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| Pranzegg “Miau” pét-nat of lagrein + schiava Trentino-Alto Adige 2021 Pranzegg “GT” orange wine Trentino-Alto Adige 2021 Pranzegg “Vino Rosso Leggero” schiava Trentino-Alto Adige 2023 Pranzegg “Campill” schiava Trentino-Alto Adige 2020 |
| The Italian word “schiava” means slave in English, and it would appear at face value to be an unprepossessing and uneasy name for a wine grape, or worse. The reality, however, behind the name is quite pragmatic and bland. Italy, like all of Europe, was (and in some places, still is) a country of peasant farmers. Historically, peasant farmers were paid by the weight of their grape harvest: the more, the merrier, and so varieties that were dependably heavy producers would, even if the resulting wine is less than transcendental, find their way into the farmers’ hearts. One of my favorite examples of this is the Sardinian grape, “pagadebit,” which translates as “debt payer.” Schiava too is a productive grape and if you push it, it provides obscenely high yields without making any undue demands.
A maxim for this sort of growing strategy is that the higher the yield, the lesser the wine, the logic being that each vine has a finite ability to make delicious grapes. By overcropping, you dilute the finite quantum of energy (nutrients, phytochemicals, etc.) a vine can allot to each grape and are left with an abundance of watered down, insipid fruit. But, like many truisms in wine, the truth of the matter is that it depends. Some grapes, such as melon de bourgogne can make lovely wine while producing obscene amounts of fruit, and I’ve had high-cropped schiava that was also lovely. But what happens when you reduce yields and lavish your schiava with near-obsessive attention? A grape that you might have formerly dismissed as undeserving of your attention suddenly shifts to “where have you been all my life?” I feel this way about the French variety grolleau (it too is a high-cropping variety), which, like schiava, is a grape that’s been playing a long game. Tonight, we’re tasting several schiava-based wines from a grower who is a bit of a schiava nut, Martin Gojer. His tagline is the operatic “schiava liberata.” Martin lives and works in the Dolomite mountains, close to Bolzano, a part of Italy where the miasma of half-remembered childhood cinema just might compel you wonder, “is this place even real?” In this mountainous region of small villages, impossibly nestled in steep valleys, it feels as if the Von Trapp family could burst into song at any moment. We have worked with Martin’s wines for many years and take quite a lot of his aptly named Vino Rosso Leggero (“light red wine”), a schiava that is light-as-a-feather, and fantastic served cold. To inaugurate this year’s vintage, we are tasting Martin’s 2023 VRL tonight, along with a more serious, single vineyard schiava with a few years of bottle age, his thirst-quenching pét-nat of schiava and lagrein, as well as his orange wine. |