Cantina dei Colli Amerini, Terre Auree 2009 Trebbiano (Umbria)

My sagrantino issues threaten hopeless bias in favour of the wines of Umbria, though the whites from there are still mysterious to me.

This wine, from Cantina dei Colli Amerini, is 100% trebbiano. There is lemon, lemon cordial, a note of Bickfords lime, some chalky/talc characters, and a refreshing finish. While it is a bit one-dimensional, the acids are layered, lengthy and add genuine interest to the wine. 12% alcohol.

http://www.colliamerini.it/uk/azienda.htm

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.

Italian lamb, 2008 The Story Grampians shiraz

Sometimes for me it is easy to forget how well certain Italian dishes and Australian wines go together. Last night, a case in point: simple roast of organic lamb with rosemary, paired with the 2008 The Story Grampians shiraz. The lithe, savoury, bright aspects of the wine brought out the sweetness of the lamb and the crisp oily aromatics of the rosemary. More Grampians shiraz for me in this style, I think. The pairing would also have worked with the crisp sage and sweet, salty meat of a veal saltimbocca.

The simplicity and beauty of the single panel label, shown here next to developing fruit of a dwarf purple shahtoot mulberry, is also something to admire. And did I mention it is available for $22 a bottle and has good development ahead of it?

Sotto la pergola - new Australian Italian wine blog

Twitter is good for all sorts of things. It let me know that a few days ago a new wine blog came on to the scene. Sotto la pergola, or under the vine, is the Australian blog for Italian wine importers Trembath and Taylor.

The first couple of posts, including one on closures in the Italian wine industry, show some of the benefits of having direct knowledge of the Italian wine scene. Italian wine (even more so than German?) can be a bit of a maze, as my slow rate of learning is showing me. Great to see people with years of experience (going since 1994 as importers) taking the time to share knowledge about their passions and their business.

This also reminds me that I wanted to do some profiles of importers and distributors of Italian wines for this site: Arquilla, Mondo Imports, Bibendum, Douglas Lamb Wines, as well as Trembath & Taylor, are just some of what is an active import scene.

Alinga 2009 Sangiovese (Canberra)

This is the first sangiovese I have had from the Four Winds Vineyard at Murrumbateman that provides fruit for the Alinga wines. Advertised as hand-pruned and basket-pressed, the fruit is from vines of the 'Yarra Yering' clone (no longer grown at Yarra Yering, if I recall correctly). I am unclear as to whether this clone is the H6V9 clone brought in from UCD Davis in the late 1960s, or of one of the later imports from Italy in the 1980s.

The wine is attractive. Very much at the lighter end of the colour and fruit-weight spectrum, it shows best without being too cold. Red fruits, slightly medicinal cherries, good acid and some clear tannin. On night two, it had put on weight in the bottle and went well with beef dumplings, showing less acid and tannin and more the characteristics of a generic dry red. While more clearly varietal when first opened, it went well with food and is decent value at $19 a bottle.

Poggiotondo Cerro del Masso 2006 (Chianti)

Poggiotondo, or 'round hill' makes several wines, including a Chianti Superiore and this wine: a blend of 80% sangiovese, 10% merlot, 5% syrah and 5% colorino. Alberto Antonini is responsible for managing the operation, following in the footsteps of his father Carlo, who founded the original Poggiotondo property (called Cerro del Masso) in 1969.

This wine, sealed with Diam, offers appealing Chianti freshness: a lightness of fruit, tangy acid and some good length. The blending components seem to fill out the fruit profile, adding flesh and structure. I would not have picked the 5% shiraz in this wine, which made me wonder what difference the shiraz made beyond the impact of the merlot and the colorino.

Tasted over two nights, the wine went well with home-made pizza. Perhaps the best match of wine and topping was with roast jerusalem artichoke, mashed with confit garlic and fresh thyme, spread over the base and then topped with cubes of organic bacon.

The image is of Alberto Antonini tasting Poggiotondo grapes.

Path life

The last four rows of grenache are to go in today. Lots of time at ground level, working planting spears and dormant vines into soil, mulching, guarding. Lots to see at ground level - this fungi from a path in the front garden (dryland Mediterranean) at home.