La Magia 1992 Rosso di Montalcino (Tuscany)

Rosso di Montalcino as a 21 year old? These wines are often intended to be had while waiting for Brunello to mature. Good makers can turn out fine wines as Rosso di Montalcino, but even then they are not always intended to age. It can also be where declassified Brunello ends up, for good or ill.

La Magia is not an especially storied producer. The Schulz family, from Alto Adige, bought land for their fattoria in Montalcino in 1979 and are now on to their second generation of Montalcino growers, producing wines, grappa and olive oil. The La Magia vineyard is south of the centre of Montalcino, near the Sant'Antimo abbey. South of Montalcino can mean lower, hotter, earlier with sangiovese (not to mention the international varieties appearing in Sant'Antimo from the 1996 revision of the DOC rules). But that is not what shows here.

Sangiovese stars in this wine, in its aged form of leather and preserved meats. Cherried primary fruit is well and truly gone, but sour cherry acid and ripe, gripping, sangiovese tannins remain. So much to smell here, aged fruit and something verging on cola. Savoury the whole way along, but flecked with gentle spice. Fine drinking tonight with steak cut tagliata style. An eye-opener for me, in how modest Rosso di Montalcino can age.

Cork. Auction. $30 plus premium and shipping. 13% alcohol. Website here.

Occhipinti SP68 Rosso 2011 (Sicily)

A night out at Italian & Sons. A call for a red, something light, to go with the food. A section of the list as 'Pinot Nero & Others'. A blend from 2011 of Nero d'Avola and Frappato. Sicily. Occhipinti rings a bell. An asterisk to a footnote of organic, biodynamic or natural wine. Let's go then.

Beef carpaccio, garnished with fried capers. A beautiful dish, both with a 'wrong' negroni and then the first of the Occhipinti. Then a wet braise of lamb in the wood-fired oven, with peas, potato and globe artichoke. Pizza funghi on the table too. The wine so brightly red-fruited, so clean and clear. Raspberry and red currant from the nero. Sour strawberry from the frappato. So well stitched together. You don't even think about tannin, or analysis. You do think about a second bottle.

Hook in.

Cork. Purchase. Retails about $40 a bottle, more on a list. Brought in by Addley Clark. Occhipinti website here.

Isole e Olena Chianti Classico 2008 (Tuscany)

I cannot say I have my head around 2008 Chianti. Some big wines, some quite light & sprightly. No picture has gelled yet, so more shopping, tasting & drinking clearly needed.

Tonight, after a book launch and flying visit to Ainslie Cellars to taste Bryan Martin's new Ravensworth releases (including my second look at his 2011 sangiovese), it was time to grab a bottle and head to Pulp Kitchen for dinner. The bottle being the 2008 vintage Chianti Classico from Isole e Olena, one of my favourite Tuscan producers.

Deep, rich, dark. There are lots of purple fruits in this Chianti, with red fruits accents only to the main theme. But there is a beautiful wash of tannin; drying, ripe, nutty tannin, all through the wine. Ripe, but varietal. No loss of the sangiovese refreshment factor, even with the purple-fruited richness of the thing. Handled bread and oil, handled roast spatchcock, handled confit duck. Handled good conversation.

Not much more to ask of a Chianti, really.

$40, cork.

Carpineto Chianti Classico 2010

Good, ripe but not stewy, food-friendly Chianti for $20 or less... that sounds like the kind of wine I want to buy, drink and recommend.

The 2010 Chianti Classico from Carpineto is brought in by International Liquor Wholesalers and is 90% sangiovese with 10% canaiolo. Six months in oak, then 4-6 months of bottle age prior to release. Alcohol is 13%. Available at Dan Murphys for a $20. Good colour. Some varietal tannin. It is a touch over-ripe and slightly stewy for my tastes, just out-of-focus, but it sounds like a good package, does it not?

There's even an Australian-market-friendly English back label with useful information.

But there is also a cork. And a cork-tainted bottle. The kind of taint is just assertive enough that many people would not return the bottle, instead choosing not to buy any more, perhaps writing off Chianti (and sangiovese) in the process.

Simply not good enough.

Argiano 2005 Brunello di Montalcino (Tuscany)

Seven years can be the charm for sangiovese, much as it can be for shiraz. Seven years from vintage, cork gods being kind, sangiovese based wines not explicitly built for early drinking will have often taken on some softening of tannins without hollowing out the fruit.

This bottle of the 2005 vintage Brunello from Argiano drank well at dinner last Friday. A thank-you night for the people who helped me pick the sagrantino I have planted at Quarry Hill, we had dinner at Dieci e Mezzo in Canberra. After a Campari and soda and some Prosecco, we got into the food and this bottle.

A deep colour, there are pleasant candied cherry and nutty things to smell. And oak. Oak does show in the wine, but the fruit is not totally swamped. Argiano keeps their Brunello in oak for two and half years, starting with a year in French oak small barrels, before moving the wine to Slavonian oak in larger format botti for another year and half or so. A kind of new-school-plus-old-school approach. A bet each way?

There is oak on the palate too, but also ripples of sangiovese tannin. The overall impression is of fruit ageing gracefully, with oak as a buttress more than a distinct ingredient. Worth a look if you see it on a list and have a hankering for Brunello spread across old and new styles. I suspect the 2007 vintage is the current retail.

Website. $120 (list price). Cork sealed.

Older nebbiolo

In anticipation of what should be a good dinner this Friday at Scopri in Melbourne. The theme is aged Barolo and Barbaresco. I'm anticipating some of my prejudice against nebbiolo and in favour of sangiovese may be challenged by this lineup:

MONFORTINO 1952 G.CONTERNO

BAROLO 1955 RISERVA G.BORGOGNO

BAROLO 1962 RISERVA G.BORGOGNO

BARBARESCO 64 RIS. FASCETTO MINUTO

BARBARESCO 67 RIS.RABAYA' PRODUT.

BARBARESCO 70 RIS. OVELLO PRODUT.

BARBARESCO 1976 BRUNO GIACOSA

BARBARESCO 1974 PRODUTTORI

BARBARESCO 1974 JEROBOAM PRODUT.

BAROLO 1976 RISERVA G.BORGOGNO

BAROLO 1986 BRUNATE CERETTO

MONFORTINO 1941 G.CONTERNO

The two encounters I have had so far with well-aged nebbiolo have been underwhelming, but I have an open mind.

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.

Argiano 2005 Brunello di Montalcino

Brunello with a bit of age on it can be dead-right drinking with Italian grilled meats. There is something so right about the fit between charred meat and grilled nut-skin tannins.

Argiano's 2005 bottling of Brunello comes out light in the glass. Less an orange rim from development - more a wine that will have been light in colour the whole time. An observation from my dining companion: have you ever seen an Australian sangiovese of that colour? I struggle to think of an example of an Australian sangiovese that has the light-red sparkle in the glass, like a lighter-hued pinot, rather than a deeper red.

We have polenta fritters stuffed with gorgonzola, rosemary focaccia from the wood-fired oven, and some smallgoods (proscuitto & capocollo) to start. The wine does well. It does that Brunello thing of leading with tannin, then refreshing acid, then fruit tucked in behind. The tannins really do taste and feel like the skins of grilled nuts (hazels, especially). A tagliata, again from the wood oven, of beef crusted in salt & pepper, served on radicchio & rocket, with a horseradish sauce, also sits well with the wine. I finish with some truffled pecorino, the last of the wine, and a good short black.

Good eating (at Italian & Sons), good company and a bottle of Brunello. Enough to feel lucky about, really.

About $120 (list price), sealed with a cork.

A sagrantino dinner

A wine memory. 2006. A McLaren Vale connection, an invite through the Kay's of Amery, through Mark Lloyd of Coriole to a dinner with sagrantino wines brought back by friends of the Lloyd's from Montefalco in Umbria. The friends had decided to grab a bunch of the wines they'd brought back and put on a dinner at Fino in Willunga. Another layer to this: the wines had been put together by the people the friends stayed with, at a pensione just off the three-walled historic square of Montefalco. Generosity and friendship, folding over each other.

I hopped on a flight to Adelaide, then to the Vale. Good food, great service from Sharon Romeo, but the wines were my highlight:

- 1998 Adanti Arquata Montefalco
- 1999 Arnaldo-Caprai Montefalco
- 2001 Rocca Di Fabbri Montefalco
- 2002 Fongoli Montefalco
- 2002 Ruggeri Montefalco
- 2002 Scacciadiavoli Montefalco

- 2004 Murry Darling Collection (Project Wine Series), Chalmers (Euston, NSW)

- 2001 Adanti Arquata Montefalco Passito
- 2002 Ruggeri Montefalco Passito

The Caprai and the Scacciadiavoli were my pick of the dry sagrantino wines, with depth of fruit, clarity of expression, acres of ripe tannins and a dusting of bitter cocoa. The Adanti passito wine was also an attractive introduction to the traditional mode of sagrantino.

It was a great night, I was welcomed warmly by a room full of people who didn't know me from Adam, the wines were a gift and we only paid for food. An affirming moment of wine culture for me, and a night that confirmed why sagrantino is worth chasing - as a drink and as a vine.

Castellare di Castellina Chianti Classico 2006

Push, shove, on the spot - I'd go for Chianti Classico as my favourite Italian wine. Sorry, Montefalco and your sagrantino, just shaded.

There's a directness of pleasure from good chianti. Not so much hedonism as a sense of everything being just right, especially alongside a plate of Italian food. Brought in by Arquilla, this 2006 vintage Chianti Classico from Castellare is 95% sangiovese and 5% canaiolo. A beautiful cork, a moment in the glass to wake up, and this was away. Red, ripe fruits - nothing purple - refreshing acids and a lick of tannin to remind you what you're drinking, but all so nicely resolved. Made eating pizza even easier than it usually is.

I would have paid about $25 for this (the Riserva version currently sells for about $60 in Australia). A bluebird on the label too. www.castellare.it

Mapping Italian wine

Mucking about with maps is one of the things I do in my day job. There's quite an art to laying in different types of information to produce an arresting, engaging and memorable map.

I have recently come across Antoine Corbineau's national and regional map of Italian wine. Full of whimsy and playful images, the maps overlay history and the contemporary, including other produce and history of the regions.

I wonder what a similar map of Australian wine regions might look like?

Getting started

My earliest wine memory is Italian. A Sydney Christmas, I would have been thirteen, left with the dishes to do with everyone else in bed. A bottle of Donelli Lambrusco left out on the bench, amid the piles of pudding bowls and pavlova crumbs. A little sip... this stuff tastes alright. A sink of dishes, a bit of wine, more dishes, pour some more wine.

Nothing broken, slept as well as ever on Christmas. Years later, back to Italian wine and still find something quietly satisfying about doing dishes.

Pork skin, meatballs, red wine

What to do with a small piece of home-made pancetta, some pasta and a bottle of red wine?

Take a piece of pancetta, rind-on, about the size of the back of your hand. Soak it in water for a while. During the soak, braise some finely-diced onion, carrot and celery in a little olive oil until soft, adding some bay leaves, thyme and garlic towards the end. Lift the heat, add some white wine, bubble it off for a bit then top up with stock and chopped tomato. Add the soaked pancetta and cook the sauce out very slowly for seven hours or so (try a simmer pad).

Make some meatballs. All pork mince is fine. Get some garlic into the pork mix plus seasoning and grated zest of a lemon. Work the mix until it sticks to the bowl. You are aiming for lightness of flavour here and a worked texture, not something loose and open.

When the sauce is ready, pull out the pancetta. Strip off the skin and cut into small strips. Break up the pancetta meat and return to the sauce. Fry off the meatballs and then give them a little time in the sauce while you cook off your pasta (spaghetti works well with this). When the pasta is just shy of done, add it to the pan of sauce and meatballs and finish it off.

What you should have is a depth of flavour in the ragu and a lightness (leavened by the lemon rind) in the meatballs. The thin pieces of slow-cooked rind and the pasta will have textures that play off each other too. You might find yourself wanting more rind next time...

And for wine? Try a bottle of Masi's Campofiorin ripasso wine, using rondinella and corvina grapes. It has depth enough to handle the sauce, without overbearing the other flavours. I opened a bottle of the 1995 Masi Campofiorin, which looked like a good, aged red underneath the oxidised characters. Thank you cork. A fall back bottle of Preston Peak 2008 Sagrantino from Queensland's Granite Belt did a fine job as a backup bottle.

Expertise (fish, ponds, size)

A comment from wine writer, reviewer and maker Nick Stock at the recent ANU Wine Symposium is still rattling around in my head. Among a diverse range of arguments, observations, provocations and fripperies was a comment about how some sommeliers and other people in Australian wine were focussing on alternative grapes and wines because it was easier to be an expert there - easier to be a big fish due to the small size of the pond.

Nick named no names, so the comment floated free of any yoke to specific examples, but it got me thinking. I probably would not disagree with Nick that there will be some people who have a focus on the alternative and the rare because it is an easier path to expertise than say mainstream French varieties and wine styles. But I could not honestly say I know who these people are, that I could name them and would do so publicly.

Most wine people I know, in and out of 'the industry', even where deeply involved in the alternative or the rare, would hesitate to call themselves 'expert'. For me, the more I know, for instance about the grapes and wines of Italy, the more clear to me become the gaps in my knowledge, its limits and constraints.

If I disavow a desire to be 'expert', where does that leave me? As an 'enthusiast', an 'amateur', 'dabbler', 'dilettante', a 'practitioner' because I work with Italian vines and wines... (certainly not a 'professional' as that's tantamount to expertise)?

For my writing and blogging, I think I am happiest with 'student'. My knowledge is less than 'expert' in wine or in Italian wine, and suspect it will always be the case that there is more left to learn than I will ever know. And I think I'd rather share my learning than my expertise, whatever size this pond is.

Pio Cesare Grignolino del Monferrato Casalese 2009

Grignolino is a new grape for me. Reading up, I find it is one of the tribe of 'lesser' red grapes of Piedmont. Now quite rare in Piemonte, plantings cluster between Asti and Monferrato. The name refers to the many seeds found in grignolino grapes. Grignolino is sometimes described as making rose-like wines, of light fruit, freshness and often a somewhat orange colour. This 2009 grignolino from Pio Cesare is not like that at all.

The fruit is mainly fresh strawberry and sour cherry to smell and taste, and sparkles in the glass rather than blocking all light. In fruit character it somewhat resembles village beaujolais, but the tannins and acid say Italy to me. The integration of fine, grippy tannin and acid is excellent, stretching out together from start to finish, without dipping or coming apart. Genuine refreshment here. Not for drinkers looking for fruit-forward styles of lighter red wine, but well-suited to cut through a plate of lasagna or sliced smallgoods.

$33.25 at Dan Murphy's in a mixed six-pack, sealed with natural cork (about to fail, this one), 13% alcohol.

The numbers on Italian wine imports

The Australian Bureau of Statistics released March quarter 2011 data on wine sales and imports earlier this week. So what do they tell us about Italian wine being brought into Australia?

Annual figures have 6.607 million litres of Italian wine cleared for Australian import in 2009-10. The 2011 March quarter showed 1.604 million litres, up 23% from the 1.301 million litres of Italian wine imports for March quarter 2010.

New Zealand provided 63% of Australian wine imports by volume for the March quarter 2011, Italy the 2nd ranked source at 12.6% of imports by volume, just ahead of France at 12.5%.

By customs value, New Zealand had 59% of March quarter 2011, 25% for France and Italy at 8.5% share.

Underlying trends for Italian wine imports into Australia are positive for wine by volume (growth of nearly 20% in volume between 2001 and 2010). But over the same period Italian wine imports into Australia grew 29% in customs value.

Last look (Gran Sasso Montepulciano d'Abruzzo 2008)

What did I think of this wine in 2009?

This is very tasty. Great colour and good fruit intensity. Cracking value at $120 delivered for a case. Dangerously easy to drink with barbecued food, or pizza.

Where is it now, with my last bottle from a case?

Still good fruit, but less of it than previous bottles. As the fruit drops away, notes of astringency and bitterness sound out more clearly. Drink up now, if not already.

Top-notch value Italian drinking over a couple of years from a case delivered for $120. Not much more to ask for, really.

Castello di Gabbiano Chianti Classico Riserva 2006

Riserva chianti can sometimes be a story of same fruit but more oak, age and cost, not always to the benefit of wine or drinker. But there are good values around in riserva chianti. This wine, from Castello di Gabbiano, from a chianti vintage I like, can be found between $30 and $35 at retail and shows that sometimes riserva chianti can show good sangiovese character without excessive oak. A good foil to salt & rosemary foccaccia from a wood-fired oven, it also went well with bresaola and then a beef tagliata with rocket, horseradish and lemon. Purple fruits more so than red, it shows more fruit stuffing than many entry level chianti, as well as some attractive grainy tannins. Worth a look.

Dinner with pecorino and barbera

A relaxed dinner with friends at Italian & Sons last night. Trapped into drinking Peroni by asking if it was local or not, but then into good wines and food.

With a dish of sardines marinated in vinegar, onion, pine nuts & sultanas - a glass of 2009 Caldora Colle dei Venti Pecorino. Recommended by the waiter as a good match for the sweet/sour/fish/onion challenge of the sardine dish, this turned out to be a good recommendation. Not overtly fruity of definitive in flavour, the wine's most obvious characteristics were a light gold colour and a line of oxidative flavour (in a good way) that really worked against the fish dish. Somewhat like how the oxidative line and weight of fino or manzanilla sherry is also so good with sardines.

Even better drinking was a bottle of the 2008 Pio Cesare Barbera d'Alba. While the rest of the table had a round of pizza, I had the Thursday night special of White Rocks veal with marsala and king brown mushrooms. Excellent, it was, with the veal tender, the marsala well-judged and the mushrooms inspired. The balance, poise and acid of the barbera sat well against and across the savoury and sweet of the veal dish, as well as the different pizza I may have helped myself to.

So a good, relaxed time of Italian food, wine and conversation. Even if no one agreed with my dislike of Mad Men's version of late-fifties and early sixties America. A good short black and a glass of Nocello get me over these things.

Matches

Wednesday night dinner was a visit to the newish Dieci e Mezzo (half past ten?) restaurant in the base of the new ACTEWAGL building here in Canberra. With a chef ex of Otto in Sydney and some cluey owners, Dieci stretches across breakfast, lunch and dinner services, with a largely Italian menu (though does not pass itself off as such).

There is some good Italian cooking, respectful and daring, going on in this kitchen. Some excellent marinated fish and gnocchi were had. After a Menabrea beer while looking through the menu and list, two other dishes stood out for me as interesting experiences with wine:
- A savoury pannacotta made with a deft loading of taleggio cheese sounded like a good chardonnay match to me. The chardonnay (from the good winelist, as this is not really a BYO venue) was a 2009 Oakridge. The matching did not work at all. Even though the food texture was light and creamy and the cheese flavour restrained, the chardonnay needed more weight, texture and generosity to complement (and compliment) the food. As it was, the wine looked thin, tinny and green-edged, all bone no curve, and exaggerated the mild fungal note of the taleggio.

Moving on...
- Veal stracotto with kipflers and quail eggs. Lots of soft, stewy, sweet-edged savoury textures and elements in the stewed and pulled-apart veal. The excellent service at Dieci included a suggested additional salad that provided a contrast of light, bright, crunch and acid: pea shoots, inner leaves of red radicchio, pickled red plums, pistachio. A winner of a salad, and exactly what the dish needed.
The wine I had was a glass of Nerello Mascalaese, a red wine from a grape often overshadowed by Nero d'Avola. A little wild, brambly spice (almost reminiscent of mataro), a pulse of ripe tannin and enough easy acid to balance the sweetness of the slow-cooked veal. Tenuta Della Terre Nere the producer, if I recall correctly.

So the unfamiliar Italian wine the better match with both the braise and the salad, while the pairing I thought most likely did not work at all. But definitely a restaurant to go back to. Very different to Italian & Sons, but a strong addition to Canberra's options.