barrels that have a powerful influence on bouquet and flavor of the wine? Does the winemaker use a mixture of barrel sizes? And, for how many seasons does he use the barrels? Does he use them for one wine one year, and another the next, and if so, why? Once the wine is finished aging in wood, then what happens to it? How much bottle fining? All these things influence the taste of the wine.
Once you've seen the cellars, it's a good idea to at least look at the vineyards, even if you don't actually wander about them. Which direction do they face? What's the production? (A vineyard with poor exposure but low yields can still produce excellent wines.) How many vines per hectare? (More is better, within reason, because it means that each vine devotes all its energy to a small number of grapes). What sort of pest-control? (Some producers are implementing innovative, effective, and ecologically sound programs.)
Once you're done looking, you go to the tasting room (sometimes an office, sometimes back into the cellars), and try all the wines, studying color, sniffing the bouquet, and tasting the wine, taking notes all the while. First, you jot something down about the general conditions. Smell of the room? One winery's tasting room smelled, not to mince words, like chicken shit. Temperature of the room? Temperature of the wines? Sometimes producers forget to bring bottles in from the cellar before hand, and you find yourself tasting something so cold it numbs your tongue - make small talk while you warm the glass in the palm of your hand. Once the wine is at the right temperature (or thereabouts), how is it? And how does it evolve during the tasting? Since some wineries make as many as ten wines, and being drunk before lunch is not good form, you usually spit the wine out, unless it is very good. Once you're done, you move onto the next winery.
On most days we visited four, and also had lunch or dinner (or both) with producers. Fun, but I gained 5 pounds!
Good Food &
Drink,
Kyle Phillips
