Wine of the Week – a stylish Italian sparker

I have recently returned from a fascinating trip to the Soave region of Italy. It is a very beautiful and tranquil area centred on the wonderful city of Verona. There were many wines that impressed me and many experiences that stood out and I will write in more detail soon.

The beautiful landscape of Colli Berici just to the south of Lessini Durello.

However one group of wines did surprise me. The sparklers. This is because I simply had no experience of them. In the UK only one Italian sparkling wine seems to be important – Prosecco – and while it is dominant even in Italy, there is so much more.

Everywhere I have been in Italy recently there have been excellent quality sparkling wines. Sparkling Falanghina in Campania, sparkling Carricante on Sicily, Verdicchio in the Marche, sparkling Lugana in the Veneto and Lombardy, Franciacorta in Lombardy, Nebbiolo – both white and rosé – in Piemonte, Chardonnay in Trento DOC and many other I am sure. So I was excited to find yet one more – I find that life is always better with a bit of fizz.

Prosecco of course can be made over a very wide area, principally in the Veneto region, but also outside in Friuli, while most of these other sparkling wines are produced in much smaller regions and mainly using the traditional method.

Whilst touring around Soave though I was made much more aware of another sparkling wine from Veneto that has a great deal to offer.

Wine map of northern Italy. Lessini Durello is immediately to the north of Soave and Colli Berici – click for a larger view.

DOC Lessini Durello is a smallish PDO just to the north of Soave in the Monti Lessini, which is a lovely area that forms part of the prealps. Somewhat confusingly the grape they grow here is actually called Durella – the wine must contain at least 15% of this and can also include Chardonnay, Garganega, Pinot Bianco and Pinot Nero.

Riserva wines must be made sparkling by the traditional method followed by 36 months ageing on the lees, while standard – non Reserve – examples is only made by the tank – or Charmat – method, so the second fermentation, which produces the CO2 that makes the wine sparkling, takes place in a tank before the wine is bottled.

I tasted quite a few of these wines and was impressed. The only problem being that thy do not generally seem to make it to export markets. So I was very excited to taste one that does and have made it my Wine of the Week.

Settecento33 Brut
Cantina di Soave 
DOC Lessini Durello
Veneto
Italy

I loved visiting the Cantina di Soave, they are the big cooperative producer in the area, but make some superb wines. 

There is nothing too fancy about how this wine is made, it’s just very technical, clean and precise and that is pretty much how the wine tastes. It is made from 100% Durella.

One of the beautiful buildings belonging to the Cantina di Soave.

Everything about it is clean and fresh. The nose is floral and citrussy while the palate is pure and lively with a bracing acidity that makes the wine lively and refreshing. It feels more taut and classic than most Prosecco which gives it a feel of elegance and finesse. This is a very attractive easy drinking and versatile sparkling wine. It makes a great aperitif, goes well with light dishes, pesto and tortellini with sage and butter – 88/100 points.

Available in the UK for £10.00 per bottle from:
Oddbins.

So you see, Italian fizz does not have to be Prosecco!

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.