From the “I wish I would have thought of that” department…

My life in Italian wine began twenty years ago when I first visited Bagno Vignoni near Montalcino and began tasting some illustrious and not-so-illustrious bottlings of Sangiovese thanks to my friend Riccardo Marcucci.

While the single-vineyard system of Barolo and Barbaresco offer the Nebbiolophile a legend by which to navigate the terroir of those appellations, lovers of Brunello di Montalcino have little guidance in negotiating its various and highly diverse subzones.

My friend Alessandro Bindocci of Tenuta Il Poggione has unlocked some of the mystery behind one of the Brunello subzones, Sant’Angelo in Colle (the southernmost growing area in the appellation), in a series of posts entitled Understanding Brunello Terroir Using Google Earth. The most recent post is particularly fascinating: I’ve downloaded and installed Google Earth and it’s amazing to use it as a tool in understanding the unique macroclimate of Sant’Angelo, just as Alessandro suggests in his post. Damn, I wish I would have thought of that!

In other news…

However chauvinist and intrinsically bourgeois, the flier for yesterday’s Paris tasting of natural wines produced by Italian women winemakers is utterly irresistible. Did I hear someone say “movie rights”?

Click the image above to view in detail (hosted at Arianna Occhipinti’s blog).

Lastly…

While nearly everyone was relieved yesterday to see the EU drop plans to alter way rosé is made, Tuscan winemaker Gianpaolo Paglia offered some interesting insight in a comment over at VinoWire:

I’m a wine producer. I’ve never made nor I do intend to make rosé wine in the future. I’m saying this because I wouldn’t want to be accused of having a vested interest in what I’m going to say now: can someone explain to me why a rosé wine made with the saignée method (salasso, in Italian) would be by default better than a blended rosé? Isn’t Champagne the only wine in EU always been allowed to be made that way and has that consequently resulted in the production of poor quality, but premium priced, Champagne wines? Are all the rosé wines made outside EU, largely produced by blending white and red wines, worse than the worst EU wine made with the saignée method?

I confess my ignorance, but I don’t see the point in this “battle for quality agro-food heritage and wealth.” To be honest, and perhaps even a bit rude, all this nonsense looks to me [like] a lot of political rubbish.

Thanks for reading!