Lauren Wine: Bella Italia

Italian wine has always mystified me, as an impassioned lover of all things French probably the most I knew about Italian wine was what is on the Pizza Express Wine List (Montepulciano d'Abruzzo anyone?!). Over the past year or so I have attempted to rectify this. Italian wine has had a bad time over the decades, the overproduction still haunts its (now much improved) reputation and the mass immigration in the late 19th and early 20th century affected the production significantly. However from what I have recently experienced it is currently one of the most exciting wine countries and my trips there have been as enlightening as they have been enjoyable. On my last (Chateau Canard) blog I wrote about Puglia. The wine production there and in Sicily has been growing and evolving loads recently and the Etna wines are gaining the notoriety (and price tags) of their Northern Piedmont cousins. There are also some very refined Primitivos making the rounds in Puglia. I have also been tasting some fabulous Italian wines as part of my WSET Diploma course. Here they are below and I recommend every one of them!

Bearing in mind that I have a WSET Sparkling Wine exam coming up very soon, it felt like a good idea to take a trip to Milan. Milan is in Lombardy which is the home of the severely under recognised Franciacorta, it also happens to be just above Emilia Romagna, home of Lambrusco, just below Veneto, home of Prosecco and rather a bit further south than Piedmont the home of Asti or Moscato d'Asti. Funnily enough all these regions also produce outstanding still wines (for when revision time was over!).

The first night at a Roman restaurant Rugantino we got stuck into some Lambrusco. Fun, fizzy and fruity (strawberry and cranberry) I think is the best way to describe this, very easy to drink! Chiarli are a big producer and funnily enough the following week I met them at The Great Western Wine Tasting on Brick Lane where they had brought some of their more prestigious sparkling wines and very delicious they were too. Following that I tried for the first time a Lagrein wine, this is a native grape from the very northerly region of Alto Aldige which is a very interesting, almost autonomous region where they have their own language and the labels are often written in Italian and German! This was a wine with salinity and red and black fruit aromas and flavours, high tannins, but firm. This was an earthy wine with great depth and great value.

We were then plied with Grappa by the very friendly waiter who incidentally did nearly kill me by inadvertently throwing a glass at me, no harm done though, apart from the following morning's headache (Grappa induced).

The following day was another revision session. After an epic walk around the city we stumbled across a gem of a wine bar Don Tannino in the Brera district. It was happened upon totally by chance, and what a chance that was! The owner, Damiano is a total wine aficionado and was very happy to see me pointing and sniffing and swirling away at the wines and after we got over the language barrier (two hours of using google translate until we realised we could all communicate in French) great wine chats were had and many glasses of a fabulous vintage rosé Franciacorta (my first) and some wonderful Barolo, not to mention the lovely Parma ham and cheese foccacia sandwich (which paired really rather well with the Barolo!). We felt very at home and I now have a new Italian friend! The Franciacorta had a great onion skin colour, with a lovely sour dough nose, with softened ripe fruit, raspberry and pink lady apple, crisp acidity and with slightly savoury umami mushroom notes. The Barolo had the classic violets and cherry flavours with ripe and candied properties. There ware fantastic hints of black pepper and medicinal notes including eucalyptus. Big tannins which evolved from slightly grainy to velvety in the mouth with a beautiful lengthy finish.

Great Pairing!

Later that evening some Chianti Classico was consumed with dinner from the famous Tuscan producers Antinori with much veal! This was at the Tuscan restaurant Trattoria Torre Di Pisa.

It was a real struggle trying to eat that veal!

Some architectural culture was on the cards the following day with a visit to the Duomo and it's surroundings followed by yet more Franciacorta, this time by a super vintage Ca' del Bosco, again, great autolytic yeast notes, streaks of minerality and apple and peach featuring too with a bit of wet wool! Beautifully crisp acidity, this is fast becoming my favourite tipple!

And then dinner at the Milanese restaurant L'Altra Isola which was recommended by Damiano for their legendary Osso Buco which was necessary to pair with yet again more Barolo, this 2011 one had flavours of red cherry and vanilla with huge acidity and a touch of boot polish all held together with ripe red and black berries.