Tag Archives: Barbaresco

Angelo Gaja’s State of the Union Address: “the winery next door isn’t an enemy”

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Above: The last time I tasted with Angelo Gaja was in March 2010 at his winery in Barbaresco.

Earlier this week Angelo Gaja sent out one of what I call his “papal bulls.” As an elder statesman of Italian wine, he often issues these statements via email — on the state of the Italian wine industry, on the Brunello controversy, on the distillation crisis in Piedmont etc. And a number of Italian bloggers repost them.

As I prepare to leave for Italy to attend the Italian wine trade fair Vinitaly (and to lead a group of bloggers to Friuli the following week), I decided to translate his most recent “state of the union” address.

Whether you agree with him or not, I think that you’ll find his insights and observations as interesting as I did.

For the record, I am the author of the translation below and while you can find the piece on many Italian-language sites, I read it on I Numeri del Vino (an Italian wine industry blog that I highly recommend).

I also highly recommend checking out this post by Alfonso on the DOC(G) to DOP migration (part of the same EEC Common Market Organization Reforms that Gaja references in his statement).

Europe’s Winds of Change

by Angelo Gaja

The Italian wine market is going through a phase of profound change that offers contrasting clues for interpretation.

Domestic consumption is dropping while exports are growing. There are producers who are finding it hard to sell their wines and their cellars are still full of wine. Others take advantage of market opportunities and they empty their cellars with ease.

The current trend of pessimism contrasts with the rhetoric of optimism. Where does the truth lie? The numbers don’t tell the whole story but they help us to understand the current situation.

Nearly twenty-five million hectoliters of Italian wine are exported annually and domestic consumption is just over twenty million hectoliters. Together, these numbers constitute a demand of forty-five million hectoliters, to which we need to add the demand for wine by vinegar producers and users of industrial alcohol. The annual average production of wine in Italy in recent years has strained to meet demand. Will Italian wine fail to rise to the occasion?

Causes that Contribute to a Balancing of the Market

Global warming has contributed to this stress, as has the advanced state of obsolescence of 50 percent of the vineyards in Italy today. But it has also been accelerated by the effects of the European market reforms that were called for, imposed, and implemented by Brussels on August 1, 2009.

These reforms were inspired by common sense — a rare commodity these days. And they were intended to put an end to the waste perpetuated by more than thirty years of public subsidies devoted to the elimination of surplus. And they were implemented by the introduction of measures aimed at re-balancing the wine market.

Once squandered, [European Economic] Community contributions are now devoted to the co-financing of promotion of European wineries beyond Europe’s borders and they have helped exports take off despite the current crisis.

In a short period of time, the number of wineries exporting their products has grown more than 30 percent. A significant number of artisanal producers has begun to ship wines abroad and their success has encouraged to them to combine their resources and to travel beyond Italy’s borders to tell their stories and share their passion, traditions, and innovations. And in doing so, they have helped to contribute to the greater respect that Italian wine now commands throughout the world. As a result, there are many who now believe that the Italian wine market is undergoing a profound and unprecedented structural change that requires them to adopt a new and different cultural approach.

Think Differently

More must be done to monitor and prevent the production of counterfeit wine.

We must stop thinking that we need to compete with one another and that the winery next door is an enemy.

It’s inconceivable that the windfall of European Economic Community contributions for the co-financing of exports beyond Europe’s borders continue uninterrupted: why should European citizens be taxes to achieve this goal?

We must learn how to build business networks using only our own funds.

The domestic market continues to be the most challenging. But its value is undiminished because it’s what shapes and builds business: it’s a mistake to dismiss and neglect it.

The producers whose wines enjoy a healthy presence in the Italian market are often the same producers who reap the rewards of foreign markets.

The balance between supply and demand puts the greatest responsibility on all of our shoulders. And it should impel producers to grow and to become more capable businessmen who are better prepared to rise up to meet the challenges of the market.

Angelo Gaja, March 19, 2012

First Kiss: 07 Produttori del Barbaresco and Gianni Brunelli olive oil

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Maybe it’s because she knew I was depressed by the flurry of bad news from Europe.

But it’s definitely because I’m the luckiest guy in the world: when Tracie P came home from work yesterday, she brought me a bottle of 2007 Barbaresco by Produttori del Barbaresco, which — believe it or not — I still hadn’t tasted.

However bizarre the 2007 vintage in Langa, everything I’ve tasted so far from Barbaresco and Barolo has been simply sensational. Here’s what one of my favorite wine writers, Antonio Galloni, had to say about this strange but glorious (imho) vintage:

    The year started off with an unusually warm and dry winter, with virtually no precipitation. Flowers and plants went into bloom nearly a full month early. Growers had never seen conditions such as these. The summer was warm, but evenly so, without noticeable heat spikes. Towards the end of the growing season nighttime temperatures lowered, slowing down the maturation of the grapes, and allowing for the development of the perfume that is such an essential component of fine Nebbiolo. The harvest was earlier than normal, but the growing season started so early in the year that the actual length of the vegetative cycle was actually close to normal if not longer than normal by a few days.

At first kiss, the 2007 classic (as opposed to vineyard-designated) Barbaresco by Produttori del Barbaresco was very generous with its fruit. Arguably the most elegant bottling I’ve ever tasted from the winery that forms the centerpiece of our wine collection, the wine showed stunning balance before quickly closing up, with the muscular tannin dominating the wine in my glass for the rest of the evening (I’ve saved the great part of the wine in the bottle and will revisit it tonight and tomorrow night). If ever there were an expression of Barbaresco “Barolo-esque” in its power, this would be it: there was a delicate menthol note in the mouth that reminded us of some of our favorite “east-side,” “Helvetian” growers.

It’s too early for final judgment on this wine, but wow, my impression is that we have a lot to look forward to…

In other news…

I also opened a bottle of Gianni Brunelli olive oil that Laura Brunelli gave me when I visited the family’s amazing farm in Montalcino in October.

A drizzle over some still warm toasted bread was unbelievably good, one of the mineral olive oils I’ve ever tasted. (When tasting olive oil, please be sure the olive oil is room temperature and always taste with warm bread; the gentle heat of the bread will prompt the oil to release its full flavor.)

I used the oil to dress some fresh red leaf lettuce and some cannellini beans. Utterly and absolutely delicious.

Whereas Ligurian olive oil tends toward the fruity and Sicilian toward the spicy, great Tuscan olive oil leans toward salty: I added just a dash of kosher salt to both the salad and the beans and Laura’s oil imparted all the savoriness I needed to both dishes. Fantastic stuff… Enough to cheer a wine blogger up after a day of gloomy news from his adoptive country…

Stay tuned for a post on my visit with Laura, a tour of her amazing “biodynamic” house, and a tasting of some current and older vintages of her family’s incredible wines… one of the best tastings from my last trip to Italy… Thanks for reading!

Gaia Gaja’s cowgirl boots (and my first Alba truffles of the season)

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Yesterday found me back in Houston where I had lunch with my friend and client Tony and Gaia Gaja.

To mark the occasion of her Houston, Texas visit, Gaia donned the cowgirl boots she had picked up on her previous visit (above). As the saying goes, you can take a girl out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the girl. After all, she does come from a town where they didn’t have running water until 1964.

As you can imagine, Tony pulled out all the stops for the luncheon: I’ve posted my complete notes on the meal and the wines over at his site here.

I wasn’t surprised by the Gaja 2007 Barbaresco: however strange (by virtue of the fact that there was no winter to speak of), the 2007 vintage was generous to Barbaresco and everything I’ve tasted so far has been great to phenomenal (remember when Tracie P and I tasted 2007 Asili and Santo Stefano with Bruno Giacosa?).

But it was Gaia’s family’s 2008 Barbaresco that really blew me away. In a challenging vintage, Gaja was blessed with very juicy, well ripened fruit. Green harvesting and southern exposure of their vineyards delivered mature grapes, said Gaja, and allowed them to pick before inclement weather arrived. The floral notes on the wine were fantastic and although still very young in its evolution, it had that zinging acidity and powerful tannin that makes Barbaresco such a unique appellation imho and one of my favorite wines in the world.

My favorite dish of the meal was the branzino and poached potato tartar topped with caviar and paired with the 2009 Gaia & Rey Chardonnay (a guilty pleasure, I must admit).

Click here for all of my notes, including the 2005 Sperss, and images of the dishes…

Thanks again, Tony and Gaia!

Giacosa 1999 Barbaresco (classic) and a gig tonight

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From the department of “somehow, someway, I get to taste funky ass wines like every single day”…

Comrades Howard and Mary Beth came to visit me on Saturday night at Sotto in Los Angeles, where I was “pouring wine on the floor,” as we say in the wine trade.

Comrade Howard graciously and generously shared the above bottle of 1999 (classic) Barbaresco by Bruno Giacosa. (Howard was elected vice president of the Writers Guild of America last week, btw. Mazel tov, comrade!)

Great Barbaresco always inspires equine metaphors in me and this wine, powerful and muscular, asserted a masculine beauty tempered by feminine grace, a young mare whose strength was still countered by its youth.

Earth and stone dominated the fruit as the wine began to reveal its nature but dark and red fruit emerged as the wine spent some time in the glass.

Barbaresco by the hand of Giacosa never fails to invoke equine wonder in those of us lucky to experience the wines and his 1999 vintage continues to thrill me, often rivaling the perhaps more graceful 2001 with a combination of power and to kalon.

Thank you again, comrades! Avanti popolo!

In other news… All work and no play would make me an otherwise dull boy…

My friends at Jaynes Gastropub have asked me to sit in with them at tonight’s battle of the Chef Bands 2011 in San Diego. The charity event supports domestic violence awareness and takes place tonight. The Grapes (our band) go on around 9 p.m. Last night’s rehearsal featured some excellent 2007 Lafarge Bourgogne Passetoutgrain.

04 Roagna Barbaresco Pajé INSANE

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I didn’t get to taste every wine at the Dressner magical mystery roadshow yesterday in Los Angeles, but I did devote ample time to Luca Roagna’s wet-dream flight of his family’s crus (above). The 05s were showing nicely but the 04 Barbaresco Pajé was INSANE, with bright acidity, wonderful wild berry notes and the earthy tones that define Barbaresco when vinified by one of the great ultratraditional houses of the appellation (IMHO). Killer wine.

I was also geeked to taste Arianna Occhipinti’s new “négociant” project: Arianna (above) has begun supervising growing practices and vinification for other growers. The 2010 Tamì Grillo was awesome, salty and crunchy and delicious, with bright, bright acidity, remarkable for
Sicily where winemakers have trouble obtaining acidity in their wines. Very groovy.

Many more LA stories to come but now I gotta get my butt back to Texas for some rock ‘n’ roll!

06 Barbaresco: a final (?) clarification from Aldo Vacca, Produttori del Barbaresco

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Above: As my good friend and top sommelier David Rosoff will tell you, “I learned more about Barbaresco talking to Aldo Vacca for 10 minutes” than I have in my whole career.

I wanted to draw your attention to a comment made by winemaker Aldo Vacca, Produttori del Barbaresco, posted the other day here at Do Bianchi. He was commenting in response to Charles Scicolone, who had asked plaintively whether or not Produttori del Barbaresco typically executed different bottlings destined for its domestic and international markets (the thread appeared in a post on the winery’s decision not to bottle its single-vineyard wines for the 2006 vintage).

Here’s what Aldo had to say:

    Just a quick note: we at Produttori Barbaresco never bottle wines specifically for one market or another. We do not look for specific taste for specific market and all that, we just make the wine at the best of our knowledge in one very define style. If we do more than one bottling, we try to have a similar blend in all bottling.

    We do release our new vintage in the Fall in Italy and usually, because of the logistics of the market and because we like to give some more bottle aging when we can, the next January is most export market. So, it is usually the case that the first bottling is mainly sold in Italy while the second bottling (which is also larger in size) goes to export and Italy as well: it is just a matter of timing, not of deciding which market gets what.

    Normally this will not make any difference anyway because the two bottling would be very similar.

    The one thing that happened with the 2006 vintage was the late decision of not bottling the SV. If we had made the decision earlier, as we usually do, all bottlings would have been the same.

In a somewhat unrelated note, yesterday I poured the 2008 Langhe Nebbiolo by Produttori del Barbaresco in a tasting in Austin. Man, it’s light and bright and showing great right now, better than when it first came into the market. A tough vintage in Piedmont but great for entry-level wines like this, where some of the better fruit ended up in the front-line wines.

And in a totally unrelated note, in the light of Aldo’s love of Neil Young, we’re trying to get him out to San Diego on July 8 to sit in with The Grapes.

In other news…

I highly recommend my good friend Thor’s excellent post over at the 32 Days of Natural Wine on the natural wine scene in Paris. I really love his writing and I especially appreciated his hypercorrective neolgism oenopiphany. After all, there are men who know what the word epistemology means without having to look it up in a dictionary and there are others who have to go to Brooks Brothers to find out.

In other other news…

For the wine geeks out there and anyone else who wants to wrap her or his mind around what sulfur, sulfites, and SO2 have to do with wine, I highly recommend this post on the use of sulfur in wine by bonvivant Bruce Neyers, a man who needs no introduction to the oeno-initiated.

Buona lettura e buon weekend, ya’ll!

2006 Produttori del Barbaresco: an important clarification from Aldo Vacca

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From the “department of keeping the world safe for Italian wine”…

aldo vaccaAbove: I tasted with winemaker Aldo Vacca at Produttori del Barbaresco in March 2010. Anyone who reads my blog knows that I am one of the wineries hugest fans.

Reader Ken wrote me a private message recently, asking if I’d seen an email blast from a New York retailer in which the author claimed that there had been two bottlings of Produttori del Barbaresco classic Barbaresco 2006 — one made before the decision not to bottles the 06 crus (and thus not including the single-vineyard juice) and one made after the decision not to bottle the 06 crus (and thus containing the higher-quality single-vineyard juice).

“If there has, in fact, been a second release that now has included the single-vineyard grapes,” he asked plaintively, “how on earth can anyone distinguish the bottles?

“I’ve cut and pasted a recent e-mail from [a highly respected New York retailer] and highlighted the statement about a second release. I’ve collected a ton of the blended 05’s for cellaring and have only a couple of the blended 06s, which got initially reviewed (by fellow Cellar Trackers) as a ‘drink early.'”

      The news, if you haven’t heard it: for the 2006 vintage the Produttori have decided not to bottle any of their single-vineyard Barbaresco Riservas. Aldo Vacca, manager of the Produttori, describes this [

SEE THIS POST

      ] as a business decision that was not based on the very high quality of the wines, but instead because there have been so many strong vintages in a row (basically 2004-2009) that they were concerned that there would be too much wine on the market.

The wines were vinified and aged separately as per their normal practice; following an initial release of the 2006 Barbaresco (which was a terrific bottle at the time), all of the Riservas have now been blended together to produce just one wine.

Yesterday afternoon I wrote to Aldo, who promptly responded with the following message:

      What happened is that we took the final decision not to produce the 2006 S[ingle]V[ineyard] one year later than usual, in the spring of 2009. At that point the first bottling of 2006 was already done so no SV in the first bottling. However this is the bottling that we release every year in Italy in the early Fall, so it is largely used for domestic market.

Second bottling was done in July and then a third bottling in the Fall. These two bottlings were a blend of SV juice and standard Barbaresco juice in very similar %. The wine you can buy in the States now is from the 2nd bottling and later this year will be from the 3rd, so very similar indeed.

So the bottom line is that there were two bottlings, one without the crus and one with the crus (the former sold in Italy, the latter available in the U.S.). But if you’re buying the wine in the U.S., you’re getting wines that include the crus.

To this I would add that 2006 is not a forgettable vintage, as some of Ken’s Cellar Tracker buddies might insist. In fact, it was a good-to-great vintage (05 very-good-to-great, 07 FANTASTIC). IMHO 06 is best to drink 2011-2016 and beyond (but keep in mind that I’m a believer that these wines are to be drunk younger than most American fetishizers of old wine would tell you).

Tasted: Gaja 64, 78, 89, 97, 00, 04

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barbaresco

Above: An enviable flight, if I do say so myself. The 64 was simply stunning and the 89 gorgeous.

As a good friend and admired colleague of mine says, “whether you like the wines or not, tasting Gaja is always an interesting experience.”

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to attend an impressive tasting with Gaia Gaja, who was also in Chicago (it was a trade tasting organized by her importer and I managed to snag a spot, the fly on the wall, so to speak).

I’ve actually tasted quite a bit of Gaja recently: the Barbera 7 and I visited Gaja while were in Piedmont in March (Fredric recently published his account of our visit over at Palate Press.)

barbaresco

Above: It was remarkable to see the evolution of the Gaja brand, the labels, and the transformation of bottle shape. From a classic Albese interpretation of the Burgundian bottle shape to a Burgundian bottle with a Bordeaux neck to accommodate a longer cork. Note also the slight changes in color and composition of the labels.

I’m writing in a hurry today because traveling and will write more on what I learned about Gaja the brand and my visit with Gaia the lady in future. And I think that some of you will be surprised by what I learned. I know I was surprised.

In the meantime, here are some quick tasting and winemaking notes.

Barbaresco 1964

“Longer fermentation and maceration” during this period in the winery’s history. Two to three weeks maceration and some slight oxidation because of winemaking practices at the time that gave the wine an orange hint early on. The winery had not implemented its current vineyard management (green harvest and “short pruning”) and the grapes were picked all at once, resulting in some of the fruit not being entirely ripe.

Drinking old Nebbiolo is not for everyone and so some might have disagreed with my take on the wine but I was completely blown away by how good and how alive this wine (older than me) was. Gorgeous brick and orange color, unbelievably seductive tar and earth on the nose, solid acidity and gentle, noble red fruit in the mouth. The mouthfeel of the wine was truly divine.

1978 Barbaresco

The last year with the short cork and the first year that Gaja began to age in barrique The winery had also begun to employ a green harvest at this point, although not “systematically” at this early stage. I’d actually tasted this wine before, a few years ago in NYC: I think this bottle might have been “off,” because it didn’t show as well as I had expected. It had a strong, menthol and Eucalyptus nose and it took a while for the fruit to emerge after I revisited it during the hour or so we spent tasted (the wines had been opened a few hours before the tasting but not decanted). It was almost Baroloesque in its power and showed some spicy notes in the mouth.

Barbaresco 1989

This wine was pure beauty. Great (in my opinion one of the top 3 of my lifetime) vintage, classic and balanced, with “four seasons,” so to speak. Incredible bottle of wine, showing beautifully, and with many, many more years ahead of it. This was one of Italy’s great producers at its best. An incredible elegant lightness and beauty and simultaneous power and tannic structure — the seemingly contradictory essence of Barbaresco, an experience that always brings equine metaphors to mind. Gaia told a great story about this wine. At the end of a school year spent abroad to learn English and studying acting (!) among other interests in San Francisco, she tasted this wine in 2004 at a family friend’s dinner party. “I could smell the perfume of my house in this wine,” she said and so she decided, after all, to return home and rejoin her family’s business. A truly life-changing wine, in her case.

Barbaresco 1997

I wasn’t expecting to like this vintage but was really impressed by its drinkability and its balance. “The heat of the vintage shows” but the wine is drinking fantastically well at this moment. It has begun to attain that orange hue of old Nebbiolo and I won’t conceal that I didn’t spit this wine. I thought it showed beautifully. Of all the wines we tasted, this would have been the one I would have most liked to have enjoyed at dinner (while the 89 and 64, my favorites, would have been special occasion wines, meditation wines). Drink it now if you got it.

Barbaresco 2000

This wine is going through a very closed phase of its evolution, very tannic and very tight as we say in our parlance. Like 1997, this was a very warm vintage and I was actually surprised by how reluctant the wine was to reveal its fruit. I really wish I would have had more time with this wine but the time constraints of this tasting (a trade tasting) didn’t allow me to revisit it.

Barbaresco 2004

I’ve tasted this wine on numerous occasions and you’d be surprised by the name of at least one wine writer who revealed very publicly that he enjoyed this wine in a blind tasting. The wine is still very young and very tannic but you can easily imagine the balance that it is going to reveal with aging. As we look back at 2004 with a few years distance, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that the vintage is very similar to 1989, very balanced, very classic, and with extreme promise. If I could afford to buy Gaja, this is the wine I’d put in my cellar for long-term aging. A good bet if you’re the betting type.

barbaresco

Above: Gaia and I had a charbroiled cheddardog at Wieners Circle.

After I told Gaia and another a colleague about my adventure at the Wiener Circle (where the proprietors famously berate their customers), our colleague mentioned that Robert Parker had listed it one year as one of his “top ten meals” of the year, she expressed her desire to taste a Chicago red hot.

Impossible wine pairing? Gaja and Chicago red hot? I don’t think I’m gonna touch that one!

barbaresco

Thanks again, Gaia, for inviting me to such an incredible tasting! And thanks for the cheddardog!

More on Produttori del Barbaresco’s decision not to bottle their 2006 crus

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Thor, a wine writer and blogger whom I greatly admire and an all-around mensch, wrote the other day to winemaker Aldo Vacca (left) inquiring about his decision not to bottle his 2006 crus. Thor was kind enough to share Aldo’s response and Aldo was kind enough to allow me to post it here.

Technical reason: 2006 is a very good vintage, but warm and ripe, lacking a little bit of the finesse and complexity to make a truly great S[ingle]V[ineyard wine] and yet preserve excellent quality in the regular bottling. We think 2005, lighter in body, has more fruit and balance, at least in Barbaresco and at least for Produttori.

Marketing: with the current economy we thought it more appropriate to produce a larger quantity of solid, extremely good 2006 Barbaresco avoiding a flooding of the market with too many SV wines, since 2007, 2008, 2009 will all be produced. Had 2007 or 2008 been bad vintages, we would have released 2006 SV, but since we have so many great ones, we felt we could skip one and stay on the safe side of the fence.

—Aldo Vacca

Recipe: Giovanna’s Spinach Casserole (and I know my chickens)

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Many years ago, I worked as an editor at an Italian food magazine where I must have translated thousands of recipes. I had fun this morning translating Giovanna’s recipe below.

Giovanna’s Spinach Casserole

An old, simple, and tasty recipe.

Wash the spinach well and then wilt in a pan with a pinch of salt. Squeeze and then use a sieve to purge the spinach of its water. Sauté in a pan with a little bit of butter.

Make a béchamel and seasons with salt and pepper to taste and a dash of nutmeg. Fold the béchamel into the spinach and add freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano, 2 whole eggs, and 1 egg yolk. Whisk the remaining egg white until it forms peaks and then carefully fold it into the spinach mixture.

Grease a loaf pan (or a bundt cake pan) with butter and then coat with a thin layer of flour before transferring the spinach mixture to the pan. Heat the oven to 375°, arrange the pan in a bain-marie and bake for 40-45 minutes. Remove the loaf from the oven and let it cool for a few minutes before turning it out on to a serving platter.

Serve with a fondue, with mushrooms, or chicken livers.

*****

Tracie P’s comment reminded me that I had neglected to post about Giovanna’s rooster and chickens!

franco ziliani

There’s a wonderful expression in Italian, a phrase you might hear a mother or a grandmother utter when she can predict a child’s desire or request: conosoco i miei polli (I know my chickens). If you ever get to stay in an Italian farmhouse estate like Giovanna’s, you’ll notice that the chickens (like Giovanna’s) have very distinct and often peculiar preferences about their daily routine and pecking order, as it were. Hence the familiar, affectionate expression…

Thanks again, Giovanna, for sharing your recipe!

And for my fan of the “burning disappointment,” please don’t despair! Next on deck: Beppe Rinaldi on natural yeast… Stay tuned!