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| Cantina Federiciane “Flegreo” Rosato Campania NV Raina Grechetto Umbria ‘24 Filippo Gallino “Moda Giuvu” Piemonte ‘23 Sassotondo Ciliegiolo Maremma Toscana ‘22 Raina “Rosso Della Gobba” Umbria ‘22 |
| 92 degrees by Thursday? WTAF? And yet it’s spring and not summer, right? I often fantasize about a way to somehow cache the cooler days in our psyches and flesh to quench us when it’s like this here in Los Angeles. I do live quite a lot in a fantasy world of dreams such as this, but also accept, alas, that it doesn’t work this way. How it does work, for us adults of happy livers and thirsty throats, is that there’s something subtle about how wine operates to cool your soul in ways that a cold glass of tap water or lemonade cannot. Part of this, I think, is a function of enjoying a glass of wine with friends, folks who can, if even for a moment, take us away from the cares of the world through delicious conversation, perhaps with the Oscars droning on in the background.
With cooling in mind, this week’s tasting features a selection of soulful, refreshing wines from Italian wine importer Lorenzo Scarpone’s “Villa Italia” portfolio, presented by our friend, the intrepid wine rep Bill Fernandez. Lorenzo, originally from Abruzzo, does a superb job of bringing us traditionally made, old school Italian wine: we typically stock a rotating selection of five or eight varied wines from his portfolio in the shop, depending on the season. Lorenzo’s selections rarely display flashy labels—no cartoon characters here—wines in which the energy of the vignaiolo is focused entirely on growing and making, sometimes to the detriment of packaging. We’re starting with a dry, brisk sparkling refreshment, a rosato made from piedirosso, a unique red grape native to the Campi Flegri zone of Campania. Campania is a landscape dominated by volcanic activity, and the Campi Flegri zone is no exception. It’s essentially a vast volcanic blob west of Naples, a scary super volcano that stretches into the bay. The soils here are basalt and tufa (basalt: what oozes out of a volcano; tufa, what explodes and flies from it), rich in mineral deposits. The wines made from piedirosso are typically lean (especially compared to aglianico-based reds favored elsewhere in the region), mineral-driven, and earthy, but in this week’s tasting, the manifestation is light, dry, zero-sugar, and fizzy, with a distinctive, haunting, fresh-strawberry vibe. To follow, a bone-dry, savory white from Umbria, made from the local grechetto grape. It does receive a couple of days of maceration, but I wouldn’t quite classify it as an orange wine. Speaking of orange wine, we’re following the grechetto with a Piemontese wine that is, unabashedly, orange-colored, made from arneis (as well as other traditional white grapes; Gianni Gallino is tight-lipped as to their identity). Arneis (in Piemontese dialect = “scoundrel,” a reflection of this frustrating to grow, low-yielding, disease-susceptible variety), a traditional white grape of Piemonte that nearly went extinct by the 70s but is thankfully having a well-deserved revival today. Gallino performs five days of maceration, and the result is a wine that’s turbid, definitely orange-pigmented, dry, textured, but not terribly tannic, and tastes of dried apricots if you subtract all the sugar. To finish, two reds: one, again from Umbria, medium-bodied, a vibrant blend of montepulciano and sangiovese; the other, a Toscano rosso made from ciliegiolo, one of the ancestors of sangiovese, fuller-bodied than the Umbrian rosso (but not a come to papa sort of wine). Neither of these wines sees any oak barrel, just honest, well-crafted exemplars of what to expect from modestly priced, traditionally made wines from central Italy. |