Castellari Bergaglio Gavi 'Fornaci' Cortese 2009 (Piedmont)

Sherried at the front, honey and lemon juice through the middle. Aromatics are quite subtle, lemon, pear and dry hay. Length is good, mostly about a salty, mineral character and the last bits of the mid palate. Like an aged cold and flu remedy, in a way. The kind of wine you like, but are not quite sure why.

Perhaps it is because I like the Cortese grape, something the Lost Valley winery in Victoria provided my introduction to.

This 2009 Gavi (a part of Piedmont close to Liguria) comes from the Castellari Bergaglio winery and the 'Fornaci' is a reference to a brick furnace that used to be found on their site. Tasted over three days, with and without food, and looked best on the second day.

Brought in by Trembath & Taylor.

Cork, purchase, $28-35 for the current vintage which is the 2012 pictured, 13% alcohol, website here.

Vecchie Terre di Montefili Chianti Classico 2009 (Tuscany)

The Vecchie Terre di Montefili site, between Panzano and Greve, is high (550m), rocky and low in soil fertility. Aside from the incongruity of those cypress (which reminds me a little of a Jeffrey Smart painting), you can see the stone and almost feel the sparseness of these soils, holding back the natural vigour of Sangiovese.

This 2009 Chianti Classico is 100% Sangiovese and is deep, dark and rich, especially to look at, where it is purple verging on black. Usually that would be a possible flag of blending, but this is all Sangiovese and all about the warm 2009 vintage. The rich, ripe fruit, full of black cherry and dark bramble berry, is reined in with varietal tannin washing over the mid-palate and carrying through the finish of the wine.

For my personal tastes, I would prefer a little less ripeness here, more brightness and red fruited character, but this is a balanced wine and would be a good match for richer Tuscan dishes like a peposo beef and pepper potter's stew. A good t-bone grilled over rosemary would suit this too.

Purchase, cork, $32-$40, 13.5% alcohol, website here.

Biondi-Santi Rosso di Montalcino 2009 (Tuscany)

Biondi-Santi's Rosso di Montalcino is intended for earlier drinking than their long-lived Brunello. The 2009 Rosso is a softly-spoken kind of wine. Quietly assured, no clamour for attention, no tickets on itself, but lacking nothing.

It shows how sangiovese need not rely on fruit for appeal. There is only a faint hint of cherry here, with the wine relying on a savoury balance of tannin and acid. There is perfume, softly so, and gently persistent length. Ample room for food alongside a glass of this and fair value for the pleasure it offered.

Cork, $80-$90, 13.5% alcohol, Mondo Imports.

Vinea Marson Sangiovese 2009 (Heathcote)

Recently, as well as getting through pruning, I have been reading Kerin O'Keefe's book on Brunello di Montalcino. Drinking the 2009 Vinea Marson Heathcote sangiovese brings to mind some of the wines O'Keefe writes about as too rich, too dark to be Brunello. To me, some difference is fine in an Australian sangiovese, as surely there are paths with this grape that do not start in Chianti and end at Montalcino.

But the wine, even stating a 13.5% alcohol, looks like Heathcote and warm weather to me, more so than varietal sangiovese. It is a good wine, will age well and sat up straight next to braised beef. The tannins say sangiovese but the heart of deeply purple, verging on black, fruits says something else.

Not $44 of value here, for mine.

Tenuta Sassoregale Sangiovese 2009 (Maremma, Tuscany)

Under screwcap and sub-$15 at retail in Australia is a pretty good start for an Italian sangiovese. From the Maremma, the 2009 Tenuta Sassoregale offers bright red fruits, a hit of tangy refreshment and a touch of varietal sangiovese tannin. The fruit does dip on the mid-palate and wash out somewhat on the finish, but this does not really matter if you have a plate of pork sausages on the table and a weeknight urge for sangiovese. Decent and another example of the value (and screwcap certainty) now coming in from Italy.

Hand-selling an Italian

Last year, I started to help out with Sunday cellar door work at Eden Road Wines, who bought the old Doonkoona vineyard and winery at Murrumbateman. It is a good spot on the Barton Highway and on the granite that runs through the two Clonakilla vineyards.

I have not worked directly in wine retail since a stint between 1991 and 1994 when I lived in Sydney. In those days, working as a wine waiter, I shifted bottles from a list split between Australia (Rosemount chardonnay, semillon chardonnay, TR2) and Italy. Many a bottle of cheap Chianti, raffia fiasco and all, did I flog, not to mention Frascati and verdicchio from the 'genuine' fish-shaped bottle.

On-premise to cellar door is a difference, but some of the performance is shared. Both are based on conversation as much as labels or price. I may have an unhealthy sense of the fun of retail, but it can be among the most social, and sociable, acts of commerce. Having a good list, with good values, certainly helps the conversation, and the Eden Road range makes for easy selling.

Within that range, there is a 2009 vintage blend of barbera (90%) and cabernet sauvignon (10%). The barbera fruit comes from the Grove Estate vineyard at Hilltops (around Young, in NSW) and the cabernet from a Murrumbateman vineyard. It's a wine I enjoy drinking, which makes selling it easier, but I've also found the cellar door sales experience with this wine to be an excellent test of what this blog is all about: the fit between Australia and Italian vines.

Only a very small percentage of cellar door visitors have any familiarity with barbera. More have some experience with Italian wines or varieties in general, but that number is still quite small. I have the barbera blend in the tasting lineup after the shiraz-based wines and the contrast in fruit profiles seems to serve the barbera well. The mix of ripe cherry and blueberry fruits (perhaps some of the blueberry is Hilltops as much as the variety?) with bright acid seems to be immediately appealing to most visitors.

The conversation that seems to work best with this wine at cellar door involves talking about food as much, if not more, than the wine itself. Sometimes we talk about Italian foods in general, other times about how the high natural acid in barbera fits with high-acid food (like a fresh tomato sauce for a simple pizza, or a vinegar/oil dressed grilled vegetable dish). Another line of conversation involves situations: how the barbera fits with circumstances such as going around to a friend's house or out to a BYO when the cooking, menu or group ordering is not known. Only occasionally is there much conversation about the details of the wine itself, such as what the 10% cabernet does to extend the wine and give it structure.

As good as the wine is, as settled into itself, barbera is still a hand-selling proposition at cellar door. But that hand-selling seems to be effective, and mainly so through a conversation where food is at least as important as the bottle. Maybe my own interest, or effort, pushes through here as well, but this wine sells, even to people coming to barbera cold. I wonder if that would be the case with a more tannic variety such as sagrantino or even sangiovese? Maybe a different kind of conversation, a different set of foods?

But I also find a distinct satisfaction in introducing people to something unfamiliar and seeing that introduction jump past doubt, over indecision and novelty, and into real pleasure.