Montevecchio Rosso 2011 (Heathcote)

Montevecchio is a new brand from the Chalmers family - one of the driving forces behind alternative varieties in Australia, both with their Chalmers Wines brand, their previous vineyard and nursery, and their support for the Australian Alternative Varieties Wine Show.

The Chalmers sold their original vineyard (from where I bought sagrantino fruit in 2007) to Macquarie. While much of the nursery stocks of rare clones, including the MAT clones imported from Italy, has since been bulldozed, the family also set up a Heathcote vineyard with a mixture of Italian and other varieties.

My first impression of the title 'Montevecchio' had me wondering if there was a chance of this being an exercise in passing off Australian fruit, winemaking and wines as if it were an Italian brand. But given the age of the Heathcote soils, the Mount Carmel range, and the clear badging of 'Heathcote, Victoria' on the front labels of the red and white blends and the moscato, I think this passes well.

The 2011 Rosso is described as a 'co-fermented field blend of hand-picked shiraz, lagrein, nero d'Avola and sagrantino'. The description has me wondering how many purchasers and drinkers would understand what 'field blend' might mean (not to mention co-fermentation)? Were the grapes picked at the same time and co-fermented as a single batch? Picked from one, mixed-block, or several mono-varietal plantings? Lots of room to move under that 'field blend' label, really.

Anyway, this is a wine of the cool, wet vintage rather than of the varieties involved. There is a bright, clean flow of light, crisp fruit all through the palate here. A pleasant, sour-fizz confectionery note is the main appeal. This is jug wine, in a good way, and has me thinking tapas as much as antipasti.

Purchase, $20, screwcap, 12.5% alcohol, website here.

Preston Peak 2008 Sagrantino

My first sagrantino from the Granite Belt. I first encountered wines from this region when I moved from Sydney to Brisbane at the beginning of 1995. Because long trips are best done with stops in wine regions along the way, I spent time in the Hunter (keen on semillon chardonnay as I was) and then a Granite Belt stop off out of curiosity. I haven't really kept an eye on Queensland wines since my early years in Brisbane, so when I heard good things about Toowoomba-based Preston Peak's Granite Belt sagrantino, I was keen to get a bottle to try.

It smells good, and like a sagrantino. Loganberry. Lots of loganberry. Purple and black fruits to smell and taste. The raft of tannin carries the fruit into the mid palate, but beyond that the fruit goes missing and only acid and tannin (mainly tannin) continues. Has promise, but also has that lack of fruit carry that can come from young vines. A producer, vineyard and variety to watch though.

Screwcap, 14%, sample, rrp $38, http://www.prestonpeak.com/

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.

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.

Coriole Sagrantino 2007 (McLaren Vale)

The back label text for the 2007 Coriole sagrantino reads:

"Sagrantino is the most recent addition to Coriole's range of Italian varietals. It has a reputation for being one of the most tannic varieties in the world, but with great structure and longevity. This wine will reward patience with careful cellaring."

There's an admirable Australian directness about that reference to tannins, kind of "right, we've said it, that's out of the way now." The wine is not as tannic as the back label suggests, but it is about structure. It is also about deep fruits, purple-black but shot through with red fruits notes. Some Umbrian sagrantino (not just the blended ones) show a touch of dried herb in behind the dusty, bitter chocolate characteristic of the variety. This wine has some of that chocolate, and good persistence to go with the structure, but needs some time to fill out and add further complexity.

There is a fear among sagrantino makers and marketers from the few Australian vineyards and wineries who have it that consumers will think it too cabernet-like. Yes, it is a tannic variety, but these are not cabernet tannins. With the grip, there is a dusty, gritty, sandy, nut-skin character to the tannins that, combined with the bitter chocolate notes, make for something distinctly Italianate (and very good with braised or roast pork; Umbria is the porcine heart of Italy, after all).

If I had to try and describe good sagrantino through an Australian frame, I'd say it has the structure, length, fruit intensity, depth and persistence of a top cabernet-shiraz blend, with Italian notes throughout the nutty tannins and bitter chocolate finish. But I think I prefer the Coriole label approach - take it on its own terms, with directness and honesty.

$45, cork, winery sample, 14% alcohol.

Australian sagrantino at the 2010 Alternative Varieties Wine Show, Mildura

The results, though not yet judging comments on classes, are out from the 2010 Australian Alternative Varieties Wine Show held in Mildura last week. My main memory of Mildura from my last visit is a very large speeding fine copped while running late for a dinner at Stefano De Pieri's restaurant. I didn't make it to the show or the seminars and other events that coincide with it this year, but the results provide plenty to chew over about where Italian varieties, blends and styles are at in Australia.

This is the first year sagrantino and sagrantino blends had a class of their own. It is also the year pinot grigio/gris 'graduated' to mainstream status and out of the show. But that's another story.

The sagrantino inaugural class had nine entries, from a spread of regions. Five bronze and one silver medal were awarded across those nine wines, making for a pretty high hit-rate by my books. Five bronzes and two silvers were awarded across 26 presented wines in the 2009/2010 sangiovese class, by way of comparison.

The show would be better served if the results identified wines using actual wine regions, rather than place names many people will not know. That aside the sagrantino roll call, in scoring order (points the last number in each entry, out of 60) is:

Terra Felix (Port Melbourne), Terra Felix Sagrantino 2009, 52.5, Silver.
Oliver's Taranga Vineyards (McLaren Vale), Oliver's Taranga Sagrantino 2009, 49.5, Bronze.
Amadio Wines (Felixstow), Amadio Sagrantino 2009, 48.5, Bronze.
Chalmers Wines (Colbinabbin), Sagrantino 2009, 46.5, Bronze.
Coriole Vineyards (Mclaren Vale), Coriole Sagrantino 2007, 46.5, Bronze.
Preston Peak Wines (Preston), Sagrantino 2008, 46.5, Bronze.
Chalmers Wines (Colbinabbin), Sagrantino 2008 45.0.
Andrew Peace Wines (Piangil), Australia Felix Sagrantino 2007, 40.5.
Gracebrook Vineyards (King Valley), Sagrantino 2008, 40.0.

For the results, see www.aavws.com/media/file/PDFs/2010 Results.pdf

I'll have to go to the AAVWS next year. In the meantime, I'll pull together as many of these wines as I can and have a good look. I like the looks of how the list covers NSW, Victorian and South Australian regions, across a mix of climates.

Spring in the vineyard

I quite like some of the dancing forms and shapes you can see in young vine shoots. This is a nine year old shiraz vine, taken tonight in the early evening.

The grafted sagrantino is waking up more slowly than everything else in the vineyard. The 2006 plantings of tempranillo and savagnin are all showing good early growth on those cane-pruned vines.
This photograph shows early shoot and leaf growth in the cane-pruned savagnin; looking like a good set of possible bunches.

Chalmers 2005 Sagrantino

The Chalmers family have done a lot for alternate grape varieties in Australia. Their old Chalmers Nurseries business brought many interesting grapes to field trials, to the market, and then to plantings around the country. Sagrantino (MAT1 and MAT4 clones) was one of their imports, with, if I recall correctly, the first vintage being released being the 2004.

This 2005 vintage sagrantino was made by Sandro Mosele at the Kooyong winery, but the fruit came from the Chalmers vineyards at Euston in NSW. These young plantings were the source of the sagrantino fruit I bought in 2007 for a trial make in part-amarone process.

The fruit in the 2005 is starting to thin out a little, though still offers preserved cherry and dark bramble berry characters, as well as an attractive, dusty, bitter chocolate note. It is a wine where the flavour of fruit and the taste of tannin are hard to separate. And it does have tannin. Serious, chewy, drying tannin.

I was in the mood for tannin, to go with a full-flavoured pork ragu and fettuccine, and this hit the spot. Bottled under Diam, if you have any of these left, I'd suggest drinking up this year before the fruit fades further. For what it's worth, I reckon this is a wine that would have presented better under screwcap than Diam.

Why bianco-rosso?

Inspired by the grapes and wines of Italy, as grown and experienced in Australia...

The point of bianco-rosso is to learn and share knowledge and experiences of the grapes and wines of Italy. This includes wines being made from Italian grapes in Australia.

bianco-rosso will feature reviews of Italian wines and Australian wines made with Italian varieties, as well as occasional pieces on wine tastings, events, Italian food, and my experience learning about growing Italian grapes.

The Quarry Hill vineyard at Murrumbateman in the Canberra District, where I volunteer, established sagrantino and sangiovese vines in 2009. The success or otherwise of these plantings will be a part of what I am learning about Italian grapes and wines, and will be shared through this blog.