The Wine Curmudgeon

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.

Wine of the week: Tormaresca Neprica 2010

Background music for this post.

“It’s not going to work any more.”

“What are you talking about? We’ve been together since you started the blog – five years, five vintages. You need me. I need you.”

“I thought I needed you. But we’ve grown apart.”

“How can you say that? We were made for each other.”

“Maybe we were once. But not any more. You’ve changed this vintage ($11, purchased), and I don’t know that I like the changes. Where’s your Italian character, that darkness that made me want you in a way I never wanted another wine? Where’s the plum and earth that made you the blog’s favorite wine for so many years? Instead, you’re jammy and extracted, with gobs of red fruit and almost no acid for balance. I can get that anywhere – even from one of those California tarts.”

“Does this mean it’s over? After all this time, after all the wine we’ve shared?”

“You tell me. Should we give it one more chance, one more vintage? Or is it already too late?”

Wine of the week: Beni di Batasiolo Gavi 2011

Gavi is one of those Italian wines that lingers in a netherworld – not as popular as pinot grigio or even Soave and not always easy to find. But when it’s done well, it’s a wine that makes you go, “Wow, why was I wasting my time with all that crappy pinot grigo?”

Case in point is the Beni di Batasiolo ($14, purchased), which was everything I hoped it would be. This white wine is made with the cortese grape in Piedmont, where it has to vie for attention with some of the best-known Italian red wines, Barbaresco and Barolo among them. Is it any wonder it gets lost in the shuffle?

This wine has bright and fresh lemon fruit, some stoniness (or was that bitter almonds?), and low alcohol – the kind of balance that the best Italian white wines are known for. It’s surprisingly versatile, whether you drink it chilled on its own, with grilled seafood, or even with Tuesday night takeout.

Wine of the week: Feudo Arancio Stemmari Sangiovese 2010

The display at the wine shop did its job: “Sangiovese from Sicily!” How could the Wine Curmudgeon pass that up?

That’s because Italian sangiovese usually comes from just one place, Tuscany, and it makes some of the most famous wines in the world. It’s also not cheap. The Stemmari ($8, purchased), on the other hand, was cheap and comes from a part of the world hardly known for sangiovese. But regular visitors here know how much I appreciate the Sicilian wine renaissance, and Feudo Arancia is a top-notch Sicilian producer.

The Stemmari did not disappoint. No one will ever confuse it with a high-end Chianti or Super Tuscan, two of the best-known Tuscan sangioveses, but it tastes exactly like sangiovese. To be honest, I had my doubts whether it would. The wine is a little short, in that its flavors end abruptly, but what is there is varietally correct – sour cherries, a little earthiness, a little cedar. It’s just not as well developed as in a better quality wine.

Which does not imply there is anything wrong with the Stemmari, and especially at this price. You get more than $8 worth. Drink this with any red sauce, pizza, and even burgers. Just don’t tell a wine snob it’s from Sicily until after they taste it.

Wine of the week: La Fiera Montepulciano d'Abruzzo 2010

How does one improve on this wine, which was one of the best cheap wines I tasted lasted year? Do the same thing the same way, which is mostly what this vintage does.

The La Fiera ($8, purchased) is a red wine from the Abruzzo region east of Rome and made with the montepulciano grape (not be confused with the pricier wines from the Montepulciano region of Tuscany, which are made with sangiovese). In this, Abruzzo wines have always been poor relations to their more expensive cousines, but you can’t tell that from the La Fiera anymore.

The 2010 almost smells of violets (really), and retains the wonderful sour cherry fruit and Italian earthiness of the 2009. It’s a little heavier than the previous vintage (though the tannins are proper), but that’s not a problem – just pair it with red sauce and sausages. I’d also chill it a touch. The bottle sat in my 78-degree house for eight hours after I bought it, and the wine was just too warm. I’m pretty sure I didn’t taste all of the of the fruit. Which was too bad, because this is a wine one should get every bit from.

The Italian Wine Guy gets what he deserves

The Wine Blog Awards were announced over the weekend, which usually merits a short in the Tuesday winebits notes post. But Alfonso Cevola, whose On the Wine Trail in Italy won this year’s award for best single subject blog, deserves more than a short mention.

Yes, he is a friend of mine (fortunately, he wasn’t penalized for that). Alfonso is one of the good guys in the wine business, someone who cares more about sharing the joy of wine with others than with being famous or scoring points at someone else’s expense. His writing is often lyrical, and always on target. It’s about the way wine should be, and not the way wine has become. Which means, as Alfonso recently noted, no posts about the five top Super Tuscan trophy wines, but posts about how Italy got so turned around that it cares too much about things like that.

The voters for these awards did the right thing. That even made a crank like me smile.

Wine of the week: Bollini Pinot Grigio 2011

The Wine Curmudgeon doesn’t trust Italian pinot grigio. Since it’s a wine that people who don’t drink much wine drink, a lot of pinot grigio producers feel it’s their duty to foist poorly-made, over-priced wine off on them. Some of the samples I get are so awful that I pour them down the drain after the first couple of sips (with loud muttering under my breath).

So I haven’t done an Italian pinot grigio review in two years, and an Italian pinot grigio has never been a wine of the week.

Until now.The Bollini ($12, purchased) is everything the rest of those wines aren’t. It’s reasonably priced. It doesn’t taste like rubbing alcohol. Even more amazingly, it’s varietally correct. There are aromas of flower blossoms, just enough apple and pear fruit to be recognizable, and bit of minerality (and not turpentine) on the finish. Serve this chilled, either on its own or with almost any light summer dish. It would also go with pasta and seafood. I'd even buy it again.

This is the kind of wine that people who don’t drink wine would love; if you know someone like that, tell them about it. To be honest, I’m not quite sure why I bought the Bollini. I guess I was feeling guilty about my attitude toward pinot grigio given that one of my goals for the blog this year has been to be more accessible to non-wine drinkers. I took one for the team, and I’m glad I did.