Above: Dinner began with delicate marinated trout and raw shrimp. People are often surprised by how much fish and seafood you eat in Piedmont, which lies just an hour to an hour-and-a-half drive from the sea.

The last restaurant meal I had in Italy in 2012 was at the cozy Trattoria la Coccinella in the village of Serravalle Langhe, the “other” Langa, about a twenty-minute drive southeast from Monforte, beyond the gilded radius of Barolo and Barbaresco.

Above: First wine of the night was the Giuseppe Rinaldi 2010 Langhe Nebbiolo. Folks here don’t mind pairing red wine with seafood and the lightness and bright acidity of this wine was great with the raw shrimp.

The village is at the center of the Alta Langa (upper Langa) appellation where a handful of producers make classic method sparkling wine.

But it lies just far enough away from the epicenter of Nebbiololand to take the edge off the high stakes of Alba-world dining.

Above: The onion was salted and stuffed with a light chicken liver sautée before being roasted.

Giovanni (aka man, the English-language appellative we use with each other), Ferdinando (aka man), and I were there on a Saturday night and the place was packed with locals, including a boisterous high-school reunion for the over-sixty crowd and lots of groups of young people enjoying their weekend night out for dinner.

Above: I just had to have the tajarin… no frills, just classic trattoria cooking, Piedmont style.

I love visiting Langa. But sometimes the competitive dining scene there can be a bit oppressive.

It was so fun to just be…

Above: The 2008 Barolo by Bartolo Mascarello is going through a period of youthful grace and was very generous with its fruit. What a pleasure to drink that wine! I imagine it will “shut down” shortly. But it was singing that night.

La Coccinella was my second-to-last meal in Italy in 2012 (my last repast was in Milan at the home of good friends).

The food was great (the prices middle-class friendly) and I highly recommend the restaurant.

But the best part was just being somewhere where affectation is a foreign language.

On Friday of last week, a number of Italian media outlets published this op-ed by Angelo Gaja, including the national daily La Stampa and Numeri del Vino (an Italian wine industry observer blog that I follow regularly).

I always find his insights interesting, informative, and polemical. My translation of his “open letter” follows.

*****

After years of low grape production due to the reoccurrence of unfavorable climatic conditions, excess heat, and summer drought, there is a shortage of wine in Italy.

What could happen to Italian wine in 2013?

It’s possible that there will be no wine left by June and that wineries that sell at less than Euro 2 per liter (a price floor for more than eighty percent of Italian wineries) will no longer have any wine to offer.

Prudent, far-sighted bottlers might also contribute to the shortage because they’ll begin stocking up in order to avoid being left high and dry in the months that follow.

It’s a “we’ve never seen anything like it” scenario. There could be panic in the grape market when the 2013 harvest arrives because buyers will be fearful of rising prices.

Someone might become curious and start comparing grape production and wine production reports for the 2012 harvest. They might discover that between independent producers and the cooperative wineries some have reported a drop of up to thirty percent and some have reported no drop at all — the very same sky and in identical geographic areas.

It’s possible that in 2013 Italy could lose its record in hectoliters exported, with Spain taking the lead. It’s another “we’ve never seen anything like it” scenario. And there will surely be those who merely crunch the numbers and blame the Italian wine industry for drops in production and competitiveness. They don’t recognize that wine is a natural product and that the sky is the vineyard’s ceiling. If the weather causes growers to produce fewer grapes, then it’s impossible to sell more wine.

It’s possible that cooperative wineries in Italy (who control more than fifty percent of national grape production) and large winery groups will soften their refusal of the European Union liberalization of planting regulations. It’s also possible that they will agree on a shared strategy intended to introduce a mixed system by 2015: a continuation of planting rights for DOCs and DOCGs and liberalization of IGTs and table wines.

It’s possible that springtime budget analysis for large Italian wineries will reveal that 2012 profits were often penalized by the drop in gross revenue in the Italian market and that the recovery of foreign markets was the industry’s saving grace. This could give greater urgency to investment in those markets, even if that means sacrificing some of the resources earmarked for the growth of the domestic market.

Dire times for the Italian wine media, who survive thanks to advertising, just as in other countries. Tough times as well for the more than two hundred journalistic prizes instituted by wineries and public relations firms, a common phenomenon here in Italy and unheard of abroad. They will became hungry for recognition by Italian writers and more generous in their regard to the foreign media.

Brussels has contributed to this sprint toward foreign markets by financing promotional projects for wine in markets beyond Europe’s borders. Italian national pride has found new lifeblood in these initiatives as winemakers — small and large, in groups or on their own — have embraced an open-order quest to conquer Asia.

And in the meantime, we continue to learn how to explore the world that will come to be.

—Angelo Gaja
January 2013

Above: I took this photo of Angelo in June of last year in New York.

From the department of “still catching up on last year’s wines”…

Above: Pian Romualdo is a historic cru of Monforte where Barbera trumps Nebbiolo. It’s arguably the best expression of Barbera d’Alba (an appellation where Barbera always takes a backseat to Nebbiolo). Ferdinando’s vines are roughly sixty years old. This wine was incredible.

One of the most thrilling tastings of my 2012 was at the Principiano winery, grower and producer of old school Barolo and historic Barbera in Monforte d’Alba.

When Giovanni and I visited in November, we had the great fortune to taste through the entire line of wines, including some older vintages, with vignaiolo and winemaker Ferdinando Principiano.

Ferdinando’s about my age (mid 40s). His father, he told me, was primarily interested in selling their superb fruit to marquee name bottlers (Prunotto among the most famous). While he made wine, it was never his passion.

Above: This was another highlight for me. In my notes, I wrote “tannic but still so drinkable… rich fruit but there’s a lightness in body that makes it rise up.” Boscareto (or Bosco Areto) is often compared to Francia (as in Cascina Francia) because it lies adjacent to the more celebrated cru. The difference is that I can afford this one.

Ferdinando began making wine there in the 1990s. And after he spent some time flirting wine modern-style Nebbiolo (at the peak of the late 90s Langa boom), he settled into old-school, traditional-style wines by the early 2000s (thank goodness for that!).

Looking back at my notes this morning, I find that “brilliant” and “freshness” reappeared over and over again, a characteristic that Ferdinando attributes (in part) to extremely low sulfuring, which he only applies at bottling.

But beyond Ferdinando’s minimalist approach, it is the fruit, sourced exclusively from his family’s historic vineyards, that is the star here.

I was completely taken with the elegant earthiness and technicolor fruit of these wines.

Above: This was my number-one stand-out. Keep in mind, it’s not Ravera from the village of Novello but rather Ravera from Monforte. It was the most “gentle” of his Barolo, I wrote in my notes. Made from the oldest vineyard in the family’s holdings, “it’s what we used to drink at home” in his father’s day, said Ferdinando.

But the most amazing thing about these wines is how extremely affordable they are (including the Barbera Romualda).

I can’t think of a better expression of Barolo, in terms of price and typicity, whether for a middle-class collector like me or someone who is trying to learn about classic Nebbiolo for the first time.

I love, love, love these wines… a Barolo answer to my beloved Produttori del Barbaresco in terms of their classic expression and affordability.

The Trinchero family no longer prints its name on labels bound for the U.S.

La reproduction interdite…

When my friend and client Jeff showed me the new label for Trinchero Barbera d’Asti Superiore (2006 vintage) last night, I thought to myself, either he is playing a practical joke on me or this is a work of surrealist art.

As if plucked from a painting by Magritte or a fountain by Duchamp, a confident label stood before me (above), austere and elegant in its ensemble, yet marred by a glaring omission: A gaping space at the label’s center was bare, unavoidably and inexplicably innominate and anonymous…

Click here to read my post today for the Houston Press on how fascist thugs from California winery group Sutter Home forced the Trinchero family to remove their surname from their label.

Michel Bettane’s diatribe against Natural wine in the current print-version issue of the Gambero Rosso monthly came to my attention this morning via the popular Italian wine blog Intravino (where I also grabbed the above image of the French wine writer).

The issue also includes an op-ed by editor Eleonora Guerini in which she writes, “every time that I hear someone talk about natural wine, I begin instinctively to laugh.”

I didn’t bother translating her piece (for obvious reasons) but, in the interest of transatlantic dialog, I have rendered excerpts from Bettane’s harangue in English below.

The image of the page comes from the Facebook of Jonathan Nossiter (via @AliceFeiring). Click the image for PDF version.

*****

We sincerely hope that Italian wine lovers will not be subjected to what has been happening in France: an invasion of so-called “natural” wines — in other words, so called “zero sulfur” wines — with the complicity of numerous sommeliers, wine merchants, and irresponsible journalists…

[These winemakers] insist on making wine without sulfur and they peddle their “beverage” as if it were true terroir.

Their products are easily recognizable: the red wines stink and all of their grape varieties and terroirs end up resembling one another because the nasty native yeasts with which they are made — yeasts that greedily cannibalize the good yeasts if the vinifier allows them to do so — are the same yeasts that you find all over the planet. The wines are cloudy and unstable and they show an excessive presence of carbonic gas, giving the impression that the wine is incomplete.

The white wines — when possible — are even worse: more or less oxidized from the moment of birth and therefore stillborn. Their decomposition is then “managed” posthumously! We are amazed by the ingenuousness of the many excellent chefs who now only include such wines on their lists. They are so careful about their food: they should be the first to be ashamed of such rotten wines!

…

It’s up to their clients to point out that what they believe is a wine closer to “nature” is actually nothing more than a bad wine whose only intention is to give you a headache.

With some luck and perseverance, it’s possible to make wines without the addition of suflur. These are simple and very pleasant fruity wines that should be consumed where they are produced. But they need to be stored in a cool cellar and — most importantly — they mustn’t travel!

For every cuvée that turns out well, there will be two or three that are completely wrong.

But who has the means to not sell them and accept responsibility for one’s own errors?

—Michel Bettane and Thierry Desseauve
Gambero Rosso
January 2013

From the department of “still catching up on remarkable wines that I tasted in 2012″…

This extraordinary bottle was the gift of an overly generous friend who sent it to me from Italy, where the bottle once resided in his cellar.

After it had rested in my San Diego cellar for a few weeks in November-early December, I picked it up from my locker and took it to the Jaynes Gastropub staff party on my last visit to California for the year.

There were many incredible wines opened that night, including a 2000 Amarone della Valpolicella from my cellar (always a thrill and always a joy to share).

But the wine of the night was this otherwise unassuming 1990 Chianti Classico Riserva by Lilliano, a venerated but quiet and often overlooked estate in Castellina (one of the core townships of historic Chianti).

It was unbelievably fresh and the fruit wonderfully vibrant and bright. And its singing acidity and judiciously balanced alcohol gave it that gentle zing that makes Chianti — when done right — so food friendly and moreish (we paired with a spread of California charcuterie, cheese, and crusty bread).

One of the most delightful surprises and best wines of my year.

I’ve been thinking about this wine because it was around this time last year that Giulio Gambelli — the legendary “taster” of Sangiovese — passed away (see also this collection of remembrances that I culled from the internets). Gambelli made his mark on so many iconic expressions of Sangiovese of our generation — Soldera, Poggio di Sotto, Monte Vertine, and so many others. But he also continued to consult for taste the wines of many of the historic Chianti estates, like Lilliano (Bibbiano is another one that comes to mind).

There are lightyears between a wine like this earthy and earthly Chianti and ethereal wines like Soldera’s or Poggio di Sotto’s. But there is also unmistakable red thread that unites them: it’s that gentle electricity (I don’t know how else to describe it) that makes traditional Sangiovese so unique in the world of fine red wine.

Many who have followed and observed Tuscan winemaking over the last generation would attribute that signature to Gambelli.

Thank you, FB, for this truly splendid bottle of wine, shared with a group of people I care about deeply.

It reminded me that great Sangiovese was, is, and can always be…