Wine tasting in Piemonte

Warning: wine nerd post

What a fabulous experience I had in this tiny little corner of the wine world.

Piemonte is where nearly all the Nebbiolo (the grape that the great Barolos and Barbarescos are made from) in the world is grown.  It’s certainly planted other places sporadically, with mixed results, but really it’s mostly just here.  Here in this somewhere around 20 km stretch of earth (and that’s the larger region) in Northwest Italy.  When you think about it, it’s just a speck on the map.  Astonishing that any bottle of Barolo that anyone, ever, has ever drank came from within eyesight on a clear day of where I am writing this.  I think that’s pretty amazing.

And sort of grounding in a weird way.  In this time that we live in when we can get pretty much anything anywhere anytime… I mean, with Amazon you barely need to leave your house….I like that there are still things that are only in one place.  And, sure, also at your neighborhood wine store, but even that bottle traveled to you from this one little spot on the globe.

Here is a map of the Langhe, the larger region:


And here is the vineyard map of Barolo, the tiny subset of the Langhe where I did all my tasting yesterday:

I’m not sure if you’ll be able to see it in this panoramic photo, but each little hill in the distance is a town with a castle (some repurposed and functioning, a couple abandoned). What you can see here is basically all of Barolo. This is taken from one of the towns on the edge of the region, La Morra:

I thought I knew what Barolo tasted like.  Cherry, leather, oak, dry, great with food, etc, etc…..and yes, it is all those things, but IN OH SO MANY DIFFERENT WAYS.  I had no idea.  I tasted some wildly different wines yesterday, all from this tiny region.  Some I liked, some I hated, some I would trade my car for.

From what I understood during my quick education yesterday, most of the differences come from the soil.  It changes from sand to clay to stone as you move south and east here (I think…someone correct me if I have that backwards).  Turns out I like the wines from warmer years and from the stonier-soiled areas.  They are big and muscular, but still oh so elegant.  Like a strong man in a perfectly tailored suit…. ah, but I digress… 

I am staying at a renovated castle called Castello di Sinio, located very close to the actual town of Barolo.  The owner, Denise Pardini, is originally from Luca but grew up in San Francisco.  She is quite the renaissance woman – a chef, a former tech executive, and all around wealth of knowledge about this region.  She arranged my driver and all my tastings for me, and kicked off my morning with a little primer on the region and its soils in front of the detailed vineyard elevation map in her lobby.

My first tasting was at Massolino, a larger producer that is still making their wines in the traditional way, which is to say using very large and old Slovenian oak barrels instead of new French oak barriques, and mostly blending the grapes from different plots rather than doing much in the way of single-vineyard bottlings (they do have a few).  I was sort of wondering what Denise was thinking…. the people there couldn’t have been nicer, but the wine was just ok, and it seemed like a boring way to kill my morning. 

Ah… but it turns out there was wisdom in Denise’s plan…it set me up to understand the rest of the day.

After lunch I went to Paulo Scavino, where I was met by the very charming Riccardo Sgarra.  Who, upon finding out I was from Colorado, immediately asked me if I knew Bobby Stuckey at Frasca.  I felt at home right away.  The good people in food and wine always know each other, don’t they?

Scavino is more modern – they still use some big Slovenian oak barrels, but mostly new French oak, and they take such care and pleasure in showcasing their different vineyards….Riccardo calls them their “children”.  All loved, but all different.  Everyone who loves wine has a hundred photos like this, but come on…. it’s so gorgeous I couldn’t resist…

And the smell in those rooms…I love it every time.  A grapey, musty, oaky, damp, old smell.  Like you just stepped into an old book holding a glass of your favorite wine.

My last tasting of the day was actually at a wine bar/store in Barolo, and Denise had listed it on my itinerary as a “master class”.  The class (of one) was led by the very enthusiastic, if (I’m just guessing here) slightly hungover, Stefano.  Stefano is a human encyclopedia of Langhe wines.  He is also an enormous George Michael fan.  So my phenomenal 2 1/2 hours of tasting with him was accompanied by every George Michael song ever recorded.  Some I had actually never even heard.  It was totally weird and funny and kind of perfect.

I tasted 14 wines, and absolutely loved 8 of them.  Stefano started with a couple of rather generic regional wines, then narrowed down, picking the next round based on what I liked best from the one before.  He literally clapped his hands with excitement when I described a wine that I liked using terms he considered correct for describing Barolo.  Stefano is one of those lovely people that makes you feel smart and charming even when you likely aren’t being either one.  

Buzzed and feeling smart and charming, I bought two cases to ship back.

Interesting side note here:  Stefano informed me that until recently, they could use any shipping company they wanted to send wine to the US.  But as of June, the administration slapped a bunch of new regulations on the shipping and importing of wines, and during the week it happened, hundreds of bottles from his store got hung up in transit – couldn’t enter the US, couldn’t go back – and spoiled.  Stefano is still understandably pretty angry about this.  He brightened when he told me the solution – they simply found a shipping company run by an Italian that had a friend in the administration.  Then he said “we lived under Burlusconi – we know how this works.  We know your new government better than you do”.  

Granted, this is just one guy that owns a wine store in one little town in Italy, but still.  It gave me a shudder to hear that.

To end on a positive note though, I have not in fact pretended to be Canadian on this trip as threatened 😉. I’ve found Italians so far to be friendly, kind, helpful, and stupendously generous.  Even, or maybe especially, to Americans.  They are justifiably proud of their cities and happy to give you directions or a recommendation for where to eat, the latter with so much enthusiasm it’s infectious. 

I’m actually finishing this post in Torino – I arrived in time for lunch and sat at a lovely cafe on one of the piazzas.  It’s a gorgeous city, looks almost Parisian.  I’ll head back out shortly to walk around and find some dinner.  Then off to Genoa tomorrow.

Cheers!

Traveling Girl