Happy Christmas and a great 2016 to all plus a review of my year

Wow another Christmas is upon us and I have barely achieved a fraction of the things that I wanted to this year.

However, it was a great year for me for learning about amazing wines and visiting beautiful wine regions, so I can’t really complain. Here a few of my highlights of the year, I hope you enjoy them.

Naples fishing harbour with Capri in the background.

Back in March I visited Campania for the first time, seeing Naples and Pompeii as well as the wine regions of Taurasi, Greco di Tufo, Sannio and many more. It was a great experience full of wonderful wines and interesting stories. You can read all about it by clicking here.

One of my favourite photographs of Slovenian vineyards.

Italy was very much the theme of the year for me as I visited four times in all. The first one was actually an amazing trip to study the wines produced in the north east edge of Italy and over the frontier in neighbouring Slovenia – the tour was called Wine Without Borders. That whole part of the world is very beautiful and produces some stunning wines too and you can read all about it by clicking here.

Typical transport in the Romanian countryside.

One of my most exciting trips of 2015 was to Romania. I had never been to the country at all before and had no idea what to expect from the wines. It turned out to be a beautiful country full of lovely people and some astonishing wines. I did not taste a single terrible wines and was very excited about the quality of most of them. You can read all about it by clicking here.

I toured the vineyards of Chablis by 2CV!

In June I was thrilled to go on my first dedicated trip to Chablis and I learned ever such a lot about what makes these wines quite so important. Ever since I have enjoyed talking about Chablis to all my students, but have yet to write about the visit – watch this space.

The beautiful vineyards of Lavaux on Lake Geneva’s north shore.

In the same month I was honoured to be invited to be a judge at the Mondial du Chasselas wine competition in Switzerland. Chasselas is a real speciality grape in Switzerland, but comes close to being unloved almost anywhere else. Well I think the breadth of wines that I tasted and the sheer quality of most them proves the Swiss are right to love the grape and I loved the trip, as well as the big trip I made to Switzerland’s wine regions in late 2014. You can read all about my Swiss adventures by clicking here.

The beautiful Neckar Valley is like a mini-Mosel.

New discoveries and experiences continued with a terrific trip to Germany in September. Excitingly I visited Württemberg and the Neckar Valley as well as the amazing Stuttgart Wine Festival. This part of Germany is slightly off the beaten track wine-wise, certainly when compared to the Mosel or Rheingau, but it is well worth seeing as the landscape is very beautiful and some of the wines are stunning. Weingut Wöhrwag‘s 2013 Pinot Noir Untertürkheimer Herzogenberg Großes Gewächs was certainly the best Pinot I tasted in 2015 and one of the very best red wines that I drank all year. I aim to write all about it soon.

Piazza Duomo in Trento, the beautiful capital of Trentino.

My Italian adventures continued in October with an enjoyable trip to Trentino in the north of the country. It is a fascinating and beautiful region that has only been part of Italy since 199, so is steeped in history. The wines were pretty good too, but then so was the beer – you can real all about it by clicking here.

Verona’s amazing Roman Arena.

One added bonus of this trip was that I managed to stay an extra night in Verona and so saw that wonderful little city and was able to experience the delights of Lugana, a white wine from the southern shore of Lake Garda – it might well be my favourite Italian white right now and this delicious example is my Christmas white wine.

As well as overseas visits I have tasted some amazing wines over here too. I was particularly thrilled to meet the charming David Mazza who farms a tiny estate in Western Australia, but makes an amazing range of wines from Spanish and Portuguese grape varieties – you can read about him by clicking here.

The new discoveries kept coming too, new grapes like Tibouren from Provence and Cserszegi Fűszeres from Hungary, exciting old vine blends from Chile, a light red or a deep rosé from Tuscany, made from Tempranillo at that! Try as I might I simply could not leave Spain alone, I kept finding amazing Spanish wines that moved and excited me and that offered great value for money too – have a look here, here, here and here.

Along the way too I tasted a superb Albariño from California and another from New Zealand – Albariño is on the march it seems and you can read about them by clicking here.

Just the other day I presented my favourite sparkling wine of the year and I would urge you to try it if you can. It’s rather modestly called Apogee Deluxe Brut and is handmade by the great Andrew Pirie from fruit grown on a  2 hectare vineyard in northern Tasmania. I have long admired what Andrew does and if there is a better Australian fizz than this – indeed any non-Champagne fizz, although it had stiff opposition from Gramona’s amazing 2006 111 Lustros Gran Reserva Brut Nature Cava – then I have yet to try it. It is certainly a rich style of sparkling wine, but it never gets too serious, the fruit, freshness and frivolity dominate the palate and made me just want to drink more.

Vineyards in Stellenbosch.

I nearly forgot, all right I did forget and had to come back and add this, the most exciting wine that I drank all year. There was lots of competition from the delicious 2011 Chêne Bleu Aliot, the sublime 1978 Ridge Monte Bello Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon from California and the downright amazing 2001 Château La Tour Blanche Sauternes, but my stand out wine was from my own collection and it was a beautifully mature Merlot-Cabernet blend from Stellenbosch.

1989 Rozendal
Rozendal Farm
Stellenbosch
South Africa
I was very nervous about opening this. For South Africa it is very old, Nelson Mandela was still in prison when this was made and I know nothing about it. The estate seems to have disappeared. Frankly the wine seemed older and looked older than it was – even the label seems ancient. the nose was classic mature wine, smoky, cedar, earthy and overwhelmingly savoury with some balsamic notes and a touch of dried fruit too. The palate was extraordinary, still all there with that hallmark savoury fragility of very mature wine. Good acidity kept it fresh and provided the secret of its longevity. the tannins were almost totally faded, but for me the big revelation was a solid core of ripe sweet fruit that made it a joy to drink despite its venerable age.

Tasting this was a great moment and one worth recording as mature wine from anywhere other than the classic regions – I include California here – is pretty rare, especially of this quality. If anyone knows anything about Rozendal please let me know, I tried to contact them, but to no avail.

All in all 2015 went too fast, but it was good fun – despite me turning 50 in January – so let’s hope for even more excitement in 2016.

Have a great Christmas and a wonderful New Year and thank you so much for reading my wine page.

 

Trentino – Italy’s Alpine North

 

Piazza Duomo, Trento

Recently I enjoyed a fascinating trip to Trentino in northern Italy. Trento, the capital of Trentino, is a beautiful, compact city and wandering around it makes you very aware what a mix of cultures this part of the world really is. On a modern map Trentino is most definitely in Italy, but until 1919 it was part of Austria and it shows.

More Alpine Austrian architecture.

The wonderful Forst Beer Bar in Trento, Forst beers have been brewed since Austrian times. Photo by my friend Panos Kakaviatos of Wine Chronicles.

The other side of the Piazza Duomo.

Some of the stunning painted buildings in Trento.

Every where you turn in Trento you come up against this mix, frothy Italian buildings that seem to embody the Renaissance side by side with foursquare Austrian-Germanic constructions. Food-wise, pasta and polenta abound, but then so do dumplings, sausages and Weiner Schnitzel. Even for an aperitif smart bars serving local wines and Aperol rub shoulders with Germanic looking beer cellars. Fashion is mixed too, as amongst the elegantly dressed inhabitants, whose clothes scream Milan couture, you will also find some wearing the traditional grey green Tyrolean loden jacket.

Fascist mosaic together with quote from Mussolini created in 1936 by Gino Pancheri. The Fascist symbol and Mussolini’s name were removed in 1943, but strangely the rest remains.

Nestled amongst the grand buildings, there are even some architectural reminders of Italy’s more recent Fascist past, most noticeably the striking mosaic on the entrance of the Galleria dei Legionari on via San Pietro. Entitled ‘Victory of the Empire’ it shows a woman (Victory) who was originally carrying a Fascist Lictor, but this was chipped off in 1943. Underneath it is a typically bombastic quote from Il Duce, about defending the Empire with blood. Strangely this anachronistic quotation survives, although Mussolini’s name was removed at the same time as the fasces. I wonder what young Italians make of this inscription from another time?

All in all I think there is a lot to enjoy on a trip to Trento, I only scratched the surface of what you can see and do in the city, but it pleased me greatly. The narrow shop lined streets are a delight, the Piazza Duomo is stunningly beautiful with its ornate fountain in the centre, cathedral on one side and cafés and restaurants on the others. The Dolomite Mountains are all around you giving an Alpine feel and offering glimpses of a totally different landscape nearby, while the mountain air is wonderfully fresh, pure and invigorating.

Trentino is almost always mentioned alongside Alto Adige – or the Südtirol in German – because together they form the Trentino-Alto Adigo region. They had both had been in Austria-Hungary and the Italian authorities did not want an almost totally ethnic German province and so amalgamated the German speaking Alto Adige with the ethnically Italian Trentino.

Map showing the wine regions of Northern Italy.

From a wine point of view the two places are quite different, the Alto Adige was once Austria’s Südtirol region and still looks, feels and sounds very Germanic in character and at its best produces wines that have an Alpine purity about them. Trentino, the more southern part is mainly Italian in feel – with the odd onion domed church exception – and produces wines that tend to be softer and a little less racy.

So far I have only visited Trentino, it is an Alpine region and everywhere you look there are mountains together with over 300 lakes, which just add to the beauty  of the place. The lowest point of the region is the Plain of Rotaliano at 200-220 metres above sea level, which is still higher than the hills of Lombardy’s Franciacorta sparkling wine region, while the mountains reach over 4000 metres, which makes a mere 15% of the land workable. The place is astonishingly warm for such an Alpine location, with vines either being grown on the hot valley floor or on south facing slopes, so ripening is not a problem and they do not have to limit themselves to early ripening grape varieties. In fact there is huge range of styles produced from a dazzling array of grapes.

The typical Pergola Trentina growing system protects the grapes from the strongest sun while allowing the morning sun to penetrate the vine. It also helps combat humid conditions by being more open than a normal pergola. Panos Kakaviatos is providing the human scale.

Trentino DOC
Trentino DOC (Denominazione di Origine Controllata, which is the Italian equivalent of the French Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée) covers almost the entire region and usually a grape variety is also mentioned on the label.

Chardonnay is the most important white variety, but Pinot Bianco, Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon Blanc, Gewürztraminer, Silvaner and Müller-Thurgau are also widely grown as well as the indigenous Manzoni Bianco, Nosiola – often used to make sweet Vin Santo wines – and Moscato Giallo.

Beautiful Trentino vineyards.

Pinot Grigio & Müller-Thurgau
This region is also the original home of Italian Pinot Grigio and while I freely admit that I am not a fan – why such an inherently boring wine style is so popular beats me – the examples from Trentino seem to have far more character and interest than those from the flat lowlands of Veneto and elsewhere.

One of the surprising specialities of this part of the world is the whites made from the widely unloved Müller-Thurgau which in Germany is the workhorse grape for the cheap wines like Liebfraumilch. However, in the right hands it can make very nice dry wines, try examples from Villa Corniole or the much more German sounding Gaierhof.

More beautiful Trentino vineyards.

As for red wines, the most important grapes are Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot together with Teroldego, Schiava (known as Trollinger in Germany and Vernatsch in the Alto Adige), Moscato Rosa, Marzemino, Enantio, Casetta, Lambrusco and Lagrein. I understand that as in Friuli there is even some Carmenère, but am not aware of having tasted any.

Try Trentino DOC wines from Agraria Riva del Garda, La Vis, Fondazione Edmund Mach, Cantina Roverè della Luna amongst others. One of my favourite producers was Moser who make Trento DOC sparkling, but whose still wines are simply labelled as IGT, sometimes IGT delle Venezie and sometimes IGT Vigneti delle Dolomit depending on the location of the vineyard. Their Riesling is superb and one of the best white wines I tasted on the trip.

If a bottle is labelled as simply Trentino Bianco or Trentino Rosso with no mention of a grape variety, then it contains a blend of grapes.

Our little group at dusk in the vineyards above the town of Isera.

Trentino DOC Marzemino
Although I enjoyed a wide selection of the Trentino DOC wines, my favourites were consistently the Trentino reds made from the Marzemino grape. This grape isgrown all over Lombardy too, but is the speciality of Isera, a commune down near the north shore of Lake Garda. I found them to be attractive dry reds with medium body, red fruit, smooth tannins and a mineral, savoury, herbal, almost earthy character that goes very well with the delicious local cuisine. Try examples from the excellent Cantina d’Isera.

The northern shore of Lake Garda from the mountains above.

Valdadige DOC (Etschtaler in Alto Adige)
This vast DOC covers both Trentino and Alto Adige and as such is only used for basic wine and so is more akin to a PGI / IGT.

More gorgeous vine covered slopes, I cannot get enough of them!

Trento DOC
This DOC (always spoken as Trento-doc as one word) is only slightly smaller than Trentino, but is for sparkling wines produced by the Traditional (Champagne) Method. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are the principal grapes, but Pinot Meunier and Pinot Blanc are also permitted. The wines must be bottle aged on their lees for 15 months for non-vintage and 24 months for vintage.

Stunning vineyards, photo courtesy of Cembra Cantina di Montagna.

I managed to taste a great many of Trento Doc wines and thought many of them were pretty good quality, indeed the best are very like Champagne and sadly sometimes have price tags to match. Ferrari are of course the pioneers and most famous producer, as well as being the most available in the UK, but if you get the chance do try wines from Maso Martis, Rotari, Càvit, Revì, Moser and Doss24 from Cembra Cantina di Montagna as well.

Stunning vineyards, photo courtesy of Cembra Cantina di Montagna.

The other DOCs
As well as these over-arching DOCs, there are some other DOCs in Trentino, some of them covering smaller, more specific areas and some straddling the border with Alto Adige:

Casteller DOC for light red wines made from Schiava, Merlot and Lambrusco grapes.
Sorni DOC makes lightish, dry reds from Schiava that is often fleshed out by being blended with Teroldego and Lagrein. The whites are usually based on the lightly aromatic and delicate Nosiola grape  together with Müller-Thurgau, Silvaner and Pinot Blanc.
Caldaro DOC, sometimes Lago di Caldaro or Kalterersee in German, is a large area straddling the border with Alto Adige and producing red wines from Schiava that is often blended with Ligroin and Pinot Noir. Often simple, easy drinking, the best can be very fine indeed, look out for the superioré and classico versions as well as the sweet Scelto made from late harvested grapes.

Our little group being lectured, for a very long time in the relentless sun, about Teroldego Rotaliano.

Teroldego Rotaliano DOC makes red wines from the indigenous Teroldego grape. Indeed it seems to have originated here and not really to succeed anywhere else. The Campo (Plain) Rotaliano is the flattest and lowest land around here and the wines can be very good indeed with rich fruit and smooth tannins. Superioré and Riserva versions are richer and more concentrated. Try examples from Foradori, Zanini Luigi and the Mezzacorona cooperative.

There are two possible sources for the name Teroldego, either from the tirelle trellis system the vines are grown. Or, and this is my favourite, so I hope it is the real one, from it being a dialect phrase for Gold of the Tyrol.

Looking down on the Campo Rotaliano.

So, as you can see there is a great deal to experience and enjoy in Trentino, and not only the wine,  so I highly recommend a visit, or if you cannot get there, try some of their wines, or beer, in the comfort of your own home.

Lake Garda’s northern shore.