The Wine Curmudgeon

Expensive wine 50: Contadi Castaldi Franciacorta Brut NV

The Wine Curmudgeon has never been able to figure out Italian sparkling wine, all those Proseccos and Astis, despite Herculean efforts from people like the Italian Wine Guy. And if those wines baffle me, you can imagine what I think of the newish sparkling moscatos, many of which are made with all the finesse of a 7-Eleven Slurpee.

Not all sparkling wine needs to taste like Champagne (long live cava!), but I appreciate the Champagne structure and style – firm, tight bubbles; a clean, long taste; and the balance between acidity and fruit.

That’s what makes the Castaldi ($21, sample, 12.5%) different from other Italian sparkling wines. It’s made with a couple of Champagne grapes (mostly chardonnay) and made using the Champagne method. The Franciacorta region, near the Swiss border, is the only area in the country where this is done.

And, as with well-made sparkling wine from Spain and elsewhere, it uses those techniques to make a terroir-driven wine. The Castaldi tastes like it comes from Italy  -- crisp, small bubbles and a bit of clean apple fruit that’s not a Champagne knockoff that oozes of caramel. Excellently done and much better than I expected.

This is Mother’s Day wine, whether for brunch on Sunday or to toast Mom for another year well done.

More about Mother's Day wine:
• Mother's Day wine 2013
• Mother's Day wine 2012
• Mother's Day wine 2011
• Wine of the week: Domaine du Tariquet Classic 2011
• Wine of the week: Casteller Brut Rose NV

Wine of the week: Il Poggio Rubicone 2011

The official name of this wine is actually a lot longer -- Il Poggio dei Vigneti Sangiovese di Romagna Rubicone – which is one of the contradictions that makes the Rubicone interesting. An old-fashioned name, yes, but a modern and professional wine.

Increasingly, there are two kinds of Italian sangiovese – the traditional, which I like but which don’t seem much in favor with the Winestream Media, and what I call the post-modern – Italian in label only. I did a tasting a couple of years ago where we paired a high-point Tuscan red made with sangiovese and a Texas sangiovese. Not only did the latter taste more like traditional Italian sangiovese, but the people at the tasting preferred the high-point Tuscan, which tasted like it came from Paso Robles. Maybe the Italian Wine Guy can explain this to me.

The Rubicone ($12, purchased, 12%) combines the best of both styles. There is a lot of juicy cherry fruit and top-notch winemaking, but also more traditional Italian sangiovese characteristics like bright acid and earthiness. It will please those of us who don’t want the traditional styles to go away, but also don’t want the flaws and off-flavors those wines sometimes had, as well as people who need gobs of fruit in their wine.

Wine of the week: La Fiera Primitivo 2011

One of the questions we got during our Savor Dallas wine event last week was about price: Is there really all that much good $10 wine?

Several people, knowing the Wine Curmudgeon’s reason for being, chuckled. I was actually quite restrained, since I was in public and did not not want to embarrass myself or the other people on the panel. Throwing things and jumping up and down tends to do that.

In fact, I spoke barely at all, and when I did it was to recommend the La Fiera ($8, purchased, 13%), an Italian red that is everything a cheap wine should be – varietally correct and indicative of its place, all the while treating the consumer with respect.

Primitivo may or may not be zinfandel; I’ve tasted some that had nothing in common, and some, like this, that show that the grapes are related. Look for some black pepper on the nose and more dark red fruit than I expected (zinfandel characteristics). This is not a perfect wine – the vanilla on the back was annoying and the wine would have benefitted from less oak or chips or whatever. But it cost $8 – how much more could I want?

Drink this with takeout pizza, any Italian-American dinner, or even hamburgers on the grill. I just hope the people at the panel take my advice.

Wine of the week: Cusumano Nero d'Avola 2011

One day, perhaps, Sicily will take its place as one of the world’s great wine regions. The Winestream Media will flock there, and its members will write glowing 94-point reviews about wines made with grapes most people have never heard of. The region’s winemakers will become celebrities, starring in glossy cover photos and showing up in wine gossip columns.

Until then, let’s drink the wine and not let anyone else know how well done it is.

Case in point is the Cusumano ($10, purchased), yet another Sicilian wine that is stunning in its combination of value and quality. It’s made with the nero d‘avola grape, common on the island, and one that gives the wine a dark, plummy and almost earthy character. Which, of course, is not what most of us expect from a $10 red wine. There is no sweet fruit, no winemaking alchemy to take out the tannins and smooth out the acid. You get what the terroir and the grapes offer, and that’s a drinkable, impressive hearty red wine of the kind not found often enough in California.

Pair this with a red sauce, roast chicken, hamburgers or sausage. And if someone asks you where you got it or how much it cost, mumble your answer so it stays our secret.

Wine of the week: Falesco Vitiano Rosso 2009

Consider these quotes from the Wine Curmudgeon’s previous reviews of the various Vitiano wines:

• "I sound like a gushing school girl. …”

• “Riccardo Cotarella is a genius.”

• “How does Ricccardo Cotarella produce a wine of this quality, ship it to the U.S., overcome the high euro, and sell it for about $10?”

Needless to say, I like the wines.

The 2009 Rosso ($10, purchased) is yet another triumph – a red blend of sangiovese, cabernet sauvignon, and merlot that is not too fruity, not too alcoholic, not too tannic, and not too acidic. In other words, balanced, as all great wine should be, whether costing $10 or $100.

The 2009 is more rustic than previous vintages, with some heft and a leathery feel, but this variation is one of its charms. Most cheap wine is made to taste the same from year to year, but Cotarella’s wines are better than that.

Drink this with any red sauce or any combination of beef or chicken with red sauce. It will be back in the $10 Hall of Fame when it appears next week, a testament to the concept that cheap wine does not have to taste cheap.

Wine of the week: Castello Montauto Vernaccia di San Gimignano 2010

We’ve had more than 250 wines of the week on the blog since we started, and this may be the most unique.

For one thing, the Montauto ($10, purchased) is a white wine from Tuscany, best known as a red wine region. For another, it’s made with vernaccia, a minor grape even by Italian standards, given that there are more little-known grapes in Italy than almost anywhere else in the world.

And it doesn’t taste like you’d expect an Italian wine to taste, which means it’s not for everyone -- especially for people who prefer anything but subtlety in their glass. Look for some white pepper and lots of minerality to go with a little lemon peel, and not much else. In this, it’s almost like an aperitif made with tonic water and vermouth. But it’s fresh and clean and very well done.

In fact, it was far from a wine of the week when I first tasted it, but the more I thought about it, that difference was part of the Montauto’s charm. It’s the sort of wine that fits the holidays -- light and refreshing, whether for drinking on its own or with Christmas oysters.

Wine of the week: Alois Lageder Pinot Bianco 2010

One of the great joys of Italian wine is also why Italian wine is so frustrating. There are too many wines and too many regions and too much to understand, but the thrill of finding a wine completely by accident makes up for all of the aggravation.

That’s what happened with the Lageder ($10, purchased). It’s an Italian white wine made with a German grape, pinot blanc, that is more popular in France than it is in Germany – but in Alsace, a region of France that used to be part of Germany. And if that wasn’t complicated enough, this wine is made by a fifth-generation Italian producer that comes the country’s far northeast, which is almost in Austria (as you can tell by Lageder, which sounds more German than Italian).

With a story like that, how could I not buy the wine? Best yet, the Lageder rewarded me for the decision. It didn’t taste like I expected it to – none of that Italian minerality or bracing acidity. It was a more subtle wine, fresh and clean but with a bit of richness to go with some apple fruit. In this, it was more Alsatian than Italian, though I paired it with my annual spaghetti carbonara dinner and it was exactly what the spaghetti needed.