Maker's Table

Stepping Stone by Cornerstone

Cornerstone Cellars stakes its reputation on high-end California Cabernet Sauvignon and Oregon Pinot Noir. The winery recently released several new wines under its second label, Stepping Stone, including a Napa Valley Cabernet and two North Coast blends called “Rocks!”

Unlike Cornerstone’s main line wines, these new releases are vins de plaisir, made for early drinking and everyday enjoyment. It’s a somewhat risky strategy, since second labels can dilute a brand, and blends are often confusing to customers who associate a house with a particular grape.

These wines, though, display a grace and balance concomitant with the winery’s reputation. There’s evidence of a light hand in the cellar, and oak is modest. All three wines have a clarity and juiciness that keeps them lively. Pricing is modest, too, but good fruit and expert handling don’t come cheap. Both Rocks! blends sell for $18, grazing the ceiling of table wine affordability, and the Cab, at $35, remains a splurge for most consumers.

For the white blend, winemaker Jeff Keene drew inspiration from the light-bodied, aromatic wines of Friuli. It’s a curious blend of chardonnay and gewürztraminer, but for all its aromatics it manages to retain freshness and vibrancy.

For the red blend he looked to the earthy, chewy wines of Languedoc-Roussillon; this wine is a blend of zinfandel, syrah, and merlot. The Napa Cab draws its inspiration from, well, Napa—but old-school Napa. Its fruit derives from the same vineyards that furnish the winery’s top Cabernet.

Producing blended wines afforded Keene the freedom to select the best fruit and finished wines available. Blending does make the wines less about terroir than about the winemaker’s stylistic imprint, but fortunately, that style is about refreshment, food-friendliness, and approachability.

I spoke recently with Keene about his winemaking sensibility, and what he is striving to achieve with these wines.

 

Tell me about your winemaking style.

My winemaking philosophy is about acid and balance. We purchase all of our fruit. I’m not a fan of estate fruit, because I don’t like being tied in. I like selection.

I’m lucky enough to be sourcing fruit for reds up and down the length of Napa Valley, from some of the best vineyards. I don’t deviate from the great growers, because I don’t have to tell them how to grow grapes. We just have to be on the same page about what I’m trying to achieve.

There’s a lot I can control in the winery and cellar, but I can’t control the weather—I have to wait for Mother Nature and see what she throws at me. That’s the great thing about working at Cornerstone: it does have a style people recognize, but I can still let the vintage dictate the style we’re making.

 

What was your goal for the Rocks! wines?

We were talking about having an everyday drinking wine—something that you can come home to, it’s in the fridge all the time, you can pour it out and have a glass while you’re relaxing with dinner. I want it to show off its aromatics and fragrance, a touch of sweetness, but mainly some acid on the finish that gets you wanting more.

I’d love for serious wine consumers to enjoy the wine for what it is, and not over-analyze it. Just drink it!

 

What was it like putting together these blends?

Cornerstone is connected to Howell Mountain, but with the blends, I have the freedom to experiment with other varieties. We sourced finished wine from the North Coast appellation. We started with Napa, but my hands were tied. It limited what was available to me, and the cost.

They’ve actually been hard blends to put together, because the wines hadn’t come from my cellar, and I hadn’t followed them throughout their lives. I knew what I wanted to do in my head, and I was just waiting for the wine to show up.

 

Chardonnay and gewürz are somewhat odd bedfellows. What was your thinking behind the white?

The chardonnay is a blank canvas, and I add something to it to make it pop. In 2012, chardonnay is going to be a major component of the wine as well, plus white muscat. Again, I want those aromatics.

 

And the red?

I wanted to use varieties to give a little bit of perceived sweetness from the fruit flavors. The majority of the wine was stainless fermented, and the syrah and merlot had a little bit of oak. I don’t want perceived oak tannins coming through. I use it more like a spice rack, just a touch of seasoning. I’m choosing barrels because it adds to the mid-palate and length. There are only a few barrels I use to “add oak.”

 

I know it’s not a vin de garde, but do you think the red Rocks! has aging potential?

With the varieties like zin and syrah, and the merlot to keep that nice mid-palate juiciness, there are opportunities to develop some interesting bottle age. Sometimes we open it up and let it sit, and the zin flies away but the syrah pops up. It may have three to five years. It’d be interesting to try it. I’m hoping it doesn’t sit around that long! We have other wines for that.

 

Tell me about the 2010 Stepping Stone Napa Valley Cabernet.

Two thousand and ten was a difficult vintage, cool and wet. The vineyard management teams had to shine. Fortunately, I don’t have to hit case numbers, so I can make the best wine possible from the fruit I get.

This is the first 2010 red we’ve released, and a Cab as well, so in putting together the blend, I wanted it to deliver early. I wanted to make sure it was in the Stepping Stone style, but showed off what Napa Valley Cab can do.

One thing that’s great about this wine is that the alcohol content is 13.9%—truly 13.9%. It’s been great to make a wine like that but with the palate presence of a bigger wine.

With this wine at $35, if you put it on a wine list, you’re getting close to $100 in a restaurant. I wanted to make sure that I’ve put all my effort, my best grapes and barrels, into what wine, so people will get their money’s worth. That’s very important to me. 

 

Anything else?

I am very proud of what I’ve done. It’s wonderful to have been given a free rein to express myself in the top Cornerstone Cabs—Napa and Howell Mountain. I’d love to do 100% Cabernet, or Cab Franc, but I’d want to make sure I’m putting my best foot forward every vintage. So, while my aim is 100% varietal wine, if there are noticeable gaps, to my palate, I’ll fill those in.

We want to over-deliver. People are putting up good money to buy these wines. I want to make sure they really enjoy them.

 

 

T A S T I N G   N O T E S

Stepping Stone “Rocks!” White Blend North Coast
2011
13.5% abv | about $18 (media sample)

A blend of chardonnay and gewürztraminer. Pale clear yellow with aromas of green melon, tropical flowers, ripe citrus, lemon peel, and jasmine. This wine feels fresh and clean, with good acidity offset by lavish floral fruit flavors, like star fruit and melon. It makes a good aperitif, and has sufficient aromatic oomph to be poured outdoors for patio or picnic gatherings. Pair it with spicy Asian cuisine, sushi, young cheeses, or salads with a citrus dressing.

Stepping Stone “Rocks!” Red Blend North Coast
2010
14.5% abv | about $18 (media sample)

This blend of zinfandel, syrah, and merlot is deep violet-red with notes of black pepper and rustic herbs. It delivers a mouthful of black pepper, too, plus dark fruits. The oak is restrained, and the wine has good texture—chewy with a velvety mid-palate and a slow, earthy finish. A balanced and intelligent red blend. While it isn’t meant as a vin de garde, it’d probably relax after a couple of years of cellaring. Pair it now with earthy, robust meats, including pepper-rubbed steak, venison, or stew.

Stepping Stone Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley
2010
13.9% abv | about $35 (media sample)

The wine is 93% cabernet sauvignon from Howell Mountain, Rutherford, and Oak Knoll Districts, and 7% merlot from Carneros and Oakville, aged for eighteen months in 50% new French oak. It weighs in just shy of 14% alcohol, a rare distinction in Napa Cab. Deep velvet red with dark blueberry aromas top-noted by green herbs, it has a base note of smoky black berry fruits on the palate, with juniper berry and cedar. This is not a plush wine, and not showy; it’s a wine that knows its place at the table. It’s somewhat reminiscent of cool-climate reds from Austria and Germany, and was even more integrated on Days Two and Three. Pair it with red meats, mushrooms, and aged cheeses.

Palate Shepherd

I met William Allen about three years ago, online. At that point, he was tech exec by day, garage winemaker by night (and weekend), and advocate for Sonoma winemaking on his website, Simple Hedonisms. He seemed sociable and spirited, if slightly tinged by the Weltschmerz of one who must toil in the corporate world to finance an avocation.

We met in person a year later. By then his winemaking side gig had taken a more ambitious turn. He’d moved operations from his garage to a friend’s winery in Fulton, California, and started a new label, Two Shepherds Vineyards.

Although he’d made many styles of wine in the past, he had decided to focus his efforts on Rhône grapes, sourcing fruit from cool-climate vineyards in Russian River and Santa Ynez Valley. His approach was minimalist, picking on the shy side of ripe, fermenting on native yeasts, and using only tiny amounts of sulfur.

Two Shepherds’ first harvest was 2010, but the wines weren’t released until November 2011, after the obligatory struggle with the labyrinthine arcana of TTB approval. He now offers red and white blends, varietal Viognier and Grenache Blanc, and a marsanne-roussanne orange wine he calls “Centime.”

Critic Jon Bonné of the San Francisco Chronicle recently wrote admiringly of his Grenache Blanc. So did Virginie Boone. Mutual friends had effused about his wines, too. I hadn’t tasted any of them until this fall.

Accolades notwithstanding, my expectations were modest. This is where an affinity for narrative can work against a wine writer. Knowing a wine’s story doesn’t change its flavor, but it does change its significance. To me, William was the scrappy, underdog garagiste, a part-timer trying to get traction. I didn’t expect serious wines.

But these are serious wines. They have great finesse and gravity, plus a kind of ringing clarity. They have a delicious texture that makes them seem both earthy and polished. They love food. They also like air and warmth to open up, and change in the glass throughout an evening. They’re a bit mercurial, which is a good litmus test for interestingness. Many are just as alive, if not more alive, the next day. 

These wines seemed to speak a language I didn’t know William spoke. By doing so, they told me something new about him, and about my own preconceptions.

After the tasting, I talked with William about his work.

Why make wine?

It was just something I was compelled to do. I’d been making wine for years, but really got serious when I first moved to wine country. It was kind of hard not to. I’d been blogging a lot, and my focus in talking with winemakers was always technical. I started to test out those things myself. People were like, you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re just a garage winemaker.

How did Two Shepherds get started?

I had all these things I wanted to try, but there were so few people who knew about Rhône grapes. Nobody up here knew about working with grenache blanc. Anyway, you ask ten winemakers about anything and you’ll get seven different answers.

So I didn’t know I was going to start Two Shepherds. I just knew I was going to make wine in bond with Darek Trowbridge at Old World Winery. Because Rhônes are best as blends, but how the hell was I going to make seven barrels of wine myself, in my garage?

Why Rhône grapes?

When I was a garage winemaker I was all over the board. I’d done Sangio, Chardonnay. The Grenache Blanc motivated me to do this. Anthony Yount of Denner was an inspiration, one of the first to combine the brightness of Grenache Blanc with more complexity in the aromatics and mouthfeel. Grenache Blanc can be frankly a boring varietal. You have to look for the nuances, but they’re there.

One of the aesthetics of the brand is taking traditionally hot-climate varieties like marsanne and roussanne, ripening them in a cool climate, still getting phenolic ripeness, and bringing them into balance. I used to say “low alcohol,” but what’s important is balance. If I can also bring out wine with lower alcohol, that’s great.

Say more about your aesthetic.

Everyone uses “sense of place.” But sense of place is not only terroir and cool climate, it’s also the vintage. My wines will never be the same year to year, because the vintage won’t be the same.

I’m never going to call myself a natural winemaker. I’ve tried that route, and twenty parts per million of sulfur after malolactic will save your ass. There’s nothing wrong with a little sulfur. It’s been used for thousands of years, and will continue to be. But adding tartaric acid, water, tannins—that’s not winemaking.

Why “Two Shepherds?”

It’s a combination figurative and literal: “Shepherd of the palate, shepherd of the grape.” I make wine for consumers. I’m trying to get them to try something besides what they’d get at Safeway every day. So the “grape shepherd” watches the vineyard, then brings it into the winery and guides it into the bottle.

What’s in your way right now?

Money. I need to expand. I should do a more formal business plan and go out for funding. I need a passionate business partner, someone who has the same passion for Rhônes that I do, but has branding, marketing, accounting—all the stuff I hate.

What’s next?

I have a million ideas and want to do things that are new and innovative. I do massive experimentation and segmentation of lots. I’m not afraid to tinker, and if it’s bad, it goes down the drain.

I solve some of my problems by sticking to my core philosophy, which is to go simple. The second I start moving toward massive, stainless steel fermenting, I’d strip away everything that makes the brand what it is. In the Rhône, nobody buys new barrels anymore. You just wait until the old ones fall apart. In California, we talk about that like it’s an epiphany.

Each year I’m uncovering things that work well, and don’t work well. That’s a good reason to grow in increments. I’m not operating from a master plan. This thing happens organically every year.

 

 

T A S T I N G   N O T E S

Two Shepherds Vineyards Viognier Russian River Valley
2011
13.8% abv | $24 (media sample)
One hundred percent viognier from Saralee’s Vineyard in Windsor, California, harvested at 23° Brix and barrel-fermented in neutral oak with native yeast. The wine went through full malolactic. It was aged for four months in neutral oak on gross lees, then racked into stainless and aged an additional four months before being bottled, unfined and unfiltered.

Restrained stone fruit aromas open with air to yellow apple, laurel leaf, and wet stone. Lovely, creamy brioche notes mingle with flavors of yellow peach, stone fruits, and salty herbs. Restrained, with great minerality and acidity. It shows best between 55°F and 60°F. Although the winemaker maintains this vintage is less Condrieu-like than his 2010 (which I didn’t taste), it still evokes the Northern Rhône to me. Californian Viognier can be plush and syrupy, and I prefer the stony quality of true Condrieu, which this wine manifests. Serve it with crab cakes, lobster, seafood risotto, or a cheese course with a scattering of roasted nuts. 

Two Shepherds Vineyards “Pastoral Blanc” Russian River Valley
2011
13.8% abv | $24 (media sample)
A white Rhône-style blend of 45% roussanne, 20% marsanne, 20% viognier, and 15% grenache blanc. The fruit derives from Saralee’s Vineyard, with Brix at harvest from 22° to 23.5°. The grapes were fermented separately in neutral oak with native yeasts, and all went through malolactic.

Brilliant yellow gold color, with herbaceous aromas and a kind of savory silkiness on the palate. The roussanne gives the wine backbone and weight, but the blend feels lucid and beautifully balanced. It’s not a fruit-driven wine, and it’s not a showy wine, either. It seems meant as a versatile partner for food. I’d pour it with anything from roasted poultry rubbed with garrigue herbs, to butternut squash ravioli with browned butter and crisped sage, to pan-seared scallops with celery-root purée.

Two Shepherds Vineyards Grenache Blanc Santa Ynez Valley
2011
13.8% abv | $24 (media sample)
One hundred percent grenache blanc from Saarloos Vineyards in Los Olivos, California. The fruit was harvested at 22.9° Brix. The wine was fermented on native yeasts, then aged on the lees in neutral French oak.

Aromas of lime leaf, laurel, sage, and salt yield to a plush texture that’s balanced by great acidity. The wine feels spirited, almost nervy, but with a kind of lacy elegance that keeps it demure. Grenache Blanc shouldn’t be served too cold, and this one rewards languorous enjoyment, changing in the glass with air and warmth and time. Pair it with grilled fish drizzled with citrus butter, roasted chicken, or aged cheeses, especially old Gruyère.

Two Shepherds Vineyards GSM Russian River Valley
2010
13.8% abv | $32 (media sample)
A blend of 50% grenache, 25% syrah, and 25% mourvèdre. Grenache and syrah derived from Saralee’s Vineyard; the mourvèdre was from Livermore. All fruit was harvested under 24° Brix. The wine was fermented in neutral oak with native yeast, then aged ten months in neutral oak. The winemaker says this grenache was particularly pretty, very like Pinot Noir, requiring a deft hand in blending to let it express its charms.

Garnet red with aromas of beach rose, spice, white pepper, and rosemary, the wine is both wildly floral and tightly wound. It needed at least thirty minutes of air to open up, and was actually better the next day, relaxed and smiling. To me, grenache is about black pepper, berries, and wild herbs, and this grenache-heavy blend expresses this character well. It would be great with Provençal cuisine, particularly pissaladière, the aïoli platter, or black olive tapenade on grilled meats. Fittingly, it would also be great with lamb.

Mulderbosch Steen

Mulderbosch
Chenin Blanc Steen op Hout Wine of Origin Western Cape
2011
13.5% ABV | Price: about $14*

I've recently tasted some admirable—and affordable—Chenin Blanc from South Africa, so I was eager to try this low-priced offering from Mulderbosch.

This wine is 100% chenin blanc, a grape South Africans call steen, and was grown in the Stellenbosch district of the Western Cape. This is the oldest viticultural area in South Africa, with plantings dating to the 1600s, but these vines are still new to the neighborhood—average age: 32 years.

The grapes were harvested at an admirably restrained 23.5° Brix, and while 80% of the juice was relegated to humble stainless tank, the rest was sent off to ferment and age five months in French and Hungarian Oak.

It's savory. Yes, there are floral top notes of tropical fruits, white flowers, clover honey, and cracked white pepper. But the wine has a gorgeous vein of slatey minerals; an opulent, luscious body; and an glaze of oily citrus that adds shine and polish to the top. There's great acidity here, too, so while the finished wine weighs in with 4.3 g/L of residual sugar, it still feels fresh.

This wine has zing and charisma, and is a terrific deal at about $14.

*I received this wine as a press sample.

 

Hope, Hunter

Hope Estate
Chardonnay Hunter Valley
2009
13% ABV | Price: about $14*

I receive a fair number of wine samples, sent by a producer, importer, publicist, or social media impresario in hopes of a media placement. Bottles started landing on my doorstep in earnest a few years ago when I was writing both here and for Palate Press. The supply justifiably trickled out while I was working full-time for winery, but now that I've returned to writing for both publications, the sample taps are open once again.

I don't write about all the samples I receive, because some of them are frankly unremarkable, and disquisitions on unremarkable wines don't make very good reading. But I do try to taste through them all in a timely manner, partly out of respect for their supplier, and partly because I'm incurably goal-oriented. I like to let the bottle settle for a week or two after shipping, then pull the cork, taste it alone, taste it with food, and taste it again the next day to see whether it had the backbone to stand up to air.

Sometimes, though, a bottle will languish awhile, un-tasted, on the sample rack. This was one. It arrived, along with six or eight of its Australian brethren, on the exact date of a live social media tasting over a year ago. During such an event, a number of writers open their samples at a given hour, then chatter about them together online. It mostly works, although it's somewhat chaotic, and the preponderance of "me, too" updates adds drag to the proceedings. But it's a sociable way to share wine notes when a group of like-mindeds can't meet face to face. I couldn't keep up with the pace that night, so several bottles were sent off to the rack, where they reposed for a bit too long.

Unfortunately, these particular wines had arrived with no accompanying information—no write-ups on viticulture, vinification, tasting profile, lab stats, no information about retail pricing or distribution. It's not completely uncommon for samples to be sent naked like this, as some writers prefer to keep their tasting experience free from any information that might bias their judgment. They like to taste nearly blind. I don't. I like context. I like to know where a wine is from, what soil it was grown in, what grapes it contains, who made it, and how. I like to know why the winemaker thinks this wine matters. I don't think this knowledge changes my physiological experience, but I do know it changes my intellectual experience, fleshing it out with the particulars that give the wine relevance, provenance, history, and story. These things matter to me. A lot.

Here's another problem: a lack of accompanying information makes a sample even more unremarkable when I eye the rack with intent to write. So, not surprisingly, I've been getting around to opening the rest of those Australian wines slowly. Last January, I opened the 2009 Hope Estate Hunter Valley Shiraz, which I found to be funky, smoky, and earthy on the nose—somewhat reminiscent of rare red meat—and lively on the palate with flavors of coffee and smoked earth. But the wine lacked grip and structure, so it never made the cut as a formal tasting note (until, I suppose, just now).

A few nights ago I finally opened this Chardonnay, the white companion to the Shiraz, without great expectation. It had aged for a year beyond its release date, and most whites are meant to be drunk young, especially those at the low end of the range, where I could only divine this wine might reside (no sell sheets, right?). Sure, I could have researched the wine before tasting, and I often do, but I was feeling lazy. I just chilled it down, and poured.

It was a surprise. Brilliant yellow with flame green highlights, the wine yielded slightly funky oily citrus aromas with a hint of bay laurel and sage. The funkiness—possibly reduction aroma, as it had now spent some time under screwcap—blew off quickly, and the wine soon blossomed open with pineappley citrus aromatics tinged at the edges with buttery caramel. It had an unctuous texture on the palate, top-noted by the brilliant tang of stone fruit and lemony citrus. The wine seemed weirdly both juicy and buttery, and from one sip to the next moved back and forth between these two, mercurial and evolving with air and warmth and time. 

After tasting, I did finally scan the producer's website for information, and learned that they barrel-ferment their Chardonnay in 100% French oak barriques, then let it rest on lees for creaminess. But they work hard, they say, to retain the grape's dazzling, native zing.

Perhaps that extra year of bottle age was all to the good. I expect this wine had an awful lot going on at release—Lemon! Citrus! Herbs! Oak! Toast! Butter!—and that time has tempered it, mingling these together and yielding a wine that is, if not quite harmonious, at least more interesting. It reminded me somewhat of a teenager, gangling but pretty too, with a little too much makeup. Now I wish I had another bottle, to see how it grows up.

*I received this wine as a press sample.

 

Albariño, Salt

I've had a lot of California Albariño in the last two or three years, an inevitability of working for Bonny Doon Vineyard. Through 2009, fruit for their Albariño derived exclusively from their biodynamically farmed Ca' del Solo estate, a 125-acre patch of earth just outside the gates of the state penitentiary in Soledad, California.

Bonny Doon's '09 Albariño, which was released about the time I joined the company, was crisp and zingy, with notes of citrus, lemon rind, bay laurel, and sage. It was an incredible seafood wine, but its acidity and wild aromatics also made it great as an aperitif and excellent with fresh cheeses and salads. It became a staple of our cellar—or our countertop, really, because it rarely made it into cold storage.

By the 2010 vintage of the wine, the Ca' del Solo vineyard had been sold, although an arrangement with the new owner let winemaker Randall Grahm harvest the last albariño before the vines were ripped out and replanted with who knows what—probably merlot, if the gods were feeling sadistic. The '10 harvest was fleshed-out with fruit from Jespersen Ranch in San Luis Obispo, and while the wine was fermenting it was a true tangerine bomb. By bottling it had become more generally a citrus bomb, with lovely floral top notes of lemon grass and laurel leaf, the snap of grapefruit rind and green almond, and a long, silky finish. We drank a lot of that vintage, too.

One of the peculiarities of the Bonny Doon Albariño was a distinct brininess, a ringing crystalline minerality that crackled across your tongue. Perhaps the association was imaginative, but perhaps it was real. The Ca' del Solo vineyard lay near Salinas, California, and it's not called Salinas for nothing. The word means "salt marsh" in Spanish, and the Salinas River, which runs between two coastal mountain ranges before emptying into Monterey Bay, feeds an extensive aquifer that provides irrigation for the region's vast agricultural tracts. The coastal margin is washed by storms and fogs, tainting sweet waters with brine. When the sun rides high and the winds kick up, it dries the landscape mightily, and despite Randall's constitutional opposition to vineyard irrigation, he is a practical man, and in the years he farmed Ca' del Solo, he was obliged to irrigate his vineyard against these ceaseless winds. Over time, he observed his vineyard soil becoming ever so slightly saline.

This always struck me as poetically, if not agronomically, fitting, at least for Albariño. The grape's homeland is Galicia, in northwest Spain along the Atlantic coast, and it's also grown (as alvarinho) in the northern region of Vinho Verde in Portugal. Although it has been cultivated in Spain since the 12th century, it was mostly used as a blending grape until recent decades. In 1986, Spain established the Rías Baixas DO, the only exclusively white wine DO in the country, and this is divided into five subzones with varying terroir: sandy and alluvial, granite, slate, or a mix.

That region's maritime climate likewise pushes fog and cooling breezes up the coastal valleys, or rías, that reach inland nearly 20 miles. Albariño has a thick, protective skin that lets it succeed in these damp conditions where thinner skinned grapes might succumb to rot. But the region also receives ample sunshine, which dries the mists, leaving behind a rime of mineral salts that tasters say imbues the wine with a briny bite.

Albariño and salt are made together, and made for each other. Here's a Spanish version to try.

Martín Códax
Albariño
2010
13% ABV | Price: about $16*

Pale straw yellow with green highlights, this wine yields aromas of citrus and briny sea air with a slightly oily catch. On the palate it offers the bitter snap of grapefruit peel and lemon rind, and with air this wine opens further, yielding fresh, lemony citrus notes, green herbs, and a lean finish with zingy acidity. Clean, spritely, and refreshing, it would pair beautifully with shellfish, calamari, salted almonds, or fresh goat cheese.

*I received this wine as a press sample.

Altri Italiani

I recently taught a class on Italian wine. My research, so called, took me on a clockwise virtual tasting tour of the boot of Italy, from Friuli down to Apulia, from Campania up to to Piemonte. My primary goal for this class was to demonstrate the prodigious diversity of Italy's wine styles—not an easy task given that we could feasibly taste only six or seven different wines that night.

According to some sources, Italy boasts nearly 2,000 grape varieties in cultivation, and depending on the year, is either the top or second-largest wine producing country in the world. Unlike its rivals France or Spain, whose viticultural areas tend to be concentrated geographically, Italy is almost completely covered in vines—and has been for about three millennia. Indeed the Greeks, who essentially invented Italian viticulture by importing vines and winemaking practices into the region, called it Oenotria, "the land of trained vines."

Such viticultural diversity is due in part to the wide range of growing conditions and terrain. Italy spans 10° of latitude, from Trentino-Alto Adige in the north to Calabria and Sicilia in the south, leading to significant differences in solar exposure across the region. The spine of the Apennines runs almost the full length of the peninsula, and since most grapes are grown on hillside vineyards to leave the rich alluvial plains for food cultivation, elevation factors into consideration, too. So do the cooling sea breezes off the Mediterranean and Adriatic in coastal areas. The upshot is that micro- and mesoclimatic differences mean one cannot draw clean demarcations showing which parts of the country are viticulturally warm or cool, nor tag a region with a specific style of wine. The country is a complex mosaic of grape cultivars and production practices, and hence of wines themselves. 

It's also a mosaic of culture. Unified as a country only about 150 years ago, Italy retains its gastronomic regionalism. And since its wines are true gastronomy wines, meant for the table and, more significantly, meant to pair with the regional cuisine, the persistence of these myriad wine styles is hardly surprising. 

If any generalization can be made about Italian wines, it's that, on the whole, those that are made in a traditional style offer good acidity, moderate ripeness, and modest alcohol levels—all factors that make them very food-friendly. Reds with supple tannins, like Sangiovese and Barbera, and whites with crisp acidity and mineral notes, like Pinot Grigio and Malvasia, are extremely versatile partners at the table. Even those reds with pronounced structure, notable ripeness, and higher alcohol levels—like Barolo, Barbaresco, and Amarone—are decidedly not cocktail wines, not meant to be pleasing to the front to the palate. Rather, they're made to pair well with their regional cuisines, and deserve a little age, a little air, and a little food to show well.

So I realized in hindsight that my class was slightly misnamed. There's really is no such thing as "Italian wine," and certainly no easy route to understanding or mastery. But I wanted my students to taste that for themselves.

 

I wrote earlier about two of the wines I researched in preparation for class, a Brachetto d'Acqui and a Vernaccia di San Gimignano. Below are notes on the rest of the wines I poured, along with pairing recommendations. All wines were provided as samples by The Wine Crate, where I teach.

Terradora di Paolo
Aglianico Campania IGT
2009
13.0% ABV | Price: about $19

This wine is 100% aglianico, a grape that originated in Greece and was imported by settlers around Cumae, home of the famed Cumaen Sibyl (whose temple I visited in 1986). During Roman times the wine was very highly regarded, yet it retained an echo of its origins; until about the 15th century the grape was still called "ellenico," Italian for Hellenic or Greek. Terredora di Paolo owns 200 hectares of vineyards in the Avellino province, making it one of the largest wineries in southern Italy. Grapes are macerated for seven days, which affords good color extraction but keeps the tannins in check. The wine is aged in both wood and stainless steel, the latter to preserve its freshness. Its color is a deep ruby red, almost inky, and it yields minerally, smoky aromas of earth, tar, and pine forest, with top notes of black cherry, sage, anise, lavender, and brushy herbs. On the palate the wine offers smoky cherry, plums, and a pronounced deep, black earthiness with grippy tannins. The fruit is not pronounced, and the finish is all carbon blackness; it tastes like licking a volcano, but in a good way. The wine needs air and profits from at least 30 minutes in the decanter, which softens it and allows the fruit to stand forward. Pair it with roasted or smoked meats and game, aged cheeses, charcuterie, barbecue, bacon, and sausages. Marvelous with pizza whose crust bears a little char from the wood hearth. 

Cantore
Nero d'Avola IGT
2008
13.0% ABV | Price: about $13

Sicily produces more wine than New Zealand, Austria, and Hungary combined, and Nero d’Avola is one of its most important red grapes. The fruit for this wine derives from the west coast of Sicily, but ample searching yielded no information on specific fruit source or production techniques. The wine has a bright ruby color with aromas of fresh black cherry and subtle spice, and its firm tannins give way to pure dark berry fruits. This is not a complex wine, and it also needs at least 30 minutes in the decanter to open it up. But its acidity and sprightliness make it a natural pairing for food, including pizza, pasta with red sauces, stuffed peppers, polenta, and lasagna. Try it also with pepper-rubbed roasted meats, grilled meats and vegetables, and barbecue. Probably also quite good with spicy sausage pizza. 

Vietti
Nebbiolo "Perbacco" Langhe DOC
2008
14.0% ABV | Price: about $28

Langhe is in the extreme eastern region of Piemonte, and although most nebbiolo-based wines like Barolo and Barbaresco are quite tannic, this 100% nebbiolo is quite supple and needs no decanting. The fruit derives from 35-year-old vines, and grapes from each vineyard are vinified and aged separately. The wine is aged in barrel for 10 months, then in oak casks for an additional 16 months before bottling. The color is a light brickish red, limpid like a Pinot Noir. Aromas of anise and wild herbs waft above a red-meatiness, with a high top note of spice, especially clove. These aromas carry smoothly to the palate, with more meaty fruits, spice, and herbs. Extremely elegant, light- to medium-bodied with good acidity, supple tannins, and a savory, lingering finish. Serve with roasted but rare red meats, especially lamb, beef, and game, or pair with aged and blue cow’s milk cheeses: Asiago, Taleggio, Gorgonzola, aged Gouda, or Romano. Truly a lovely wine. 

Leone d'Oro
Pinot Grigio Friuli Grave DOC
2009
12.5% ABV | Price: about $16

The Order Sons of Italy in America (OSIA) created the Leone d’Oro lineup specifically for import into the U.S. The firm partners with growers and winemakers in Italy to bottle six wines: Chianti Colli Senesi, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, Sangiovese, Gavi, Prosecco, and this Pinot Grigio. The producer's website provides no information on this bottling, but some sources I found indicate it is a single-vineyard wine. The color is intense yellow-gold with green highlights. Aromas of pineapple mingle with citrus and a fresh grassiness, giving way to flavors of pear and ripe yellow apple with mild acidity and an overall softness. I detected a slight but not unpleasant tinge of oxidation, and this wine is more savory than many of its kind. Pair with light seafood dishes, including white fish, scallops, shellfish, and seafood risotto. It would also be good with semi-soft cheeses, especially goat’s milk or cassatica di bufala, and with antipasti or a spring vegetable soup with just a touch of cream. 

Scagliola
"Frem" Barbera d'Asti DOC (not shown)
2010
14.0% ABV | Price: about $20

Barbera, a Piemontese grape, is known for its bramble fruit character, light to medium body, and supple tannins, which make it an extremely approachable and food-friendly wine. These grapes hail from the Calosso province of Asti, and the vineyard sits at about 1,300 feet of elevation with soils of limestone and clay. The wine is aged in oak barrels for approximately 12 months. The color is ruby red with a faint brown tinge, and earthy aromas underpin notes of licorice, bright bramble fruits, and baking spices. On the palate the wine has good body and acidity, with bright cherry and blackberry, hints of sweet tobacco, dried fruits, and sage, plus smooth tannins. Pair it with grilled or roasted beef, lamb, salmon, or poultry, cured meats and charcuterie, and aged cheeses like Piave and Pecorino. Also a natural with tomato-based sauces, pizzas, pastas, and mushroom risotto.  

Vinosia
Malvasia Salento Bianco IGT (not shown)
2009
13.0% ABV | Price: about $16

The malvasia grape is likely of Greek origin, and the name derives from the Greek port of Monemvasia (known in Italian as Malvasia) from which large quantities of wine was shipped during the Middle Ages. The grape is also used to produce Madeira, often referred to as Malmsey, a further linguistic transformation. This Malvasia is actually a mix of three varieties of the grape: malvasia di novoli, malvasia di candia aromatica, and malvasia candida. The fruit was whole-cluster pressed with cold stabilization, and fermentation took place on wild yeast. It is pale yellow gold with aromas of white flowers, beeswax, honey, and straw. Beautifully weighty on the palate with great balancing acidity, it offers honeyed notes of lemony citrus with a bit of stone fruit. A slight oxidation note adds depth of character, and the finish is all honeyed tropical fruits. Pair with richer seafood like shrimp and lobster, antipasti with olive oil, the aïoli platter, grilled or roasted fish and poultry, and medium-bodied, semi-soft cheeses. I'd guess its fruit aspect would make it terrific with lightly spiced curries or Moroccan tagines. An extremely versatile and delicious white. 

Due Italiani

Cappella Sant'Andrea
Vernaccia di San Gimignano DOCG
2010
12.5% ABV | Price: about $15*

Neirano
Brachetto d'Acqui DOCG
NV
7% ABV | Price: about $18*

I've been teaching wine classes every other week at a tiny new wine shop in town. The store's proprietor has given me a lot of latitude in designing the classes. Pour whatever you want, he says. It's up to you.

So our first class was on Pinot Noir, because what better place to begin? We tasted a California blanc de noirs, a Savigny-lès-Beaune, and Pinots from Austria, New Zealand, Oregon, and the Russian River Valley. The second class, as a kind of reverberant response, an answer in white, was on Chardonnay. I showed a California blanc de blancs, a Chablis, a Poully-Fuissé, and Chards from Sonoma Coast, Russian River, and Australia. 

My aim in these classes is to demonstrate a range of expression, to see what grapes can do in different soils, climate, and winemakers' hands. I also want to introduce people to unfamiliar varieties, especially ones they might not otherwise take a chance on.

Class Three is about Italy. What wines shall we show? I asked the proprietor, as I gazed at the two-hundred and fifty or so SKUs on his shelves, of which perhaps fifteen or twenty—a sizeable percentage, given the range—are Italian. Again he said simply: It's up to you.

I pulled these two bottles down from the shelves, and bundled them home to begin research.

Vernaccia has been a favorite for many years, due in part to my having visited San Gimignano, the Tuscan hill town in which it's produced, when I was studying art history in college. The town is notable for its well preserved medieval towers, built partly for defense and partly as an expression of neighborly one-upmanship. The day we visited was cool and gray, with cobbles damp beneath our feet and May poppies like tiny jags of fire in the roadway gutter. Our ragtag band huddled at the entry of the town's highest tower, waving our student passes compliantly at the caretaker before mounting the untold floors to the top. Once aloft, we wowed and smiled and caught snapshots of each other surveying the town and its surrounding fields and vineyards. When one has thus taken in a landscape at a single swallow, one does not soon forget the taste.

And so, remembering, I chilled this Vernaccia down and pulled the cork. The wine is pale yellow gold, with aromas of yeasty pear and very faint herbal notes of lavender and thyme with fresh cream underneath. On the palate it's very savory, and slightly more bitter than it should be. A bitter almond note is typical of this grape, especially in the finish. But here the bitterness is a bit too strident, and there's a hollow spot in the middle where I expected citrus and ringing acidity. The finish is all bitter pear.

So this wine does not feel exactly typical, not quite au point. As a consequence this bottle won't make the cut for class, and I'll regret not having the opportunity to show the class the faded Kodachrome of my young self standing in the San Gimignano ramparts with a wide-eyed smile. 

The Brachetto was another easy choice. I'd had my first experience with this grape just recently, but as a still table wine rather than as this spumante style (I wrote about my experience in the post Brachetto, Birthday). There's a general prejudice among serious wine drinkers against sweet red wines, with special antipathy reserved for sweet red sparkling wines. This likely derives from a preponderance of regrettable Lambrusco imported into the U.S. during the 1970s and 1980s. But authentic Lambrusco, which hails from Emilia-Romagna and Lombardia, can be very good, and those with balanced fruit, acidity, and sweetness can be great partners to all manner of foods. 

Brachetto's hallmark is its aroma of wild roses, and the still wine I'd tasted was so redolent of the flower I found it nearly cloying. But I guessed the effervescence and acidity of a frizzante version would enliven the wine and keep it refreshing. 

The grapes for Neirano's bottling come from the Asti and Alessandria provinces of Piemonte. The must soaks on the skins for two days to extract color. Secondary fermentation proceeds according to the Charmat process in large pressurized stainless steel tanks, with bottling under pressure to preserve the dissolved gasses. The resulting wine is a deep strawberry pink with copious spuma. The bubbles transport soft floral aromas of rose petals and spring flowers, then scrub across the palate, subsiding in waves of flavor, including strawberries, red raspberries, and pink flowers. There is significant sweetness but just enough balancing acidity to keep the wine lively.

Still, this is a wine for a dessert course, not an aperitif; served first, it would make any subsequent dry wine taste astringent. Given this sweetness, it is best paired with foods that are at least as sweet as, and preferably sweeter than, the wine, and would work beautifully with berry tarts, fruit pastries, and pastry cream, and be a natural for brunch with the sweeter dishes. It would also balance saltier fresh cheeses like feta or ricotta salata.

The perfect pairing, though, is semi-sweet chocolate. I'm not generally a fan of red wine with chocolate, although this pairing has its acolytes. I find the wine's tannins grate against the bitterness of dark chocolate and make milk chocolate seem far too sweet. Neither complements nor elevates the other, which is my litmus test for a perfect pairing. But tasting this wine with its berry sweetness made my palate yearn for a little bitter snap, and I reached for a small handful of the Guittard semi-sweet baking pastilles I keep in my pantry. It was magical. 

So I'll pour this wine at the very end of our class, passing around a dish of pastilles, and call it dessert. I bet I'll see a few wide-eyed smiles.

 

* I received these wines as samples from the Wine Crate, where I also teach wine classes.

Heart of Gold

Edmunds St. John
Heart of Gold
2010
12.9% ABV | Price: about $20

This wine is a blend of 72% vermentino and 28% grenache blanc. It's its third vintage, made from grapes planted in 2005 on east and north facing slopes of the rocky Rome Vineyard, at 2,800 feet elevation. Harvest occurred in mid September and the fruit was whole-cluster pressed into stainless before undergoing a cool fermentation. The wine remained on gross lees until February and was bottled in mid March. Two hundred and sixty cases were produced.

The color is deep gold, which is striking for such a young wine, although it does have a faint greenish tinge. Restrained aromas of ripe pear and pineapple mix with faint notes of fresh grasses and mint. It has a pleasant acidity with a lean, minerally grit on the palate—that's the vermentino talking—but this is balanced by some fatness from the grenache blanc.

These two grapes are strange bedfellows, but they mingle and interplay well here, yielding an extremely versatile, food-friendly white that would be wonderful with fresh cheeses, risotto, seafood, and poultry.

Corse

Domaine de Granajolo
Corse Porto-Vecchio
2009
13% ABV | Price: about $14

André Boucher's Domaine de Granjolo comprises 20 hectares in the southern tip of Corsica. The granitic soils are farmed organically, and Boucher's daughter Gwenaele is the winemaker. This wine is 100% vermentinu (vermentino). 

Spritely aromas of bay leaf, sage, lemon, and citrus blossom rise to meet you. The wine has a smooth texture and succulent flavors of citrus and wild herbs, with a bitter cut that renders it cleansing and brightly refreshing. Lively, shimmering, and succulent, it would be a perfect mate for seafood, herb-roasted poultry, or fresh cheeses. Highly recommended.

 

Zing

Twisted Oak
Grenache Blanc "Calaveras County"
2010
13.2% ABV | Price: about $24*

This wine is 94% grenache blanc and 6% viognier. Only a few dozen cases were made. It's a very pale, clear yellow, just this side of colorless. In the glass it yields subtle aromas of green apple, stone fruit, tangerine, fresh straw, and sweetgrass. But its predominant characteristic is its zingyness, its bracing acidity. This is a very juicy wine. I would call it "citrusy," but that's more its effect than its flavor.

Sharp and cleansing and sunshiny, and probably perfect with oysters—which are this evening, alas, in short supply.

 

*I received this wine in an exchange with the winery; I sent Jeff Stai a bottle of Bonny Doon Vineyard's Grenache Blanc; he sent me this bottle of Twisted Oak's.