Uncorked (13 page)

Of course, we also had our share of duds. I was very excited about a grappa tasting combined with a card lesson. By 1 a.m., we’d emptied six bottles (almost $500 worth) and the group was just getting warmed up—except for one slight young woman who passed out. Sip ‘n’ Cinema, our weekly free tasting and movie, was similarly hit or miss. One time it coincided with game four of the World Series.
Dead Calm
was exactly that. One person came.

Yet that second year was not spent entirely spitting with sales reps in the back of the store. When Becky and I went to Italy again in the summer of 2007 to visit my father and Lisetta, we felt we could not turn down an invitation to a nearby lunch organized by a consortium of wine producers in southern Tuscany’s Maremma region. For centuries, this coastal territory remained
unspoiled and sparsely populated as its low-lying marshland harbored malaria. In the 1930s, Mussolini filled in the swamps as part of a huge land reclamation project called the Agro Pontino. Although the region remains one of the least recognized areas of one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations, insiders are familiar with its pristine vistas, Italian cowboys, and, imagine this, rodeos. No wonder Sergio Leone shot his Westerns in the Maremma.

During the 1980s, the Marchese Antinori, who had vineyards in neighboring Chianti, was the first internationally recognized winemaker to buy land here to make his now legendary super-Tuscan Ornellaia. Based on a traditional Bordeaux blend, Ornellaia is bold, beautiful, and unabashedly nontraditional. It was a big hit, and other winemakers soon followed in the hopes of also making superpriced wines from these heretofore overlooked plots.

In the shadows of this formidable new generation of international wines, local producers with older vineyards hidden in the hills still struggle for recognition. Morellino di Scansano is the best known of the Maremma’s traditional wines. At its best, this Sangiovese-based blend can approach the sublimity of Brunello di Montalcino made just over the inland side of the same mountain, Monte Amiata. Sometimes, as with many Sangiovese-based wines, Morellino can be aggressively tannic, especially when young, and therefore not the easiest sell to an American looking for a bottle to drink tonight.

Overlooking terraced vineyards and the azure Tyrrhenian Sea in the distance, the tasting was held at a long table, with a dozen glasses at each setting. At the lunch were eight winemakers ranging from the fastidious Adolfo Parentini of Moris Farms to the easygoing Gianpaolo Paglia of Poggio Argentiera. Some of the vineyards sought to improve the traditional Morellino; others had planted new varietals with a clean slate. All were there to get us to buy wine.

Becky and I were embarrassed by all the attention. Our neighborhood store had been open only one year. We took assiduous notes and tried to remain poker-faced to avoid showing favoritism while clinking glasses and trying to keep up with the heaping plates of pappardelle (wide pasta noodles favored in the area) and cinghiale (wild boar).

We struck up a conversation with Roland Krebser, a quiet Swiss transplant and winemaker for a German-owned vineyard in the heart of the Maremma. Over the course of the lunch, Becky and I bonded with the genial organic farmer so focused on making the best possible product. Then we left.

On the heels of such a memorable experience, we decided to take up Fabio Burlotto on his offer to visit his family’s estate in Piedmont.

After six hours on the autostrada with my wife, mother-in-law, cousin, and son squeezed into our convertible with a broken top, we knew we weren’t in Tuscany anymore. Gone were the silhouettes of cypresses bathed in a golden glow. Gone was the lapping Mediterranean. Gone also was the sun. We were shivering.

But we were finally in Verduno, at the front gate to G.B. Burlotto, one of Barolo’s oldest-school producers. Looming behind the cast iron entrance was a meticulously painted façade emblazoned with “Comm. G.B. Burlotto” on a scroll. Underneath were depictions of three coats of arms and twenty-three medals.

It was also one of the few times I’ve visited Piedmont as an adult, and it made me realize how poorly I remembered Italy’s most famous wine area. In addition to being colder, this northern region was more sparsely populated than I recalled. Burlotto’s headquarters, an assembly of stunning old buildings in the center of town, was practically the only thing going on there. We were just an hour away from Turin, and there were more tractors than cars. For someone used to the scrum at the beaches of Versilia, packed with vacationing Florentines and Milanese, discovering Verduno was like finding rural Iowa next to Detroit.

I’d always been led to believe that in Italy the farther north one goes, the more developed, the more innovative, the more hell-bent on progress it becomes. Burlotto’s fattoria in Verduno, I imagined, would be like the Ferrari factory in Maranello, a famous icon that is now completely enveloped in urban sprawl. In reality, vineyards surround Verduno, and they have for centuries. On steep hills where tractors can’t climb, vineyard workers tend the vines. By the roadside are haylofts and dung piles. Burlotto isn’t biodynamic or officially organic (another laborious certification
in Italy), but it’s definitely green. Like many well-regarded vintners, their carbon footprint has always been small. That’s just how they make wine.

Fabio was also more at ease than I’d remembered. Gone was the wall-eyed aristocrat in the Hermès sneakers I’d met in New York the previous year when he came to our store on a sales call. Then again, I’m not sure how comfortable I would have been being dragged around from retailer to retailer by a sales rep eager to show off his trophy vintner. In place of the reluctant marketer was a soft-spoken, more confident winemaker wearing New Balance this time and in his element.

He was eager to show us around, and we were happy to be warming up. Our first stop was the cellar. Burlotto’s stone vaults, wine-stained floors, and ancient barrels offered a wine cellar as you always imagined it, a far cry from the stainless-steel vats and vaguely nuclear aesthetic that characterize many contemporary cellars. The competition may replace small Slovenian oak barrels (called
barriques
) every year to beef up the flavor, but here they still reuse massive old casks that impart a more mellow richness by limiting the wine’s contact with wood. One was even emblazoned with the seal of former King Vittorio Emanuele. And for good reason: Burlotto was a supplier to the royal household when Italy still had kings. The king brought Burlotto Barolo to fortify himself on an 1899 expedition to the North Pole, so convinced was he of its value. I could just imagine the packing list: Sleds? Check. Sled dogs? Check. Barolo? Check.

At every turn was a reminder of that illustrious history: pictures of his grandfather, great-grandfathers, and great-great-grandfathers. As we made our way through a series of interconnected structures passing through various courtyards and under
loggias (open walkways facing gardens), we finally came to the “tasting room.” Actually, that is a misnomer: this wasn’t a rec room slapped together to shill plonk to busloads of tourists out of plastic cups; this was a seventeenth-century chapel with magnificently restored frescoes and shafts of light dramatically streaming down from the cupola. After Fabio left to retrieve the wines, Becky and I looked at each other and let out a collective “Can you believe this?”

Burlotto, it became immediately clear, is a marketer’s dream: an authentic brand with a distinguished heritage, a product of passion rather than venture capital. The vineyard reminded me of Florence’s now-famous Farmacia di Santa Maria Novella, a drugstore that has been in business since 1381, whose lily-infused soaps are available at Barney’s.

When Fabio returned, he laid out a line of dusty bottles. Our first taste was of Pelaverga, that local and lesser-known varietal we had first tasted when Fabio visited our store. In New York, the wine had struck us as delicate and mysterious. Here, it was Piedmont translated into liquid. Talk about terroir! Our first Nebbiolo, the grape from which Barolo is made, was from their Monvigliero vineyard, a mile away from Burlotto’s Verduno winery.

Facing south, the vineyard produces riper grapes; the taste is slightly fruitier than typical Barolo but also a tad friendlier—still refined but something a California Cab drinker might enjoy. Slowly, we worked our way through the lineup until we reached the climax, Barolo Cannubi, named after the most famous vineyard in Italy. Cannubi is so well regarded that it’s now actually split up among a number of the area’s most legendary producers, such as Giacosa and Mascarello.

Ironically, as I’ve discovered in the store, Barolo is a harder
sell than one would imagine for a wine of such world renown. As esteemed as the “king of wines” is, Barolo suffers from an image problem. Like Sangiovese, Nebbiolo can be tannic when young, particularly in off years when the weather is harsher than usual. Until the 1970s, traditional but unsophisticated winemaking often compounded the problem. Just as with old French Burgundies, also grown in colder climes, Barolo’s good years were transcendent, but the bad were almost undrinkable: thin, alcoholic, and often bitter. The macho rep still lingers, and, not surprisingly, Barolo is still a steakhouse mainstay. But the reality is different, as we were about to find out. At last we were to taste the pinnacle of Italian winemaking from a banner year, meters from where it was pressed—still completely by human feet.

As Fabio poured the wine, one thing was immediately clear: Pale Nebbiolo is not a swaggering grape. Compared to Opus One, that paradigm of Napa inkiness made from Cabernet Sauvignon, this wine was almost translucent. Green tea to California’s Aqua Velva, the delicate smell was more intriguing than in your face. As we sipped, we were slowly enveloped. The scent lingers but whispers. Was that truffle? Were those plums? Barolo, we were reminded, is a wine that beckons you to discover it rather than broadcasting itself from afar.

It was the perfect moment: the chapel and the angels, the elixir and the shafts of light descending from the heavens. I’m surprised I didn’t end up speaking in tongues. I was shivering again.

“I’m hungry,” my son, Luca, cried, jolting me out of my reverie. “Let’s eat,” I suggested.

Four hours later, we finally stumbled out of La Morra restaurant, testament to the selfless generosity and true gentlemanliness
of a shy Italian vintner saddled with five American dinner companions. The meal was a haze. Truffles, I’m sure. Wild boar? Yes. That too. What really lingers is the magic of that low-key sophistication and of what was in that glass at the chapel.

Our shop has remained one of Fabio Burlotto’s most ardent supporters.

During our second year, I also learned an invaluable shortcut: to find good wine, turn the bottle around. On the back of each bottle you will find who brought it into the country. The imprimatur of a good importer, I discovered, is often a reliable guarantee of quality. The talent scouts of wine, importers are the intrepid explorers hunting for the next barn find. The best of them, like Kermit Lynch, are legendary for their ability to uncover gifted winemakers. Lynch, who also operates a San Francisco wineshop thanks to more lenient Californian liquor laws, was one of the first entrepreneurs to bring over small production wines.