Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Lunch with Luigi Ferrando (Piemonte)



On my last evening in the Valle d’Aosta Suzanne rejoined me to travel to Lake Orta (for a relaxing day at the lake ;), and then onward to Gattinara, Ghemme, and for the grand arrival at Spinetta.
On our way to Orta we would be passing right by Ivrea, where the lesser known (but worth knowing about!) wines of the Carema DOC hail from. It was a Saturday, but we thought maybe, just maybe we could stop by Ferrando for a degustazione. Long story short: whomever Suzanne spoke with at the winery then gave her Roberto Ferrando, who then called his dad, Luigi Ferrando himself, and the next thing we knew we were on our way to lunch with him. Only in Italy would they ever be that hospitable!

The Ferrando family has been making wine in the area for around 100 years now, though Luigi started in the late 60's right around when Carema was given a DOC (1967) - but more on the turbulence of that time below. Originally the Ferrando family sold most of their grapes to the Valle d'Aosta region, but in the early 70's Luigi bought his first very own vineyards and began making wine under his own label. The wines themselves come from steep slopes (and I can vouch for them because I drove past them - and after stepping foot in the Valle d'Aosta, I feel I can judge a book by its cover) and are in a conca or horse shoe shape. His first vintage of white wine made of the native Erbaluce) was in 1981, but the wine turned out brown and oxidative, so for some years they actually shipped their Erbaluce grapes to Friuli to have the wine made!

Here was our Degustazione:



One of the most interesting moments of the lunch was when I dared to inquire about the Canavese Rosso as it's exact blend is always a little up in the air. To this Luigi responded with an enthusiastic "Well that's a story!" (Granted, in Italian :)

As it goes, back in the 1960's when the DOC laws were first put into effect (and, in conjunction with the 1967 Carema DOC), the general Piemonte DOC only could be used for wines made south of the Po River... so, basically a regional DOC that actually only applied to 25% of the region - even if it was where 93% of the wine was being made at that time. Being so far north (on the border with Valle d'Aosta) Carema was completely shut out of a DOC unless they wanted to make Carema (which requires a minimum of 85% nebbiolo). On the other hand, the Canavese Rosso is comprised of 70% Nebbiolo & Barbera, with the remainder: neretto, fresia, dolcetto, & nebbiolo puro(?). Ironically enough, they have a Canavese Bianco - which I had seen during my summer at dell'anima. Turns out, this wine (100% Erbaluce from old vines dating to 1870!) was a private label wine they made for a local restaurant in Ivrea. They had a little more, so around 50 cases were exported to the US as a very inexpensive wine labeled "Canavese Bianco". Sadly, I believe all has been sold from dell'anima - and whilst we had no idea what a rare item it was!

All in all a wonderful lunch - probably more so because it came completely out of the blue! We also got to taste a couple of dessert wines that I had never gotten to taste: a wine similar to ice wine called Solativo which is late harvest and then aged 8 months only in stainless steel. (It's the only wine of its style made in the entire region!) Also a 2003 Erbaluce passito (in an unmarked bottle... didn't catch the name) that spent 4 years in oak (and was amazing!)

And to think all we had to do after such a lunch was get to the lake to relax...

Friday, September 18, 2009

LA SPINETTA - parte uno (Piemonte)


So, I admit it: I haven’t even finished telling you about all the cantine I visited in my first week in Italy. But I realized that I’ve officially entered my third (and final!) week at La Spinetta - and in Piemonte, for that matter - and it’d be an awfully long blog entry if I dared to squeeze everything into one posting! (Keep in mind, these first entries were mere day trips!) Not to mention, I'm dying to talk about moscato harvest - check out Suzanne & her multi-cluster! They were so intertwined that she had to cut all 3 bunches just to get the fruit off!

Before I launch into that, though, I’m also inclined to apologize, because with such a lengthy stay here I figured no need to play Japanese tourist like I did in the Valle d’Aosta and have my index finger glued to the shutter button on my camera. No, there’d be plenty of time for photos… except, now I fear I made a terrible error.

For one thing, most of the harvesting that I will do is done. The nebbiolo will be picked after I depart. (At least I got some good shots of Suzanne & I picking moscato our first day - see the album below.) But what’s really too bad is that the weather has drastically changed each week that I’ve been here, and it looks like my final week is going to be cold and cloudy with some rain. Alas, the views I took in of rolling hills of vigneti drenched in the late summer sun as I whipped around the narrow, twisting roads will have to live in my mind. Now the sky is bleak, the wind is chilly, and amazingly the leaves are already beginning to show that the colors will change soon. I can’t believe how quickly it went by, or that my first week all that anyone could do was wipe their sweaty brow and proclaim, “Fa Caldo!” (It’s hot!)

All the same, it’s been an amazing experience thus far working at La Spinetta. Every single person has been incredibly warm and welcoming and done their best to help me understand everything going on around me… albeit in a foreign language :) Granted, I was lucky that Giorgio and his wife, Anja, both speak English, and also Giorgio’s neice, Manuella, so I had some language relief (plus Suzanne came back for the first weekend!) But the person I’ve worked with most is a guy named Stefano who’s actually half French – born and raised there, so his Italian has a bit of a French accent. He’s been so patient and has managed to explain things to me in such an easy manner that sometimes I forget we don’t speak the same language! Occasionally I get tired of speaking in a foreign tongue and just start talking to him in English. The blank stare I get in return is all the entertainment (and motivation) I need to convince myself back into Italian for awhile. But little by little, he’s learning some English!

(Sadly, what I keep trying to teach him are American sayings or phrases, and by the time I’ve figured out a way to correctly translate and explain it the humor is long gone. The good news is that we’ve got the swears down :)

La Spinetta moscato Harvest


The first two days I was in the vineyards helping to clip grappoli (grape bunches) from the vines. Suzanne was with me the first day, and we helped to pick moscato in the morning from the Biancospino vineyard, and in the afternoon we picked Chardonnay. Since both of these varietals produce white wines the grapes are green (or sometimes yellow) in color… meaning they blend in with the foliage quite well. From the start Suzanne and I were commenting on how hard it was to see where the bunches were, and even then what we were doing as they were mainly deeply nestled amongst the sturdy leaves. Well, a mere hour into work there came a sudden gasp/cry from Suzanne – yep, she’d just snipped right into her thumb. Luckily it wasn’t too bad, and I secretly thanked her for being the one to prove that the clippers were definitely sharp enough to cut flesh. Fortunately, that afternoon - working alongside the experienced - we realized that they were ripping the leaves away so that they could see where the grape bunches were and, more importantly, where they were cutting. Good to know!

The fruit itself was perfect in form, and ranged from a vibrant lime-green color to golden yellow in places where the grapes had had more exposure to the sun (usually at the top of a hill, and more often than not at the end of a row.) These grapes with more sun exposure were definitely sweeter and not as firm as grapes that came from deep within the foliage, which were tarter (more acidic). But, as Giovanna explained, it’s good to have both as they balance each other out in the end. Also interesting was the general difference between handling moscato grapes in the morning and chardonnay that afternoon. Both the foliage and the grape clusters (not the individual grapes) for the moscato were softer, more pliable, whereas the chardonnay foliage was much scrubbier and tough, and the fruit seemed even more structured… kind of like the wines!

By the end of my first week I was working mainly in the cantina. My main tasks have included: helping unload the bins of grapes arriving from the vineyards (Moscato, Chardonnay, Sauvignon and Barbera) into the de-stemming machine, and a lot of hauling hoses around, turning on & off pumps when I’m told to, and constant cleaning. You don’t really think about all the extra pulp, seeds, lees (dead yeast cells from post fermentation) and just general muck that is a natural by-product of wine. While the most solid version (usually from the grape press) is distilled into grappa, there’s a ton more, called the “fundo”, which gets removed from a series of movements from tank to tank (or tank to barrel). See picture :)


Each of these “movements” or “decantings” is a process unto itself, and requires everything to be cleaned afterward… the tank, all the valves, the hoses, and sometimes the barrels. Then there’s the “jimmy-ing” effect of what to do when there’s a little more wine than there is room in the tank… Or when you realize that the new botte have to be broken down because they’re too tall to get through the doorway of the cellar… Or how to react when a hose springs a leak (happened today – a BIG leak at that! Italian curses flowing and half the room spray painted in barbera. Talk about excitement!)

Anyway, I’m sure you have a good mental picture of what goes on in the cantina. The next installment will focus a little more on my life here and some of the fun events I’ve been lucky enough to take part in (like some great dinner parties thrown by Giorgio!) Also, if they’ll let me document them, some pics of the guys I spend my days working alongside and some shots of the actual cantina. Then, I promise, I will bang out the other couple of places I visited (Antoniolo, Cantalupo, Ferrando, La Morra, and now even a weekend in Liguria…) as soon as I possibly can. It’s unfortunate, but all these amazing little wine towns in Piemonte are not exactly internet hotspots – as they probably shouldn’t be, but, hey, it IS invisible – no one has to know that my wi-fi card gets a signal! At least this weekend in Liguria I was able to hideout in my hotel room with hours of blissful internet. Oh technology, what have you done to me?

Signing off. And, in case you’re wondering, I definitely have opted for the Doogie Howser approach to this blog from here on out: Computer Diary awaiting internet upload when possible. It doesn’t get much geekier, and that part has nothing to do with wine!

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Morgex, La Salle & Arvier (Valle d'Aosta)

I believe Gianluca Telloli (the Co-Op president, and my guide to the scaling vineyards of Morgex, La Salle & Arvier) summed the day up best as he looked at my ragged disposition by late afternoon: "Un giorno intenso!"

Before I begin my run down of the "intense" days events, feel free to browse this album. It has some handy captions :)


Morgex, La Salle & Arvier (Valle d'Aosta)


That picture above is how my day started as I exited my agroturismo in La Salle. Though it was absolutely breathtaking, it was also a little chilly, so I thought it best to dress for cool weather... bad idea!

After arriving at the Co-Op winery to meet Gianluca we were off to visit many of the small vinyards in both Morgex and La Salle to collect grape samples for testing at the lab later that afternoon. Similarly to Donnas, Caves du Vin Blanc de Morgex & La Salle is also a co-op winery as the area has many small vinyards that couldn't really support their own operation, so they all combine their grapes together and then pick someone (like Gianluca, and the previous day Mario Dalbard) to run the show. Later, at the lab, we would test the sugar grams, the pH and, well, I'm not really sure what the final test was... When everything's delivered in Italian you're bound to miss something!

By the time it reached 10am I was dripping with sweat under a blazing sun amidst rows of short pergolas in Morgex. Since the town of Morgex is at such a high altitude the grapes benefit from being closer to the ground so that during the cool nights they can be kept warm by the heat collected in the soil during the day. (This drastic temperature difference is also what helps keep the wines dry, crisp, and brightly acidic.)

After observing tall pergolas the previous day (which one would obviously pick from below), I couln't help but wonder how one goes about picking grapes from these lower ones that hit around the waist. I also couldn't help but notice that most of the people who were working in these vinyards were short and stout... if that's not a case of survival of the fittest, then I don't know what is!

After Morgex we headed into La Salle, which is when things started to get a little steeper - especially towards the top. The vines actually reached even higher in La Salle than Morgex - check it!

From Morgex, La Salle & Arvier (Valle d'Aosta)


However, neither of these towns vineyards would prepare me for what I would face that afternoon in Arvier. Gianluca named his Arvier wines L'Enfer d'Arvier which translates to "the hell/inferno" of Arvier. Let me tell you, it's not just the heat that lent these vineyards their name - though that was pretty unbearable, too. The higher we climbed the more I had to utilize my hands to cling to the ground - which wasn't such a far reach as it was becoming increasingly more vertical. In the album there is a picture of old vineyards that were abandoned over time - I can completely understand why! How one could work these vineyards, much less haul the grapes down without overturning the bins completely escapes me. The monorail system in Donnas could DEFINITELY be of some help.
  • To my friends and colleagues at dell'anima (read:Clinton): I hope you all take this to heart as you sell bottle after bottle of Enfer d'Arvier wines. By no means should you stop - the poor souls who torture themselves by keeping these vines deserve a hearty return for their masocistic efforts. But please know the toil and effort that go into this wine even existing!

Much to my dismay, when we reached (what seemed to be) the top of the vineyards we kept right on climbing - Gianluca wanted to show me something he seemed really excited about. What turned into a 40 minute hike would have been totally fine if I had been prepared, but I was totally unprepared and desperately craving some water. All I could think was that whatever was waiting at the top of this mountain - a pot of gold, I hoped - had better be pretty damn exciting to warrent this spurr-of-the-moment mountail hike. At one point Gianluca asked me (after watching me pant, no doubt), if I worked out. My answer: "No. Lavoro in piedi." (No. I work on my feet.) Maybe that's a lame excuse to the rest of the healthy, fit, sport playing world, but I promise you that the majority of these people don't stand a good 12 hours a day.

In the end there was no pot of gold, but instead a very cool little cantina atop a mountain that dated back to medieval times. Gianluca mentioned trying to re-open it to the public... to that I suggest implementing a gondola system. He made up for it, though, by dropping me off at a spa at the end of the day where I spent an hour wading in natural spring pools then a good 20 minutes in some waterfall massage room. Not my typical place, but very much appreciated after a long day of steep mountains and Italian comprehension!

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Donnas (Valle d'Aosta)


http://picasaweb.google.com/nicholson.liz/Donnas?feat=directlink

I gathered myself my first official day in Italy from my friend Suzanne's apartment, where she had graciously welcomed me the previous night with a bottle of Vintage Tunina... followed by a late night amaro tasting :)

I had only one errand to run before heading off to the Valle d'Aosta: buy a wireless card so that I would be able to access this blog (and the rest of the world) from the get-go.... a lot of good that has done so far! Alas, here I am, a week and a half later, having driven a half hour to Alba from Castagnole so that I can finally divulge what I saw and learned that day in Donnas.

First off, my cellphone was registering an hour behind, so rather than being 10 minutes late it turned out I was an HOUR and 10 minutes late! Lucky for me, Mario, Guy and Bruno were extremely nice, and so long as I agreed to jumping right into the degustazione (tasting of the Rose, Donnas normale and Donnas Napoleon) they weren't bothered the slightest.

Also lucky for me was that Guy Dalbard speaks some English - something I already knew was going to be a luxury considering the woman who met me at the airport with my car - from a French/American company, albeit - instructed me on the features of my car and all the documents I needed available completely in Italian. Welcome to Italy, eh?

But back to Donnas, we began with a little lunch at the Co-Op restaurant before heading into the vineyards. This is where realization #4 from my opening blog statement first developed: I was definitely the most bizarre person in the room as a 28-year old American girl hanging with the guys from the winery. Local eyes stared upon me with.... I'm not really sure if it was disbelief, confusion, or just plain disapprovement. Regardless, the looks were there, and I realized that while I flew solo in New York City often, it was not exactly a common sight in Italy. (As I type this in a cafe in Alba I promise you I'm the weirdest person in the room.)

Once in the vineyards the slight uncomfortableness of my situation blew off and I remembered that I was looking at what I came there to see: secret-garden-like rows of tall pergolas - as you can see by the photos, almost too tall for me to reach! The Nebbiolo (Picotendro) vines were pretty fat from the August heat though they are generally harvested in early November. Ironically, when I referenced the nebbiolo as picotendro at lunch, Bruno was in such disbelief that it became his own joke to correct anyone who referenced the grapes as nebbiolo (reminding them, "No! C'e Picotendro!) for the rest of the afternoon.

The vineyards were really quite steep - so steep that they utilized a mono-rail trolly system in some vineyards as it would be just too difficult to haul the grapes down from the vines without dumping them all over the ground. Also interesting was the number of different vinyards we visited. Since the winery is a Co-Op the grapes come from several different privately owned vinyards, yet as the president of the Co-Op (and winemaker) we were allowed to show up at any of them just to check out the quality of the grapes. (Talk about VIP!)

All in all a very pleasant visit, and Mario wouldn't let me leave without a few bottles of wine - very generous of him. Most exciting one is a 1999 Donnas - I can't wait to study a bottle with 10 years of age since it is generally released (and drank) with only 4-5 years of age!

Friday, September 4, 2009

To The Estremi


Let me begin by stating that I'm having a hard time with this as my opening chapter title. For one thing, it's preconceived. But, mostly, it's what it represents: Planning.

A mere week ago - and for many months leading up to - I had a very different notion about what this blog would represent. It would be smart without being geeky, and it would meet the level of professionalism that I greet each and every one of these winemakers with. It would document this trip with the same seriousness that I first approached the topic of Italian wines with several years ago. But then I arrived, and within my first 3 days I had a few monumental realizations:

1. Liz & planning don't mix.
2. God has it out for me.
3. I am amazingly good at bluffing my way through instructional conversations delivered completely in Italian.
4. Women under 30 traveling solo through Italy is not normal.

Realizations #'s 1 & 3 I can't help but feel will be a reoccurring theme throughout my entire trip. Hopefully not #2, but it tends to be the effect of (or the scapegoat, at least) when I attempt to reverse realization #1. And, well, at least I'm prepared for awkward stares incited by realization #4. But I'm getting ahead of myself, as I often do. Realizations #'s 3 & 4 are for another entry, today focuses on #'s 1 & 2.

So that we're on the same page, though, let me give a quick overview of my master PLAN for the next 3 months in Italia.

I arrived during the last week of August in Milan with plans to depart for the Valle d'Aosta the following morning to squeeze in a few winery (or, as you'll hear me refer to them from here on out, CANTINA) tours before arriving in Piemonte on September 1st for moscato harvest at La Spinetta - when moscato harvest USUALLY takes place. Well, on the day I left the States I received an e-mail from the folks at La Spinetta letting me know that the August heat had escalated the grapes maturity... and they had already begun harvest. Now, La Spinetta is a fairly large winery, and they assured me that there would be plenty to do during my 3 week stay, and there was really no reason to be concerned about the early start.
...But when I got another e-mail from my second harvest in Trentino with Elisabetta Foradori - which was scheduled for a few days after my departure from Spinetta - I knew that something was up. Clearly God was out to punish me for even daring to make a plan... thus leading to realizations 1 & 2.

So far it seems manageable, and as far as I know the rest of the "plan" is still set. Or... at least, it is for 2 of the 3 months I am here. The final month is (currently) a hap-hazard trek through the south (solo... which you'll read about in the Valle d'Aosta entries), and I have absolutely no confirmations. But, to be honest, it now holds the fewest number of let-downs and most amount of surprises, so I've got that going for me. If the "plan" formulates as I projected back in New York City I will finish in Sicily at Terre Nere. That is, if Iano DeGrazia wants to follow up on HIS plan for me back in April. He seems to have forgot about me, and thus I may just show up knocking on his door. Hey, I got a lunch with Luigi Ferrando with an hours notice on a Saturday, so anything is possible.

Okay, so here's the part where I introduce the geeky wine aspect - which, truthfully, is gonna end up being the bread & butter of this blog. My wit can't really carry it THAT far (though I plan on interjecting with my own observations on la vita Italiana wherever possible). But, honestly, the actual trek through some of Italy's most noteworthy wine zones with apprenticeships and visits to some of the most prestigious winemakers is the real cause for my severed ties to my beloved city of New York, and my general notion of throwing all caution to the wind to embark on the ultimate wine journey. Mom and Dad, think of it as my thesis.

Not today, but shortly (I promise!) there will be links to each of the producers I visit with pictures to boast. Right now I'm just a little too tired from another long day in the cantina. See, it's starting already!

Ciao ragazzi, e buon viaggio!