Tag Archives: John Roenigk

Best Tuscan wines? Life beyond Tignanello…

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In the wake of BrooklynGuy’s post on 1990 Tignanello and my subsequent response, a couple of readers wrote me asking me to create a list of currently available, interesting wines from Tuscany. In turn, I asked you to submit some top recommendations. Here’s what you had to say…

Tuscany

Top wine blogger (and dude whose musical and literary tastes always turn me on) David McDuff’s pics were “nothing cutting edge; all are just old friends.”

Isole e Olena Chianti Classico: Always a pure and elegant expression of Chianti (and Sangiovese.

Fattoria di Palazzo Vecchio Vino Nobile di Montepulciano: Honest vintage expression of the sun-baked Tuscan hills. (They also produce an excellent Riserva.)

Corzano e Paterno Chianti Colli Fiorentini: Proof that great farming can elevate mediocre terroir.

Tuscany

Sommelier to the stars David Rosoff didn’t “have a bunch of time to rack my brain on this today but…”

Castell’in Villa: Has to be there.

Caprili: I’m loving Caprili a lot these days.

Salvioni: Is it trite to say Salvioni?

Tuscany

Wine writer and veteran Italian wine traveler and educator Tom Hyland got right to the point.

Il Poggione Brunello di Montalcino: Classic, elegant, great ageworthiness.

Rocca di Montegrossi Vin Santo: Incredibly concentrated, remarkable.

Ornellaia: Superb fruit, superb winemaking.

And he added, “3 exciting new wines from Tuscany.”

Enrico Santini Montepergoli: Bolgheri red, one of that zone’s best.

Castelvecchio Numero Otto:100% Ciliegiolo, very sexy!

Guado al Melo Jassarte: Blend of 30 varieties combining Italian and Eastern viticulture.

Tuscany

Elaine Trigiani took time out from tasting and teaching olive oil in Tuscany to pen this dispatch.

Fattoria Ispoli Chianti Classico: Well-mannered combo of clarity and mighty persistence.

Podere Le Boncie Le Trame: Quiet yet profound as Giovanna herself.

Santa Maria Rosso di Castiglione d’Orcia: Fermenty.

Tuscany

Guitar player extraordinaire and owner of the coolest wine shop in Central Texas, John Roenigk took time out from the Christmas rush to weigh in.

Selvapiana Chianti Rufina: All the textural suppleness and tenderness I might ever have expected of Sangiovese all the while being completely flavorful and satisfying.

Antinori Chianti Classico Riserva: Fine and complex, always been a personal fave.

Fèlsina Chianti Classico Riserva Rancia: Superb Tuscan estate, really dedicated to Sangiovese. Superb wine.

Tuscan dirt

Brit wine educator and Tuscanophile, author of a newly minted wine blog, David Way loves “the Sangiovese of Chianti and Montalcino as much as anyone, but rather more off the beaten track are…”

Sassotondo Maremma Toscana San Lorenzo: Sassotondo’s top Ciliegiolo, aromas of cherries and pepper, distinctive cru from the Maremma’s deep south.

Rocca di Frassinello Rosso Maremma Toscana: Elegant product of French-Italian collaboration, 60% Sangiovese, beefed up with 20% each Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, finely judged new oak above super ripe fruit. Rothschild collaboration.

Massa Vecchia Vermentino di Maremma Toscana: Hyper-natural “white” wine made as a red, i.e. 20 days maceration on the skins, orange tinge, dense herby fruit smells, orange peel, extraordinary.

Tuscany

The Italian Wine Guy by antonomasia Alfonso likes winemakers who are “small and live in as well as on their land and are fully grounded.”

Querciavalle Chianti Classico Riserva: They age beautifully, are fabulous values and have given me as much pleasure as Brunello or Super Tuscan wines have.

Capezzana Carmignano: The blend of Sangiovese and Cabernet (part of the appellation) make for a mouthwatering and delicious lip-smacking red.

Angelo Sassetti Brunello di Montalcino: Yes, his brother Livio is next door and has gotten better press and p.r. But my heart and soul is with Angelo, whose wine is still simple and direct and not obfuscated by modernity of success.

Tuscany

I was really excited to see Massa Vecchia in David Way’s contribution. I love those wines and they stink to holy heaven. I don’t think they’re available yet in this country.

I have to second David Rosoff’s pick, Castell’in Villa. As Franco likes to say, it’s one of those wines in which I always find “emotion” and “poetry.”

I’m also dying to try Tom Hyland’s “very sexy” 100% Ciliegiolo by Castelvecchio.

There are a lot of others I would add, like Sanguineto in Montepulciano, also one of Elaine’s favorites. And I was was thrilled to see her include a wine from the Orcia River Valley. I have tasted some great wines from the Orcia river valley (outside of Montalcino), and, in my view, Orcia will be the next appellation to emerge as a producer of great wine from Tuscany (nothing I’ve tasted from Montecucco has really knocked my socks off).

Thanks, everyone, for weighing in. There are so many interesting wines from Tuscany to reach for these days. This polyglot hypertextual list is rife and ripe with trusted classics, a few surprises, and the heart and soul of Tuscany when you scrape off the patina of marketese. Nothing wrong with Tignanello, of course (BrooklynGuy’s post has inspired Alfonso to “stand upright” a bottle of 1990 Tignanello to taste with me and Tracie B when we get together next weekend). So many great bottles and so little time…

An Italian wine walks into a bar…

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austin wine merchant

Above: Yesterday, I tasted through the current releases of Fèlsina with my friends, from left, Craig Collins (who works for the winery’s distributor in Texas), John Roenigk (owner and manager of The Austin Wine Merchant), and Chiara Leonini, Fèlsina’s export manager. For the record, Fèlsina is pronounced FEHL-see-nah.

It’s a labor of love and it’s my self-appointed duty: I just spent the first hour of my day translating Franco’s editorial on the list of The Wine Spectator’s top 100 wines and the Italian showing in the list. You’ve heard me say it before: Franco (the “Giuseppe Baretti” of Italian wine) is a friend, a colleague, a mentor, a partner, and one of the wine writers whom I admire most. I encourage you to read what he has to say: here in America, where few read the Italian wine media, we are often unaware of how the Italians view us and our wine media and how our wine media generally ignores the wines and the styles of wine that Italians hold to be the best representation of their enology.

In another editorial published today, by a young wine blogger and marketing consultant based in Apulia, the author writes: “Just think that the first wine in the list is an American wine that costs $27 and the second is a Spanish wine that also costs $27. In order to pay the tidy sum of $110, you have to get to the eighth place in the list for a Tuscan wine that costs a hefty $110!”

Today, I’ll leave the editorializing and pontificating to others, but I do encourage you to put it in your pipe and smoke it, so to speak.

As it just so happens, yesterday I tasted with the export manager for a winery that landed the thirteenth position in the magazine’s list: Fèlsina, whose Fontalloro, a barriqued 100% Sangiovese that has long been a popular wine in the U.S.

“Some would call it a Super Tuscan,” said Chiara (above), “even though I don’t like that term.” And, in fact, the wine actually qualifies as a Chianti, even though the winery has chosen historically to declassify it, initially to vino da tavola status and now IGT (it was first released in 1983, she said, the same year as the first release of the winery’s “cru” Chianti Classico, Rancia).

I’m a bona fide fan of Fèlsina but my favorites are always their entry-level wines, made from 100% Sangiovese grapes, vinified in the traditional style, and aged in large old-oak casks that have been used over and over again. The wines generally cost under $25 and I highly recommend them. The 2006 harvest was a good vintage for these wines, 2007 a great vintage. (I also had fun trading notes with Chiara about our university days in Italy. She studied Chomsky and generative linguistics at Florence, around the same time I studied the history of the Italian language and prosody at Padua and the Scuola Normale in Pisa. We knew a lot of the same professors!)

I’ve spent enough time in front of the computer this morning and it’s time for me to head to Houston, where I’ll be speaking about and pouring Italian wine tonight. So I’ll leave the punch line up to you Italo Calvinos out there…

An Italian wine walks into a bar…

More Nebbiolo news (and a lil’ guitar porn)

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One of the frequent questions that we wine folk get is “what’s your favorite wine?” It’s not an easy one to answer. I always tell people, it depends on where I am, whom I’m with, and what I’m eating. A favorite wine could be a humble bottle of grapey Lambrusco with some belt-busting gnocco fritto and rendered lard or it could be a 40-year-old Giacomo Conterno Barolo Monfortino and a blood-rare porterhouse steak, the genteel noble tannin of the Nebbiolo waltzing with the marbled meat.

But if there ever were ONE wine, one winery that I could point to and say that’s my favorite, it would have to be Produttori del Barbaresco. I love the wines, I have deep respect for the people who grow it and make it, and the ideology and winemaking philosophy that stand behind it. I also love it because I can afford it and because I can afford to “follow” each vintage. And more than anything else, I love how the style of the winery has remained so consistent: whether tasting a ’67, an ’89, or the current release ’05, the style of the “house” steadfastly represents the terroir and the vintage.

And so it was a thrill yesterday to taste the 2008 Langhe Nebbiolo by Produttori del Barbaresco, the cooperative’s entry-level wine, made from the member growers’s younger vines, and vinified with shorter maceration time and aging.

The 2007 was an anomalous vintage for this wine. The bumper crop of noble fruit resulted in a more tannic and richer expression of Nebbiolo than you usually see in this wine (I think this is what BrooklynGuy found to be off-putting when we exchanged notes about it). When I told winemaker Aldo Vacca that as much as I loath the expression “baby Barbaresco,” the ’07 was the one instance when I thought the Langhe Nebbiolo was “Barbaresco-esque.” “Baby Barberesco?” he said to me with a quizzical look. “Baby Barolo!”

With the ’08, the wine has returned to is more classic style: a Nebbiolo lighter in body, with very approachable berry fruit and sour cherry and already mellow tannin. Great for drinking now. Damn, I love this wine. It should retail for around $20, more or less. A great value.

In other news… boys will be boys…

John Roenigk and I played a little hooky yesterday after tasting and some lunch: we went to one of the most amazing guitar stores I have ever visited, Quincy’s here in Austin. (John’s an amazing musician and I’ve been helping him transfer some of his recordings from the 1980s to digital format, one of the other things that GarageBand is great for. That dude can play him some serious geetar.)

I sure wish I had the dough to afford one of these handmade beauties. It’s hard to convey what it’s like to play guitars of this caliber. Their sounds are warm and round, with the bass notes resonating like a train in the distance and the highs sparkling like stars in the sky. That’s a 1999 Gibson SJ200 Custom (Brazilian) in the foreground.

But when you actually play them, the sensation of feeling the sounds emanate from the warm wood pressed up against your belly is purely transcendental. That’s a ’52 Martin D28 above — one of the few vintage guitars owner Pat Skrovan had in the store yesterday.

Feast your eyes on that National Steel Reso-Phonic Delphi Deluxe, above.

Happy halloween ya’ll!