Aging On The Vine - The Italian Connection



Wines from various regions of Italy


My friend R. visited us in Boston recently and invited me over to a wine tasting at his house in the suburbs of Philadelphia.  He said that it would be focused on Italian wine.  I said to myself, 'how much Chianti can a man drink?  And,  'I should fly to Philadelphia for this?'  Nevertheless R. is not only a close friend of ours, but a wine enthusiast and a wine blogger as well.


So I paid my requisite dues at home all week, to get permission to fly to Philadelphia to see a friend.







It is a distinct pleasure for me to return to Philadelphia. In a sense it is my wishing well.  I did my first studies in the U.S. here.  My first job.  My first entrepreneurial stint.  My family is here both in Philadelphia and the neigbhoring towns.  And many many years of coming back to recruit college graduates at the University of Pennsylvania, my alma mater.


So it was with pleasure that I landed in the airport and started driving to my friend's house.

Wines from around Italy

What R. had in store for us was a real treat.  He in collaboration with a Wine expert who teaches at the Philadelphia wine school, selected more than a dozen bottles of wine represented by the various wine growing regions in Italy (shown in the map above).  He had each region marked supported by a detailed description of the vintage, the type of grape and geography.


They ranged from unique white wines grown in a 'biodynamic' way or completely organically to the more famous sangiovese varietals.

Made the cut with Da Vinci

One of the wines from the winery Catello di Fonterutoli, is a Chianti wine.  The amazing story with this vineyard that it has been run by the same family for 27 generations!


In their guest register they have a commendation from Leonardo Da Vinci.



'The Queen'

We learned about the King and Queen wines of Italy - the Barolo and the Barberesco.  These are grown in only three towns in Italy.  Italy grows more than 800 varieties of grapes and only 300 make the official tally!

If ever you want to break out of the mold of Chianti for Italian wine, Barolo and Barberesco are the ones to reach out to first.



'The King'

Here is an excerpt from a ditty extolling the virtue of this pair that I composed and sent to R. the next morning:

"Ah, the king and queen
From Italy's countryside
Ruled the evening's roost
Our curtesy, surely bonafide"

Montalcino - A must try

Although when I first branched out of Chiantis myself, I fell in love with Montalcino.  This Brunello was a stunning offering in R.'s collection this evening.















The Evening's Winner by Vote


We had a vote at the end of the evening (how the counting was done with the mounting level of inebriation, I don't know; nor care to ask).  But the winner was a 1977 Emidio Pepe Montepulciano d'Abruzzo.  


For the record, I once had a colleague named Abruzzo (I'm just saying).

The  Montepulciano which normally is a light wine and should be drunk in a couple of years of bottling. We drank a 1977 which was bright and fruit oriented as a 5 year old wine and still had legs to last a lot longer. This wine had been stomped by foot, destemmed by hand, not filtered, no sulphur added, and had been bottled twice to naturally get rid of deposits. Some say ‘It is a force of nature’ as they have tried so hard to not intervene by ridding the process of winemaker’s tricks.


I enjoyed this wine a lot.  I accept the authority of its win since the three most knowledgeable people at the table - R., Frank and Frank's other student Brett voted this one in.

We tasted another wine that Frank called was developed by 'The Zen Master' - Bartolo Mascarello. This is the wine that the Sergio Esposito’s book Passion on the Vine gave over 6 pages where he talked about the winemaker. Very political, and in a wheelchair he hand painted his labels, one of which can be paraphrased ‘No Oak, No Berlusconi’. This wine evolves and changes in the glass and you can spend a couple of hours sniffing, sipping, sniffing, sipping and never having the same sniff or sip twice.


The above description is what I heard the masters at the table give. My own first reaction was, 'phew, get me a handkerchief.'  It felt like what one would experience coming across a stinky blue cheese for the first time.  Not that this was smelling like stinky blue cheese.  It was stronger!


However, when Frank explained that what we were experiencing was the smell of the soil of the particular village in Italy - and that is how you experience the wine - 'it is from so and so place.'  


That explanation turned this evening's wine tasting experience on its head for me and gave a new underpinning for enjoying wine and making the Italian connection.

Holy Wine - Popes drink this

To end the evening, R. selected a pair of dessert wines.  This one the 2005 Vin Santo del Chinati Montalbano Riserva Millarium, won the evening hands down with oohs and aahs from the visitors.  While my oohs and aahs were gaining fervr naturally with each new taste of wine during the course of the evening, the Millarium shook me out of my inebriation with a gusto that was positively divine.


At another point in the longish ditty that I sent to R. the next morning, this was the passage I recorded to honor this spirit, as it were.


"Mamma Mia
Rippled the exclamation
As the 'holy wine'
Was served to acclamation"


R. then took us to his basement where he collects wine and researches and relaxes.  It was a stunning collection indeed.

Philadelphia Wine School Teacher Frank extolling the virtue of R.'s collection

I mercifully crawled into bed in a nearby hotel and returned home the next morning before the family stirred out of bed.

My essay here is titled, 'Aging On the Vine', a play on the expression, 'Grapes on the Vine' (or the business phrase for declining projects 'Dying On The Vine').  True to the title, this experience gave flavor, luminosity and understanding to a very fascinating world that I know very little about.