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| Tonight’s tasting Wednesday, September 6th from 6 pm to 8 pm $15 no reservations required + 10% off any wine tasted Pranzegg “Miau!Miau!” Vino Rosato Frizzante Alto Adige Italy 2022 Each vintage we struggle to stock an appropriate quantity of Martin Gojer’s aptly named Vino Rosso Leggero so that we have sufficient bottles of it to slake the thirsts of our heatwave-addled customers but also to pair with Thanksgiving, but our stock never seems to stretch beyond October. It’s a wine equally suited to a muzzy afternoon sitting in a shady spot, served cold as a refreshment while you ponder with your friends the fate of the world, but also one you might serve with a holiday meal, as it dovetails perfectly with artery-clogging dishes and cranberries. As folks both hither and yon have discovered the charms of Martin’s wines our allocation of this wine has dwindled, but that’s okay with us, as it means that the word is getting out. Martin makes the wine primarily from schiava, which translates as “slave,” an indication of a workhorse grape that naturally wants to yield an abundance of fruit, a variety that winegrowers can burden with producing overcropped yields. This is typically a recipe that allows growers to produce vats of insipid wine of which the best you can say is that they are vinous. The elders instruct us to deprecate workhorse varieties such as schiava in favor of noble, meager producers such as pinot noir, and to be sure, pinot noir is capable of producing some of the most profound things that you can put in your mouth; schiava not so much. But to reach for a crude example from music, I love Brahms, but do not listen to his profound Symphony no. 1 every day. Some days are Brahms days; other days are for Albert Ayler, or even Abba (ok, admittedly, very few of the latter). Martin’s tagline for his schiava is “schiava liberata,” and by freeing schiava from the burden of over-production, indifferent farming, and low expectations, he reveals an exciting facet of schiava that is brimming with vibrant acidity, low in tannins and alcohol, and low in mouth-coating extract. The tradition in the Alto Adige, which Martin observes, is to grow schiava on pergolas, which has the effect of taming the grape’s natural proclivity to go forth and multiply. Martin farms organically and ferments with wild yeasts. The resulting wine is It is indeed a light wine, but also one that has a sort of contradictory weightless depth to it. In addition to the Vino Rosso Leggero, we’re tasting Martin’s fizzy wine made mostly from the local lagrein variety, his orange wine, and also a fellow traveler teroldego from another gifted grower, Foradori (teroldego is a cross between schiava and lagrein). |