Portovino Focus: Italian Wine

This Wednesday we welcome the importers from Portovino, one of our
absolute favorite importers. For years now they've been quietly
amassing one of the finest natural Italian wine books in the country.
It isn't a flashy book, there is little in the way of heavyweight,
expensive appellations. Instead it's focused on little known regions
and grapes, and clean, drinkable natural wines. We'll have a pretty
broad variety on Wednesday, and this is what I'll be covering today.

FUSO Col di Luna ‘Flora’ Prosecco Brut NV: One of the pleasures of
this job is finding wines from regions that are easy to write off that
are actually interesting, and of all the regions of the world that can
be easy to write off near the very top has to be prosecco. First off
it's huge. The production numbers are staggering, there is more than
double the amount of prosecco made than champagne, and nearly three
times as much as cava. The vast, vast majority of it is made as
industrial as possible, and due to the nonsense Italian wine laws,
most of it has a great deal of sugar added and still labeled "extra
dry", meaning most prosecco is cheap simple sweet wine with little
soul. So to decide to make and label a serious wine as prosecco in
this environment is a little quixotic. However, there are a few
shining lights, and this is one of them, from Col di Luna, a producer
going back generations. Like all prosecco this is made from the glera
grape (which used to be called prosecco, but because the grape is
grown outside the appellation the italians decided to rename it). The
wine itself is organic and hand harvested, a rarity in the
appellation, where industrial farming is the norm. It's labeled a
brut, which means it's actually dry (less than 2 grams of residual
sugar, as opposed to the 12-17 allowed in "extra-dry" bottlings). It's
fun, light and about as good as you can get from the region. And
luckily the importer had the sense to relabel the wine, since the
Italian labels are absolutely tragic

We have two wines from Cardedu, the beloved orange "Bucce" and a dry
Vermentino "nuo" I covered them months ago so I'm just copy pasting:


Cardedu 'Bucce' Vermentino, Grillo, Nasco NV
Sardinia and it's cousin to the North, Corsica are for me some of the
most exciting wines in Europe. They have long gone unnoticed in
Europe, mainly because of the difficulty getting them from their
respective islands to the mainland, as well as the fact that most of
the wines stay locally. The winemaker Sergio Loi is a 4th generation
traditional winemaker in the Southeast of Sardinia, which is rocky and
very infrequently traveled. The 'Bucce' (skins) is what I would
describe a beginner's skin contact wine. Made from vermentino it's a
wine that treads the line between white and orange, light on it's feet
but with enough texture and interest from the skin contact to
differentiate it. The dry vermentino is a textural, saline beauty.

Sfera Un Litro Macerato NV
This is a 100% Verdeca macerated on the skins for 20 days. It comes
from the breathtaking terroir of Puglia (the boot of Italy). The Sfera
wines are the importers project to make affordable natural wines in
liters. This is a nice little aromatic skin contact wine.

We have 2 wines from the great cooperative Valli Unite, their rosato
and bianco.  I've discussed them before, so here's another copy/paste:

While the history of Italian cooperatives largely mirrors that of
France, there exist a
number of important and well regarded examples in Italy that don'thave
precedent in France (except les vignerons d'estezargues, who I've
discussed before). In the post war period in Italy many winemaking
members of the Communist party started forming
cooperatives. This didn't sit well with right wine/fascists, who then
started forming their own cooperatives with the help of the Catholic
Church. This strange interplay of politics, religion, local pride and
winemaking produced the most serious cooperatives in all of Europe,
with Valli Unite being one of the most of the most important, as it
was the first cooperative focused on organic viticulture, with 100
hectares of fruit, livestock and grain growing besides the vines. They
are located in southeast piedmont and work with grapes native to the
area, barbera, croatina, dolcetto for the reds and the rose, and
cortese and timorasso for the whites. The wines are, like the one
above, perfectly made everyday wines. There's no flash or extraction,
they are just great wines.

Vigneti Massa Terra Rosso Barbera 2021
Walter Massa is an enigmatic figure in Piedmont. While most producers
choose to focus on the great Nebbiolo which commands prices, press and
prestige, Walter has chosen to focus on a grape that was almost
extinct (Timorasso) and Barbera, the local workhorse grape. His
barbera that we'll be pouring chilled is a perfect example of what the
grape can be. Light, fruity, and drinkable. Not much more to it than
that.

Odinstal Riesling ‘120 N.N.’ 2019
Thomas and Ute Hensel have one of the most special terroirs in all of
Germany, the highest vineyard in all of the Pfalz, on the edge of an
extinct volcano, that has absolutely no neighbors. When we talk about
organic/biodynamic farming there's always a caveat that a lot of what
goes into the soil and onto the grapes can be from the surrounding
vineyards. It's not the winemaker's fault of course, but it's always
interesting to find these truly organic vineyards. The Hensel's were
early adopters of biodynamics, bringing on Andreas Schumann who was
the region's leading light on biodynamics  to farm the land and make
the wine. Many of you have expressed how much you enjoy the wines.
They are laser focused, not sulfury or sweet and leaden.

Ferdinando Principiano Barolo Serralunga 2018
And finally Portovino does carry a few top flight wines, including the
Barolos of Ferdinando Principiano. Ferdinando is one of a handful of
producers in Barolo still making traditional barolos. He is not a fan
of the large, brooding barolos that have come to dominate these days.
He prefers a lighter, low alcohol style and to that end farms and
vinifies to this. There are no small oak barrels in his cellar, and
one thing he refuses to do is green harvest, which is summer pruning
that thins out the vines and puts more energy into ripening the
grapes, which leads to higher alcohol content and thicker
skins/tougher tannins. These are some of the lightest barolos bein
gmade, and we'll be pouring a single bottle of this on Wednesday.

Until next time

Cory