Above: Chardonnay grapes ready to be picked, from one of Cantele’s top growing sites in Salento, Puglia (Apulia). Southern Italy is generally the first to pick. But extended spring rain and cold temperature has delayed harvest throughout Italy this year.

For observers of the wine trade, this is one of the most exciting times of the year: the enoblogosphere and social media will overflow with images of ripe grapes and updates on the quality of the fruit and the harvest.

For grape growers and winemakers, this is a time for high anxiety: one rain or hail storm could ruin an entire year’s work.

And as my friend and client Gianni Cantele wrote on the CanteleUSA blog today, the little “elves” in the crushers and presses also can be a source of major problems.

There are a number of Italian winemakers who are posting about the 2013 harvest with nearly real-time updates.

Marilena Barbera at Cantine Barbera has vowed to post regularly on the harvest’s progression.

Alessandro Bindocci at the Tenuta Il Poggione in Montalcino has also been posting regular updates.

And I will be posting harvest updates for my clients Cantele, Barone Pizzini-Pievalta, and Bele Casel.

Yesterday, Barone Pizzini vineyard manager Pierluigi Donna noted that “Nature is making up for time lost during the cold and rain in the spring. We’ll be able to begin picking just after August 15. In other vintages, the grapes were already in the cellar by then.”

I’ve seen similar reports from other central and northern Italian wineries and I’ll be following along eagerly as more information comes in.

Do you know of a winery or grape grower who is documenting harvest 2013 through social media? If so, please let me know and I’ll include it in my roundups of harvest notes. Thanks!

Buona vendemmia! Happy harvest!

On Saturday night, Tracie P and I had the great fortune to taste some older vintages of Ar.Pe.Pe., including this 1999 Sassella Rocce Rosse, thanks to a generous distributor rep who dropped off the wines for us after a trade tasting.

Ar.Pe.Pe. has generated a lot of buzz in the U.S. over the last year and a half after making a landing and a big splash in New York, where it’s been a favorite among buyers and bloggers.

But Ar.Pe.Pe. has been around for a long time. It’s one of the oldest continuously operating wineries in the Valtellina.

When the “real wine” pioneer Mario Soldati wrote about the estate in the early 1970s, he notes that Pellizzati family had been bottling there since 1860 and that Arturo Pellizzati (son of the winemaker at the time, Guido) represented the fourth generation of family’s winemaking legacy.

The current winery is named after Arturo and an amalgam of his children’s surnames: Ar[turo] Pe[llizzati] Pe[rego].

Arturo also appears in Sheldon Wasserman’s landmark Italy’s Noble Red Wines (1985), receiving good, if not outstanding, marks from the author (who openly states his preference for Langa and Novarese expressions of Nebbiolo).

Today, the wines are still made in large chestnut casks, the same way Arturo made them.

Where the great wines of Langa tend toward earthiness, the best Valtellina — in my experience — are defined by nuanced spice.

It was such a thrill to get to taste older vintages of some of Ar.Pe.Pe.’s top wines.

And while we also loved the 2001 Grumello Buon Consiglio, it was the 1999 Sassella Rocce Rosse that contained the “unbearable lightness” that I look for in the greatest wines of the world.

Delicate in its aroma and nuanced in its flavor, the fourteen-year-old wine had that ineffable balance of power and elegance, with notes of faded cinnamon that played against wild berry.

Its fruit was bright and its acidity very much alive: this wine, I imagine, has many more wonderful years ahead of it in its evolution.

What a wine!

The wines aren’t here in Texas yet but they’re on the way (and will likely be here by the fall).

It’s another example of how trade forces and a new national awareness among Texas wine professionals are opening up our market.

I can’t go into details of how the wines will get here (because it’s not my place to reveal such information) but I can say that young Italian winemakers continue to search for alternatives to the monolithic channels of the past.

The Texas wine culture is only going to be better for it and I can’t wait to get my hands on some more of this superb “mountain Nebbiolo.”