Wine at Five

Greetings!

It’s been so long I’ve forgotten how to write. I spent some time (most of July) in Italy, travelling through Tuscany (Chiantiville) and Bolgheri and then up along the west coast to Piedmonte. Along the way we drank through a whole bunch of Brunellos and Barolos, carafos and boutellos and I have to admit, the carafos (AKA carafe/table wine/vin de nonsense, vin so cheap) were generally the best bet. For just a few Euros a carafe of anything red or white was placed on the table and would fill 3 good glasses – 2 for me and 1 for the misses. Some things to remember when travelling through Italy in July/August are: Oenotecas and Trattorias are typically only open from 12-2.00. If you miss the feeding trough you’ll have to wait until eight. If you arrive late on a Saturday night expect to fast on Sunday. Nothing is open – no coop, no grocery store, no restaurant – nothing. The Roman Catholics obviously felt that it was a good idea to starve the sinners on Sunday. The bread in the gas station was stale and the milk was not from any cow that I knew! Stay away from Florence unless it’s sub-zero. The masses congregate and there seems to be a communal passing of urine at every street corner. Maybe that’s also why there is so much graffiti on each street corner – passing doodles whilst passing alcohol? Don’t take the translated version of a menu – we came across; Field of Salad with Walnut Tree, Field of Tomato with Mediterranean Sea, Cooked Rice with Stir ( Risotto), Pasta Bolognese New York. Do try to speak Italian – it causes instant laughter and is a real ice-breaker. Rent the absolute smallest car you can (we had a fabulous Fiat 500 – difficult to get uphill in 1^st gear but still great), because when, for the 20^th time that day, you see another town in the distance on the top of a hill surrounded by Poplar trees and looking quite beautiful, you will appreciate the small little car going round the tightest of hair-pins on the outside lane with a semi barreling down the inside lane. Personally I think Chianti Classico and Tuscany are beautiful but do them in April or October. The grockels are as bad as you get unless you are in Bournemouth.

We did drink some terrific wines en-route, most notably the wines from Burlotto (Piedmonte) – my wife and I began that tasting at 9:00 and finished, quite reluctantly, but happily at 1:00, and Poggio Al Tesoro from the coastal region of Super Tuscany, and two special wines from Lanciola – his Terrericci and his Pinot Nero. Once the traffic returns to normal in Rye we will stock the shelves with these wines. I also have a list of smaller wines that we drank throughout the trip and I am presently hunting down their importers.

In the meantime, we did luck out on a few wines that are quite special and that I was not expecting to see upon my return. Once upon a time there were three very wise wine-makers from the Rhone valley. They decided to conquer Spain and in 2000 they bought 50 acres of land in Priorat. The hillside vineyards require trained mountain goats to harvest the grapes, no small accomplishment if the goats are Spanish and you are French. The vines themselves were almost as old as their combined ages – the carignan vines are reputedly over 100 years old. This trio (Jean Michel Gerin, Laurent Combier, and Peter Fischer) make the Trio Infernal 2/3 and we managed (I’m not sure quite how), to take delivery of 5 six packs. This is probably the best Priorat made under $100 which is why we have it on sale at $49.00. The 2003 vintage is very good – not excellent, not like the 2004, but on the other hand when you have three of the greatest Rhone wine-makers making the wine chances are even in a lesser vintage they are still going to make outstanding wine.

The other surprise was a delivery of W.H. Smith wines – specifically the 2005 Cabernet from Howell Mountain. Bill Smith is a legend – once referred to by Robert Parker as the 2^nd most influential wine hero (I suspect he thought that he was #1), he began his career with La Jota vineyards which he sold to Markham Estates in 2001. That’s when he started making his own label wine – W.H. Smith. Very hard to get because he typically makes less than 300 cases and now that he himself has aged a little his wines are considerably less tannic than the La Jota wines and all that beautiful fruit from Howell Mountain just pours into the glass. It’s a good thing – trust me. We presently have only two cases but are working to get more – timing is everything so let me know if you are interested. We are selling it for less than the vineyard price – $38.00 per bottle (no discount).

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This entry was posted by WinebyCai on Thursday, August 19th, 2010 at 12:18 pm and is filed under Weekly Re'Wine'der Archive. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.