Also Known As: Honoring Nebbiolo in All Its Forms

Class transcript:

On the lesson here. Zoom has decided to make its privacy controls even more stringent, which is, you know, necessary, but makes the life of a moderator a bit more challenging at times. Chesari was an anti-fascist agitator under Mussolini, was imprisoned, this is a poem, Words from Confinement. We would go down to the fish market early to cleanse our vision. The fish were silver and scarlet and green in the color of the sea. The fish were lovelier than even the sea with its silvery scales. We thought of return. Lovely too, the women with jars on their heads, olive brown clay, shaped softly like thighs. We each thought of our women, their voices, their laughs, the way they walked down the street, and each of us laughed, and it rained on the sea.

In vineyards that cling to cracks in the earth, water softens the leaves and the grape stems. The sky is colored by occasional clouds that redden with pleasure and sun on earth, flavors and smells in the sky color. And we were alone there. We thought of return the way a man thinks of morning after an utterly sleepless night. We took pleasure in the color of fish and the glisten of fruit, alive in the musk of the sea. We were drunk on the thought of impending return. I love that line about, you know, the promise of morning after a sleepless night. You know, I think we've all had a few of those during pandemic, and, you know, I think there's, you know, a bit of hope in that poem that, you know, resonates at this moment in time.

Nebbiola, the subject at hand, is an ancient varietal. It was first mentioned, or the first mentions of it in Italian literature, date from 1266. You know, typically once you're mentioned as a grape, you've actually been around for a good long while. You know, we've talked at length about the ancestry of other grapes, you know, Cabernet Sauvignon famously being the scion of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc. Nebbiola is a definitive grape that its ancestors are likely lost to, lost to history. They've likely gone extinct. You know this first mention in 1266, but it's been cultivated, you know, from, you know, that point on throughout Northern Italy and as such it goes under many different names, you know, the things you know, things that have long histories tend to carry with them many synonyms as well.

She Spassaka is a Nebbiolo kind of cinnamon, and we'll be talking about Peaky Tanner, Peaky Tanner. There's another one, Chavanesca. You know, there are dozens and dozens beside, but Nebbiolo is, you know, the alias that most people know. The etymology, the first mention was under the name Nebbiolo. Some people have posited that, you know, that is nobile, you know, the root is nobile, very noble. You know, this is a great grape. We're going to celebrate it, you know, and honor it as such. It's more likely that the Italian root is Nebbia, which means fog, and there is a lot of romance attached to that, and it feels, you know, seasonally fitting, because, you know, this is the seasons of mist and mellow fruitfulness, to paraphrase Keats, and, you know, it is a season in the vineyards throughout the world, in the western hemisphere, at least, where you get this, you know, descent of early morning fog, and Nebbiolo is always among the first grapes to bud, and always among the last grapes to ripen.

So, you know, the beautiful origin story goes that, you know, these fogs descend, and that means that it is time to harvest this, you know, famously late ripening Italian grape, and, you know, we can get a sense, too, of just how cartoonishly beautiful this region is. We are in the Piedmont, you know, that particular region encompasses kind of like northwest Italy. The name of the region comes from the Latin ad penamontium, which, as you can imagine, means at the foothills of the mountains, so you see the high alps looming magnificently in the background there. It is a cartoonishly beautiful region, you know, one of those places that I had yet to go, that I look forward, hopefully, certainly. You know, it's wines have been historically famous, you know, but Nebbiolo is an extremely fussy grape to work with.

We already talked over, you know, its, you know, early flowering tendencies, its late ripening. Because of that, it was a grape that, you know, the locals tended to only plant on their most privileged sites, you know. So, Nebbiolo is a grape that is very, very popular in Italy. It's a grape that is very popular in Italy. So, Nebbiolo was reserved for the kinds of sites where fruit would ripen most reliably. So, you know, that typically were, you know, in the northern hemisphere, that involved south-facing sites at the saddle of the hill. And by law, Nebbiolo typically grown in these hillsides in Barolo and Barbaresco, somewhere between 150 meters in elevation and, you know, 500 or so meters of elevation. But, you know, really, you know, in the heart of that, you know, zone is the sweet spot for Nebbiolo.

And it's said that the locals would, you know, look at the hillsides and the first hillsides where the snow melted. That, you know, would be ultimately where they planted their Nebbiolo grapes. I'm going to share a map of the Piedmont region, which you just got a kind of a sense of. That was a picture of Barolo. I'm going to kind of orient you and give you a tour of the Piedmont, you know, more broadly. You know, there's been wine made here well before the Romans colonized the area. The Romans didn't make it up to this corner of Italy and colonize it until the second, you know, third century BCE. So 220 BCE, they come to colonize the Piedmont. But wine had been made there already by the Celts.

Historically, the most important wines were actually made in the northern region. So Barolo and Barbaresco, they made wine there for a long time. But historically, the most highly esteemed wines, the wines that made it to, you know, the northern region, were the wines that were made in the northern region. So Barolo and Barbaresco, they made wine there for a long time. So Barolo and Barbaresco, they made wine there for the Dukes of Savoy, or, you know, the Austro-Hungarian emperors of the world, who were the kind of major noble consumers of these wines. They were from these northern regions. So I'm going to orient you all so you can see we're in, you know, the far northwestern corner of Italy. We've got France here and then Switzerland to the north.

Your more famous names are clustered in kind of the heart of this region, south of Turin. So you have the Barolo zone. Which is almost kind of due south of Turin. And then you have the Barbaresco zone, separated by near Miles and the adorable village of Alba from Barolo. These are both incredibly hilly zones. They are both along the same river, Tavana, that stretches, this is the Po, the Tavana River is a tributary. It runs kind of along the length of the Barbaresco zone here, but barely touches Barolo. As such, it has more of a moderating effect on the climate of Barbaresco than it does on Barolo. As such, you know, Barbaresco tends to be a slightly warmer zone than parts of Barolo. But, you know, it's hard to make, you know, broad generalizations there.

It's said that, you know, Barbaresco is the queen to Barolo's king of Piemonte Sese Red. And it is softer and more approachable kind of wine. But, you know, that's a theme we'll circle back to. Those are the two most famous expressions of Nebbiolo, but they're certainly not the only ones. We're going to scroll north here. And some of my favorite wines from the region actually come from this Alto Piemonte Sese zone, places like Gemme and Gattinara. And that's where I'm going to begin our inquisition here. So Gattinara, you know, one of the most important places historically for the production of the Nebbiolo grape, but a very different kind of iteration of Nebbiolo than most people, I think, are used to.

So, you know, among the wines that we are drinking for the sake of class, one of the first ones I have here is Uvinerian. This is from an estate based in Gattinara. It should be said that this is not 100 percent Nebbiolo. It's actually not predominantly Nebbiolo. It's predominantly a grape called Vespalina, which itself is the offspring of Nebbiolo and another varietal. So it's kind of like Nebbiolo and, you know, son and daughter of Nebbiolo. Nebbiolo. So it's kind of like Nebbiolo and, you know, son, daughter of Nebbiolo. Now you are living in one of the prehistoric literally smack up against the mountains here. And the soil type here is very different than you would find further to the south of the Po River.

You are in, you know, the kind of volcanic outflows of a massive supervolcano that collapsed 280 million years ago. And that particularly informs the soil of these two kinds of most historically important regions, Gattinara and Ghemme. And those volcanic soils, you know, give a characteristic intensity to these wines in this otherwise kind of cool, you know, climate. That said, you know, the wines themselves, you know, they tend to be, you know, lighter and more elegant than the wines in the zones to the south. They typically are lower in alcohol, higher in acidity, and, you know, more delicate. It's been said of Nebbiolo that, you know, it has this wonderful tar and roses kind of fragrance. And, you know, I think in the Alto Piemontesi zone, this zone, you know, well to the north, literally in the shadow of the Alps, you know, you are dealing with wines here that, you know, kind of embrace that rose's side of the equation more than the tar kind of piece of the ledger.

And, you know, truly that's what I adore about them is their lightness. And, you know, sadly, the world has gotten hip to the charms of Barolo and Barbaresco, which means that, you know, if we look to these lesser-known corners of, you know, the larger kind of Piedmont zone and we look to these lesser-known expressions of Nebbiolo and its associated grapes, Vespalina, Crotina, and Bernarda here, we find some wonderful values. And, you know, this is, you know, the landscape in Gatineau among the most beautiful, cartoonishly beautiful wine regions in the world. Certainly. And, you know, it is very much an Alpine kind of wine. And, you know, I want to embrace that. You know, it has this, you know, freshness of, you know, these kinds of north winds.

And, you know, on top of that, it has this wonderful kind of Alpine herbal leek to it that I quite adore. Zoë, you tasted through the Uvinere. What do you particularly like about that wine? I really like the progression of those cherry-flavored fruits with Nebbiolo. And, you know, Nebbiolo, this case, it was a little bit more like medicinal and like cough syrupy, but not in a bad way. It just kind of has that density and yeah, a little bit of that minty herbal kick. I thought that there was also like a quality of macerated fruit to it as well, going more of like the plummy, red plummy type of aroma in that way. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There's a real juiciness to it.

Vespalina in particular is high in, in Rotundone, which is, Rotundone are your, your like black pepper chemical constituents in wine. So, you know, I think you get a little more of that black pepper. Often people will blend Vespolina with Nebbiolo to soften the wine. And I think you get a sense of a little more of that fleshy softness out of this wine. You might typically expect of Nebbiolo if you tried it before. And I think it's really fun to try this as a foil with the Lange Nebbiolo. So Lange is the region, that encompasses Barbaresco and Barolo, the communes thereof in the, within the kind of larger Piedmont zone. So you can see the Tonaro River. You have the Po River well to the north.

The Po stretches, it flows from west to east, ultimately into the Adriatic. And it is one of the kind of breadbaskets of Italy. The Tonaro is one of the main kind of southern tributaries of the Po, and it winds its way flowing from south to north and taking a hard, you know, kind of eastward turn once it hits Barolo. And it kind of encircles Barolo and runs contiguous to the village of Barbaresco. And you can see the two zones here, and then the Lange sub-region encompasses this whole area. So you see the green here, but everything that's not green is also Lange. So what we're seeing here is essentially a Barolo. But it is a Barolo, you know, from younger vines, from a highly esteemed producer. Now, this is a single varietal, Nebbiolo wine.

And, you know, kind of fun taste as such coming from, coming off of a blend. I thought it would be fun to trot out one of my favorite quotes about Nebbiolo, which comes from Angelo Gaea. Angelo Gaea is, you know, this legend, a modern Italian winemaker from Barbaresco, really, you know, was this proud prophet for Barbaresco, which, you know, has always existed in Barolo's shadow. He, you know, put it on the map in the 80s, and his wines are on par with, you know, the Romani Contis of the world and collected and sold as such. But Angelo was trying to kind of describe Nebbiolo and describe its charms compared to, you know, the more stylish Cabernet. So in the 80s, you know, when Nebbiolo is kind of old hat now, but at the time, you know, there was an exoticism about it.

And, you know, people were more, you know, willing to, you know, pay $100 a bottle for the Cabernets of the world. And he was trying to come up with a comparison. So, you know, for Angelo Gaea, you know, Cabernet was the John Wayne of the world, and Nebbiolo was Marcelo Mastroianni. And I really, I like that kind of comparison here. So here's the quote: 'Cabernet is to John Wayne as Nebbiolo is to Marcello Mastroianni.' Cabernet has a strong personality, open, easily understood, and dominating. If Cabernet were a man, he would do his duty every night in the bedroom, but always in the same way. Nebbiolo, on the other hand, would be the brooding, quiet man in the corner, hard to understand, but infinitely more complex. So thank you, Angelo Gaea.

I hope I didn't make anyone comfortable. I certainly don't want a picture of John Wayne doing his duty every night. At any rate, you know, picture the difference between, you know, a John Ford movie and a Federico Fellini movie. And I think that's all you need to know about, you know, Nebbiolo. As such, it is, you know, a more temperamental varietal, but in its own way, it's sexier. You know, I think, you know, its charms are more elusive, but, you know, as such, they are more cerebral. Cabernet is a grape that you can send anywhere, and it will taste like Cabernet. You know, it won't always bear a strong influence of, imprint of, you know, where it comes from. So, you know, Cabernet is a grape where it's grown.

But, you know, Nebbiolo can't help but express that in a wonderfully, you know, profound way for, you know, I think for my sake, for the way I understand these wines. Now, just a quick word about Barolo, since we're drinking a wine that is from Barolo. This is a real, you know, kind of lovely sense for those of you exploring, sampling the wine at home, to get a sense of Nebbiolo as a pure, single varietal entity. And, you know, I trotted out that Tar and Roses, you know, kind of trope, you know, before. But, you know, I should say that, you know, there's so much more happening here. And, you know, a huge, you know, kind of part of the appeal of these wines for me is, you know, not only, you know, those heady aromatics, but the structure of the wine.

Nebbiolo is a wine that, you know, embraces this wonderful duality between power and elegance. And, you know, you have this high acid in the grape, you know, but by the same token, you know, a heavily tannic, you know, kind of wine as well, and famously, fiercely tannic. Now, this example is lighter on its feet because its maceration is not as long and it's aged entirely in stainless, you know, just as a single varietal representation of Nebbiolo. Zoe, what did you, you know, kind of tease out for the sake of this particular wine? I really enjoyed how, like, light and bright all of those raspberries were. You get, like, a little bit of the rose petals that are indicative of Nebbiolo, but it's more of, like, a crushed violet situation because they were a little bit deeper and dense.

And then I had, like, a sweet cherry cola kind of a thing going on, too, where I really enjoyed it. A cherry, a cherry Coke thing is definitely happening here. You know, it is, you know, heavily perfumed. The quality is really sweet and, you know, the, it leans less tar and, you know, earth and leather and, you know, juicier, buoyant, vibrant, you know, easy drinking in a wonderfully kind of approachable way. So, you know, I think for people that are used to, you know, Barolo, this wine that is, you know, just, you know, impenetrable and punishing and severe, you know, this would be a huge surprise and hopefully, you know, a pleasant surprise because, you know, it is not a, you know, wine that is falling under the Barolo appellation.

And that is because by law in Barolo, the wines have to be held back for three years ultimately, actually 38 months before they can ultimately be released with at least a year and a half in oak. And this obviously does not meet those requirements. And that is why it goes under the broader heading Langhe as opposed to Barolo. But, you know, certainly not a wine that is devoid of tannins. You know, it does have this subtle grip on the back end. And I love that bitterness. That is something that, you know, for me, the best of Italian wines really embody and, you know, communicate is that, you know, kind of bitter, herbal, on the back end. And I find that hugely appetizing. And, you know, those bitter flavors, they do tend to stimulate digestion in a wonderful way.

And I think they give you ballast in a wine, just like bitters will season and anchor a cocktail. I think they have the same effect for the sake of a wine like this. So hopefully I did not scare anyone off with the, you know, sexual connotations for the sake of, you know, old 60s and 70s leading men in Hollywood in Italy. Do you have any questions from the commentariat or choice comments about my haircut? Not at the moment. I think everyone is just very excited to see this new slash old throwback. Definitely need to include that quote again. I am going to copy and paste into the chat in just a bit. I would love to hear people's tasting notes from the wine, as well.

We have kind of jumped a little bit forward with the Brelo Trio that we will get to a little bit later. Great. And I am going to do some more thought testing. Do you have any thoughts on that? And, you know, we have kind of launched into Barolo and tasting fruit from Barolo, but a wine that, you know, doesn't necessarily correspond with, you know, most people's image of Barolo as such. And I wanted to talk the history of Barolo a bit. You know, they have been making wine there, you know, for as long as people have been making wine in Italy. And, you know, as I said, that, you know, predates even the Romans. They've been making wine from the Nebbiolo grape there, you know, since the 13th century, at the very least, that we know of, but, you know, probably before then.

That said, Barolo's fame as a winemaking region, you know, it languished behind, you know, those choice communes that we talked about in the Alcopi Montesi. So, you know, zones, you know, like, you know, Gemme and Gattinara, you know, their fame was established in, you know, the 15th, 16th century. Caremma, you know, was a papal favorite, you know, in the 15th century, you know, another one of those zones that, you know, we'll touch on a bit a little later. But Barolo's fame established in the 10th century. And it was the case that a lot of those northern regions often, you know, they would purchase fruit from the south if they were struggling to ripen their grapes in a given vintage. But Barolo as a single name, you know, Prince, Madonna, you know, kind of wine situation.

It doesn't really exist until the 19th century. Historically, the wines locally often, you know, were sweet. That's because Nebbiolo produces sugar really well as a grape. And if you're fermenting naturally in a cool cellar and it gets very cold, you know, especially in November and December throughout the Piedmont zone, you know, your fermentations tend to stop. So, you know, you say you harvest, you know, as late as November, you know, maybe you get a fermentation that, you know, initially starts. But it doesn't really exist until the 19th century. So it doesn't, you know, finish. So your wines are stuck well short of full dryness. Very often, if people bottled before then, you know, you were left with something that had a little bit of fuss in the mix by the time that you came back to it, you know, the following spring if you had bottled early.

And, you know, there are all sorts of these Barolo OGs. And they talk about, you know, as a kid, eating, going into the cellar because it was covered in broken glass. Because, you know, they're all over the place. And, you know, all these broken bottles from these spontaneously fermenting Barolos that had residual sugar and, you know, blew up, much as, you know, champagne famously blew up once upon a time. But the Champenois leaned into it. And they said, you know, shit, you know, if we're getting all this gas, let's capture this magic. And, you know, we'll come up with a bullshitty origin story about Dom P. And we'll roll with it. In Barolo, they said, you know, no, let's, you know, work more seriously in the cellar. Let's make fully dry wines.

And, you know, the person that, you know, gets a bulk of the credit for that. At least initially is Camillo Benso. He was the Count of Cabor. In the mid-19th century, he worked with a couple, both an Italian and a French Vigneron, to improve the local wines and ferment them fully dry. And he also gave them away to his, you know, rich noblesse friends in the House of Savoy. Savoy is a historic splinter cell of what was once the Ducat. It was the city of Burgundy. And it stretched across kind of southeastern France and northwestern Italy. And the House of Savoy ultimately became, they became the royals, the first royals of reunified Italy. And then the Austro-Hungarian empires had their own nobles that were drinking these wines as well.

So, you know, that late 19th century, that's when you really see Barolo gaining traction as a wine on the broader international stage. And, you know, it should be said that, you know, Italy doesn't have, you know, this uninterrupted kind of history as a nation. The Italian nation, you know, wasn't born, you know, until Garibaldi, you know, worked his way up from Sicily, you know, in the, you know, mid-19th century. Before that, you just had a lot of people speaking related dialects of Italian and, you know, entirely different languages at all. So, you know, there wasn't this national project to classify the vineyards like there was in France. And, you know, a lot of these local traditions have taken much longer into the modern era to be codified.

That's not to say that they don't exist. You know, in the town of Barolo, you know, there were always traditions about where the best grapes came from. And village by village, you know, how the wines differed when individual farmers were making them. But, you know, they didn't have, you know, the kind of established weight of tradition that was developed very early on in places like Bordeaux through the activity of English and French merchants, and in Burgundy through, you know, largely, honestly, through the activity of monks and the church there. So, you know, Barolo has, you know, equally long tradition, but, you know, more of a humble peasant tradition. And, you know, historically, you know, well into the 20th century, you know, you had small landowners who were cultivating the vine and selling their fruit to larger cooperatives.

It wasn't the case that they were making wine of their own. It was only in the 80s that, you know, they really started to bottle. Because, you know, they realized that if they added value themselves in the cellar, they can make a pretty penny. And they realized there was a market for these wines that had never existed before. And, you know, that's the case for the sake of Ettoreo Germano. His family's been making wine and growing grapes in Barolo for generations upon generations, dating back to the 19th century. But it was only in 1987 that they started actually bottling. And they make really lovely wine to this very day. Now, we're going to taste through some of the individual crus, which is going to be, I think, you know, really exciting.

And significant for the sake of, you know, talking about, you know, the terroir, you know, not only of Nebbiolo, but, you know, trying to understand this place that is Barolo. So we've shown off, you know, there's maps of the larger Barolo region. And, you know, important to understand that you have Barolo. It is, you know, kind of defined and shaped by the Tenara Rivers. But you have additional tributaries and a complex geology. And, you know, I am a totalist. I'm a total, you know, wine nerd. But, you know, consistent with my wine nerdery, there is aspiring geological nerdery. The two go hand in hand, you know, in as much as, you know, tasting notes are illuminating for wine on occasion. You know, maps are hugely illuminating.

We are drinking a map, you know, if the winemaker is doing his or her job right. So this is a map of the Barolo zone. And you can see here individual communes and some of the most famous vineyards on this map. And then a division of Barolo between its two most iconic soil types. So Barolo itself, the larger sub-region named after the village of Barolo, which is right here. So you have the village of Barolo and then the region of Barolo. Our producer in this instance, Azalea, is actually based in Castiglione Falletto. And I apologize to any Italians listening for my mispronunciations of the Italian language, a beautiful language, incredibly lyrical. You know, I've tried to read, you know, The Inferno and the original Italian and failed miserably, but it sounds beautiful when people are doing it right.

And, you know, arguing Italian is more satisfying than arguing in any other language because, you know, one word inevitably flows into the next, you know, unlike any other language that I've ever heard. But the main communes you see here are the major ones. So there are in total 11 communes. But five are really kind of most important. Barolo and La Mora, Castiglione, Paleto, that is the home base of Azalea, but Monforte d'Alba and then Serra Lunga d'Alba, which is, you know, I think the one outside of Barolo that a lot of people know that has, you know, gained recent traction. But you have this division of soil types and then this division of villages and hillsides. So, you see the river itself kind of works its way along the northern.

It goes up to the upper edge of the zone and then kind of turns south here. But you have all these tributaries of the Tenaro as well, which divide it into just this real hodgepoch of expositions and hillocks. You know, from one vineyard to the next, you could be facing north, south, east, west, you name it. Historically, the most privileged sites were south-facing because on the south-facing sites, you got additional sun exposure in the Northern Hemisphere, and that's what you needed. This is where you get some of the most reliable ways to reliably ripen these grapes. Now that is changing as the world warms. Barolo historically had a marginal climate for the sake of ripening grapes. And it was only in, you know, three out of every 10 years that you got truly exceptional wines.

Barolo has enjoyed a string of fabulous vintages. 2013 is one of the best of the decade. You know, it has been called thrilling, classic legend in the making. It is not a hugely powerful vintage. It's actually a very elegant vintage that was late harvested. And the fruit had extraordinary hang time on the vine. You know, but some of these south-facing sites that historically were, you know, famous because of their ability to ripen these grapes have become overripe in the last decade. And, you know, that is something that growers are continuing to watch out for in this zone. So, about the soils. You have the Tortonians. And these are representative of geological eras. The Tortonian, a younger geological era than the Helvetian. They're actually kind of geological sub-eras. Tortonian soil is blue-tinted, has marl.

Marl is a calcareous kind of claystone. But, kind of, as this mother rock has broken down more significantly, you get a lot of sandy soil on this side. And, you know, it is a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very thick layer of borolo. And sandier soils tend to give softer wines that are more expressive in their youth. And more approachable in their youth. And have slightly softer tannins, and kind of fleshy or crude. The Helvetian soils tend to be more compact. They are limestone and sandstone. Limestone just has a higher content of calcium than marl, for instance. And the soils themselves are much smaller particles. And you have heavier clay here.

And, you know, that can be beneficial in cooler years, but typically means a kind of slower ripening. You also have some higher vineyards here as well, although the topography is varied from village to village. Now, it's not the case that, you know, it's an A or B situation with these soils. There's much more of a continuum and much more intermixing that happens here. So it is the case that we're going to try a wine first from Castiglione, Folletto. And Castiglione, it said, is a bit of a hybrid. It has some of the quality, some of the approachability of the Tortonian, you know, kind of geological, you know, kind of sites, but some of the weight and, you know, some of the, you know, tannic structure of the Helvetian soils as well.

And then we're going to taste two wines from Serralunga. And you'll get a sense that, you know, Serralunga itself, certainly not a monolith. So I've been, you know, talking a lot about these wines. So I'm going to start with the Serralunga. I'm going to start with the Serralunga. I'm going to pour myself out here and pull up another map. You know, Barolo recently in particular has been, you know, kind of more fully explored and mapped more precisely than ever has been, which is, again, hugely exciting for those of us that love wine and love maps. And hopefully not boring anyone in the audience to tears. You know, but, you know, these maps, they say something, and I'm going to cite for each of you these individual crews on the map for you as Zoe kind of walks you through her tasting notes on the individual wines.

It should be said that I didn't tell Zoe we're going to do this and totally put her on the spot. So hopefully she has something to say about these. And, you know, feel free to help her out if you are in the loop and have anything to offer yourself about these wines. Kick it, Zoe. We're going to start with the Brico Fiasco. Brico Fiasco sounds like a, you know, Piedmontese rapper name. I like Brico Fiasco just as a name. I like it.This is the only, this is in the home base of Castiglione Feletto.

And you can see this is a map with, you know, this multicolored scheme. So this is Castiglione Feletto. And then Fiasco is here. This is a vineyard. Brico, Brico is a word for the top of the hill in Italian. So Brico just refers to kind of like the upper elevations of this particular vineyard for this particular wine. So what did you get on the Brico Fiasco for the sake of this flight? Or do you have nothing to offer? I am so glad that I did the homework this week. I have in my notes. I just decided to taste them alphabetically at first, just for the, just so I would remember. And with the Bricco Fiasco in comparison, after I had revisited it, I thought that it definitely had to be higher elevation because of how acid-driven it was and how it had the lightest amount of concentration.

I thought that the tannins were, yes, searing and there wasn't as much body or that generosity of fruit that we often talk about, and therefore felt like the most zippy to me, but was also the most underripe in terms of the quality of fruit. But I still got exactly what I think that I should get from Borrello, those crushed rose petals, a little bit of that tar, which is like really hard to explain. And I'm not sure if now that's just a Sami thing that I say, but that. It's more like wet earth or like, I don't know, baked brick, if that could be a better note to it. Yeah, that is a highly cited tasting of that, like ceramic fragments is kind of a, if you've ever wandered into a pottery store and smelled broken, unglazed vessels, I think you get a bit of that.

And texturally, I think these wines are at a cool place because people say, especially for the wines of Sarah, Lunga, that they'll take, you know, the better part of a decade to come into their own. And these are 2013s, but these wines are starting to soften in a really fabulous way. And, you know, let's taste through these and then I'll talk about, you know, how they're made. I think it's fun for the sake of this exercise because we're dealing with one producer. Now, these are not all made the same way. These are extended macerations. So that is a very old school way to make Barolo. So you're talking wine left, a red wine left on the skin for 60 days. It's a very long time by modern winemaking standards.

Typically, you know, winemakers will max out at, you know, three weeks for an extended maceration on the red wines. Nebbiolo is a famously light colored wine. So in this zone, typically they left the wine on the skins for a longer time to extract more color, but also to extract more tannin, you know, because very often, you know, because Borrello is a region that struggled to, you know, ripen its grapes reliably, vintage in and vintage out. You know, they're trying to coax as much power, as much grip out of these wines as they could, you know, in otherwise, you know, problematic vintages. And, you know, this two-month long, at times three months long extended maceration, you know, was one tool that allowed them to do this.

Now, that said, in the, you know, the 70s and the 80s, other producers started to play around with more modern winemaking methods. And they clipped this longer maceration, you know, kind of cycle. And they said they wanted to make something fresher and fruitier and a little less, you know, at times, punishingly unbalanced. And so, they moved in a different direction. But I think Azea is kind of one producer because they bridged that divide. Now, they are celebrating their 100th year in business, which is very rare as a state producer that has bottled their wine. They're on their 15th generation. And, you know, they're actually like really, you know, good looking dudes, it should be said. Father and son, you know, working hand in hand, Luigi and Lorenzo.

I've had the good Lorenzo on the left, Luigi on the right. I've had the pleasure of tasting with Lorenzo. And I would say I don't think that picture does Lorenzo justice. He's a beautiful man. He's a strapping, strapping young lad. Lovely guy, very good English. At any rate, fifth generation now making wine. And, you know, that is pretty rare. And then, all of these vines are very old. So, the Righetti Fiasco was one of the first single vineyard wines of its kind bottled in the Commune of Barolo. And, you know, in the late 70s, and a lot of other producers have followed suit. You know, about this particular site, you know, they say that this is a wine characterized by, you know, radiant freshness. I think there's a lot of truth to that.

For me, you know, it is fleshier and higher toned and more approachable than the ones from Cerro Lunga. And Cerro Lunga is certainly famous as, you know, the wines that take the longest to come in their own in the zone. You know, within kind of the larger Barolo. So, moving into a wine from Cerro Lunga, I'm going to share a screen again on the map because it's brightly colored and super fun. We're moving into the Cerro Lunga zone. You can see the village here, Cerro Lunga de Alba. And then, San Rocco itself, which I just, you know, think of San Rocco as just a fun name for a great name for an Italian vintage vineyard, rather. It's actually named for a picture. It's the patron saint of the hospital that was formerly situated here and associated with the vineyard.

Another, you know, you have various expositions here, but you're kind of like south and west facing at elevation, a little more so compared to the Fiasco vineyard. You can see you're well above 300 meters of elevation here, so later ripening on this, you know, hillock. Zoe, what did you kind of, you know, eek out of this wine? It should be said, these two wines, really comparable vinification. They're both aged in Barrique, smaller French oak with a little bit of new oak in the mix as well. So pretty, you know, seamless one-to-one as a pure vineyard comparison. What do you get out of the San Rocco, Zoe? I thought that was the most plush of all of them, including the Margherita.

I thought that the Margherita was much more ripe, but still had a little bit more acid to it, whereas the San Rocco was much darker fruits and was much juicier. And then in comparison to the Fiasco, that just like ripped the enamel off of my teeth. Looking at the map now, it's really interesting that the San Rocco, the aspect is east, the Margherita is west, and then looking at Fiasco, it's almost like north and south, plus it's at the top. And just looking at the sunshine hours that the vineyards would have and how that goes into the concentration of fruit as well. Yeah. And I think, you know, this is a place where I do also want to talk about fermentation vessels.

So let's scoot down now to, so both of these vineyard sites, you know, they say average vine age 65, average vine age 60 for the Margherita. You know, we're splitting hairs there. They're vinified very differently. So the San Rocco made just like the Brico Fiasco, 24 months in French Barrique, about 10% of it new. And then the Margherita is made the traditional way in old school, in old school Italian botti. So these are massive old oak vessels associated with the traditionalists of the world. The Mascarellos of the world, the Giancamos of the world, you know, these people that, you know, are making wine like their grandfathers made wine and never, you know, kind of changed their wine making, you know, style, at least for the sake of bellavage with time.

So people, you know, talk about how this traditionalist versus modernist divide in Barolo and Barbarese, Rusco, you know, has been overstated because all of these producers are working much cleaner in the cellar than folks did historically. All of them are working, you know, much more, you know, kind of intelligently in the vineyard for the sake of green harvesting, you know, for the sake of not using chemicals, you know, at all. And you know, doing all the hard work that needs to be done to bring in pristine fruits to make great wines, you know, for me, you know, I am, you know, an old school kind of guy. You can see Magaria is a purely south-facing slope, you know, almost, you know, this kind of, this like lovely point, you know, facing the valley itself, you know, on the kind of eastern edge of the valley.

And I think if you look at these in the glass, the color of the Magarita, very different, you know, it looks, you know, browner, you know, than the, you know, the, you know, the white wine, than the others, you know, it looks, you know, like an older wine. And I think it has more of an umami, you know, kind of oxidative tone to it. And you know, I think that has everything to do with, you know, the, the élevage in this older oak. And for me, you know, it's the chewiest of the bunch, you know, it has less of that primary fruit. And it's more of this like gnarly, you know, kind of dried leathery tobacco leaf. And I really love that about it.

They say persistent sapidity about this wine, sapid is a personal favorite as, as like wine adjectives go. And it does have that in spades, I think. But, you know, as illuminating as the vineyard differences are, I think, in these wines, you know, the production method, you know, different for these two and in equally illuminating. And I think, you know, what I particularly like, you know, about these three wines juxtaposed with one another, is that you get a sense both of, you know, both of the vineyard differences between different communes and within an individual commune, but you also get a sense of, you know, how the élevage can affect the, the, the wine and, you know, these are all really lovely wines.

And, and, you know, I think it's important to talk past, you know, the polemics of, oh, you know, you're using Greek, oh, you know, you're, you're making wine the old way in Italian botti and people get really hung up on that. You know, people in the region, people in the wine press get really hung up on that, you know. These are all great wines, you know, they're, they're not inexpensive, you know, and, you know, but they're, you know, really impeccably crafted, they speak to the place, you know, but they do it differently. And, you know, I, I like them all in their own way, you know, for me, you know, I, I love the chewiness of this wine and, you know, something about that, you know, it's, it's how I first came to love Italian wine and, you know, I, it feels like coming home from home for me.

And, and, you know, I love that, you know, old stewed fruit you get out of wines made this way. But, you know, I can certainly appreciate the San Rocco. I like; they call this their cuirassier, I had to look that one up - that's a, like a cavalry officer, it's like an Austro-Hungarian cavalry officer. And, you know, they said it was a monumental wine and it is, the, the, I say the San Rocco, you know, of its own right, it, it feels, you know, sturdier and, and probably more age-worthy in its own right than the Margherita, you know, just because it tastes more youthful now, you know, I think the acid may be a little, a little bit brighter, the quality of fruit a little, a little fresher, you know, but, you know, tannic structure is very different and it's just kind of like, you know, fabulously different for a wine from, you know, a mere kilometers away from, you know, this, this other site.

Zoe, do you have any comments from the folks in the audience? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Um, first I think a lot of questions about the acid, how long it takes for acid to settle or tannins to settle. Um, I will say that just culturally drinking Barolo is almost always done with food and that's why that acid can always be so searing. Um, and to me it's like always something that I want with soft cheeses or a full meal. Um, but could you talk a little bit about cellaring Barolo? I mean, so I think. Like. Like cellaring is, is historically, it was kind of a must, um, you know, there is a sense in which, um, you know, these are not wines that you wanted to approach,

um, within a few years of harvest and, you know, the best of them, you know, the Saralungas of the world were, you know, were, and still are, uh, wines that, you know, you, you wouldn't want to approach and you'd be doing them a disservice if you did, you know, prior to 10 years. Now, you know, that's not to say that the, the zone, um, is, is, you know, um, entirely that way. Yeah. So it just, it's, it's not possible to approach this tasting and, and feature different producers from, from different zones. So, um, you know, you have Barolo proper, and one of the most famous, uh, Grand Cruse of, uh, Barolo, it's kind of subdivided, um, is Canubi. And Canubi, um, you know, is such a big vineyard that it, it has kind of, uh, sub vineyards within a larger vineyard.

But, uh, Canubi, uh, historically important, one of the most kind of historically important, um, you know, sites in, in the Piedmont. Um, but it's a much more approachable wine. Um, you know, it's the kind of wine that you could drink. You know, it's. five years later, and, you know, would be, you know, enjoyable. Now, historically, you know, the, you know, the local wisdom was that everything had to age, and I think, you know, part of the reason that you saw younger winemakers in the 70s and 80s employing, you know, different cellar practices for the sake of, you know, shortening the time they left the red wine to macerate on the skins during fermentation, and using barrique, new French barrique, instead of, you know, the traditional large, you know, neutral oak boatie, or chestnut, or whatever, is that,  they wanted to soften the wine, you know They wanted to make something that people didn't have to lay down for years and years upon end, and, you know, they said part of the reason that Barolo was something that you had to lay down that long, and because it took so long for the tannins to resolve, was, you know, that was more of a factor of people harvesting too soon, harvesting, you know, underripe grapes with, you know, harsher tannins, and, you know, requiring age as a way to, you know, kind of cure, you know, what was essentially a wine flaw, and, you know, I think you see, you know, in, you know, this moment that, you know, people want to make wines that are fully ripe and enjoyable at different moments in time, so, You know, I think it should be the case that, you know, you can open a bottle, you know, that's been aged for three years, and, you know, you can enjoy it, might be more harshly tannic, but, you know, it should be enjoyable in its own way, and maybe all the more so if you give it time, but, you know, I tend not to be a person that, you know, you know, thinks that you're committing this huge disservice to wine if you, you know, open it earlier. Not everybody has the luxury of, you know, a wine cellar. You know, I think, you know, experiencing the evolution of the wine is fun in and of itself right, and, you know, if you've never tasted the young wine, how can you appreciate the older one? If you don't have a sense of what the tannins are like in their youth, how can you appreciate how they evolve?

So, I think, you know, they are, they are both really important, but, you know, it's a really long way of saying, you know, historically these were wines that had to age, so they always, in the modern era at the very least, you know, were wines that you laid down and bottled for a considerable amount of time. Are there any expressions of Nebbiolo in the new world that you could recommend? Killer question, and I'm going to kind of circle back to that at the end of lesson. You know, it's, it's a famously finicky grape. I find it hugely fascinating because, you know, there are Nebbiolo, it's a winemaker's wine. You know, it is, you know, a labor of love, you know, in the vineyard, you know, and in the cellar.

It is a wine that can be punishingly austere, you know, but can also be, you know, revelatory. And, you know, I think when you're talking about anything with those extremes of high and low, you know, it's, you know, it's, you know, it's, you know, they tend to appeal to connoisseurs, you know, and you would think that, you know, people who, who've tried this grape that has these, you know, has these profound expressions, you know, they would want to kind of transplant it to, you know, their own corner of the woods and, you know, try their hand at it. That's certainly happened with Pinot Noir. You know, Nebbiolo, for whatever reason, hasn't found a second home in the new world.

It has, you know, certainly homes outside within Northern Italy, but it has yet to find, you know, its Australia for origins, you know. It's, you know, Californian Willamette Valley for, for Pinot. You know, it hasn't, you know, gained traction, for whatever reason, elsewhere and, you know, I don't know what it is, you know, it's very ancient grape, there should be a lot of different clones for people to work with, you know, I think part of it speaks to, you know, the fact that you know these are wines that didn't really, you know, gain international traction. until the 80s and 90s. So, you know, whereas Burgundy has always been, you know, the exemplar, you know, in France of, you know, this kind of really poetic notion of wine as embodying a sense of place, you know, Nebbiolo didn't, you know, get that reputation until relatively recently.

So people haven't had as long to work with it and celebrate it the same way. And I think ultimately that's probably the real reason, but, you know, it's also the fact that you have to scrape a Nebbiolo, and for whatever reason, it doesn't, you know, really hasn't yet taken well to places where people have tried it. There's a little bit in Australia that's decent. There's some in Washington State. There's actually a little bit in Virginia. A good friend at Barbersville, who's the winemaker there, who's from Northern Italy and loves Nebbiolo, has some planted, and it's good. I mean, it's a good wine. It's just not Nebbiolo as I understand it. It's, you know, it almost tastes like a different grape, you know, and, you know, I'm gonna circle back to that because I think we love to, you know, think that, you know, the sum, the total, the, you know, full expression of the wine is in the grape, but there's just like so much else going on.

And, you know, there's something, you know, kind of cool and comforting to me about the fact that, you know, Nebbiolo really tastes this way, you know, in this small corner of the world. And, you know, you kind of can't separate the two, you know, you know, is it Barolo or is it Nebbiolo? You know, what's the, you know, kind of trump card there? Is the place, you know, the most, is the grape the most, or is it, you know, the whole, transcending the sum of the parts? And, you know, for me, that's the case. But I don't think, you know, it's for lack of trying. I think, you know, with time we will see, you know, some corner of the world, you know, China, I don't know.

You know, that is new to wine that will find, you know, a set of conditions that will work, you know, for the grape. You know, maybe not in the same way as they do in Barolo, but, you know, can be compelling in a different way. It just hasn't really happened yet, for whatever reason. Could you talk a little bit about the tasting notes different from like a stereotypical Sangiovese and how it's different from a Nebbiolo? Yeah, they're honestly often confused in, in, you know, the blind tasting. Nebbiolo is always gonna be higher acid. It's always gonna, you know, be, you know, they're both very aromatic grapes, but, you know, Nebbiolo for me leans into a tart, like a tart quality of fruit, you know, whereas, you know, Sangiovese is, is, you know, lusher and fuller.

Sangiovese is kind of like a, a broader, you know, broader-shouldered wine. Whereas, you know, for me, Nebbiolo is always more linear and sleek and elegant, you know, which is, you know, more personifying a wine than it is giving you a concrete tasting note that you can then, you know, take and use. And, you know, I, I think just speaks to the way that I, I taste wine, you know, for me, it's almost as emotionally evocative. And, you know, when I'm trying to distinguish one from the other, you know, I find that, you know, sometimes dealing with those emotional descriptors, you know, is as instructive as, as dealing with, you know, the, the, you know, fruit, primary fruit or flower or whatever. Zoe, you, you do better at the, the blinding stuff than I do at times.

What would you say is a classic, like, court tell for, for one versus the other? Wow, that's where I go to the, is it blue fruit, is it black fruit, or is it red fruit? And then from there, you can, I think that Sangiovese is always going to be more black and brambly and like, you know, fruity Tabasco, like, like fruit of the forest. Yeah. Where it's like very like wildflower, always, I wouldn't say always, but usually much more concentrated. And you can tell by sight as opposed to the clarity of Nebbiolo where you can see right through it. That's where looking at sight, I think, is very important as opposed to just like jumping in with taste and your nose and trying to figure it out that way. Yeah.

And that's a good point. I mean, like good blind tasters are ones that use every little bit of information at their disposal from, you know, the look of the wine, the glass to, you know, the initial evaluation of the nose to, you know, the way it plays across the palate and they develop an informed, you know, impression of the whole. I'm not always good at that. I tend to, you know, zero in. It's like actually one of my favorite blind tasting things is there's this great scene in The Wire where Bunk Morland, the bunk, is teaching Chima how to look at a murder scene. And he talks about having soft eyes. And the idea is that you're not zeroing in on a particular detail of the scene. You know, you have soft eyes.

You're evaluating the total scene and, you know, that enables you to pick out, you know, more glaringly significant objects as opposed to, you know, making a faulty first assumption. And I think, you know, good blind tasters are like that, too. They're the ones that, you know, have soft eyes when it comes to evaluating their wines. I'm going to talk about Barbaresco and Canavesi here, Zoe, and, you know, offer a couple of deep thoughts before we circle back and, you know, kind of, close out questions. I've enjoyed tasting these wines and, you know, certainly, I think that yellow wine of the season, you know, once there's that, you know, twinge of the first, you know, kind of fireplace fire in the air and, you know, the leaves are falling, these are the wines I want to return to.

You know, they have this, like, lovely savoriness and, you know, they just embody the season for me, you know, all the more so because, you know, the very name of the grape, you know, derived from, you know, the very fogs, you know, of the region, although it should be said that a lot of nerdy wine folk believe that the fog was actually on the grape skin itself. So, as it ripens, Nebbiolo has this, like, dusty, you know, kind of bloom. It develops like a rind that makes the grape itself look fogged and, you know, a lot of linguists think that that is the actual derivation as opposed to, you know, the beautiful fogs of the region. Talking Barbaresco. Barbaresco has four communes to Barolo's 11.

It is a significantly smaller region geographically in terms of production than Barolo. It is typically a softer wine, a more elegant wine, legally requires a couple years of age before it's released as opposed to Barolo's 3. This is the very same river that snakes its way along the boundaries of Barolo, but you get a sense here that the Barbaresco. Barbaresco's, you know, extremes of elevation from kind of hillock to hillock are, you know, less extreme in Barbaresco than they are Barolo. So, a little flatter and the river has more of a moderating influence over local climate. And as such, Barbaresco tends to be a more approachable wine in its youth. Honestly, I think it can be a lot more rewarding because of that.

I think, you know, a lot of Barolos, especially if you're not, you know, swinging for the fences and finding a great producer and something that's been aged well, they can be punishingly austere. You know, and they're just not, you know, if you have the right food, like Zoey said, you know, a lot of these are food wines, you know, but if you're jumping the gun, you know, if you're not someone that likes tannin and wine, I think you'd be much better served, you know, you know, saving a few bucks and finding a great Barbaresco. Barbaresco historically languished in the shadow of Barolo, a lot of the fruit was sold to Barolo. It didn't really establish its own name until the 80s, 70s and 80s through the efforts of, you know, people like Angelo Gaio, who talked about before, who's an unapologetic, you know, modernist.

Bruno Giacomo would be his kind of like traditionalist foil. These guys are old school, working entirely in Boti. They're also old school in the sense that their wine is always a blend of multiple crues. So, you know, we talked with the Barolo about, you know, this distinction between these individuals in French called Ludis, you know, these individual parcels that have, you know, this distinct characteristics. And we can get like super granular for the sake of, you know, you know, one geological epic versus another, for the sake of the mother rock and, you know, the various, you know, kind of water retention capacity of, you know, these different soils, stuff like that. What I dig about a lot of these traditionalists like Mascarello and Barolo, you know, like, you know, de Pourville and Barbarescos, they actually always blend their wines between different crus.

And, you know, they're looking for a recipe and they're looking for a chorus. I will say, you know, I don't know, I don't know. I don't say having, you know, tasted, you know, single vineyards versus, you know, blends. People tend to, you know, glorify single vineyard expressions as the ultimate wines. And, you know, I think of it like, you know, a cappella versus, you know, accompanied music. You have to find a gifted soloist to work, you know, without accompaniment. You know, you have to be a really gifted phraser of music and, you know, have an amazing instrument in your voice. You know. You have to assemble if you have, you know, backing vocalists or percussion, rhythm section, you name it.

And, you know, I find a lot of wines that, you know, people tend to glorify as single vineyard entities sometimes would benefit from blending partners. And that's what they're doing here. You know, they make, they do make other Barbarescos that are single, you know, kind of vineyard offerings. But this is their flagship. And it's always a blend of multiple sites and, you know, they're always looking for, you know, that, you know. Chorus, that alto, that soprano, that, you know, bass tone and, you know, they want the wine to be kind of like the sum total of those parts. And I think that's, you know, really poetic. And I think it's a wine that's, you know, just showing really beautifully.

And then, you know, lastly, I'm going to pull up, you know, the map of Piedmont and leave you with a kind of a closing thought and we'll take some more questions thereafter. But the last one is Canavesi, Canavesi rather. I keep saying Cavanesi for some reason. But Canavesi. Canavesi. Canavesi is the zone. Canavesi is about as far north and west as you can be in the north and west in Italy. So look away if you're, you know, had too much Nebbiolo, but I'm zooming in. So you've got Canavesi here, well north and west. You are, you can't see it here, but there's another region that lives in this weird little Alpine corner of Italy called Val d'Asta, which makes its own quirky little lovely wines.

And, you know, if we get to week 100, we'll get to a lesson devoted to Val d'Asta wines because they're actually really lovely. But that's definitely Italian graduate level, you know, wine nerdery. But Canavesi here, this is a 70-30 Nebbiolo and another great called, it's actually a Barbera in the mix with, you know, famously kind of fruity, fleshy, softens the Nebbiolo. But we're in Carema. Okay. So this estate is based in Carema, although this is classified Canavesi because it's aged entirely in stainless from slightly younger vines. But in Carema, they have this really unique, you know, subtype of Nebbiolo. So we talked about this grape that is hugely ancient, dates its lineage to the 13th century, has a lot of different, you know, kind of synonyms and subtypes.

This is a Picuntiner, Picuntiner, it's like Gesundheit in Carema. And it is actually genetically distinct from the subtypes that they use in Barbarasco and Barolo. And it produces these wines that are heavily perfumed and very light and elegant and actually like really red in color and have trouble taking on color. You don't get a full sense of it in this wine because Barbera brings a lot of color to the party. But in Carema as a single varietal entity from this, you know, Picuntiner, the subtype of Nebbiolo. You know, very, you know, ethereal kinds of wines. So it's a very unique wine. You get wines that are very light. When you take the same clone of Nebbiolo and plant it in Barbarasco and Barolo, you get wines that are both extremely black, much more so than other clones of Nebbiolo and, you know, remarkable for their lack of florality.

You know, so you take one thing from one place to another and it's like a fish out of water. And you know, even, you know, within, you know, the same zone of Italy expresses differently, within the same. You know, kind of larger, you know, varietal expresses itself very, very differently. And, you know, that kind of encapsulates one of the things I most adore about wine. You know, we are variably obsessed in this country and we like to, you know, think stateside. You know, we take one thing and if we, you know, kind of distill its essence, if we, you know, you know, maybe the essence of Burgundy is Pinot Noir, maybe the essence of Barolo is Nebbiolo. And if we find that, you know, essence, we can make it ourselves.

You know, it doesn't matter, you know, the trappings of, you know, culture and history are insignificant. And, you know, I love the way that Nebbiolo puts the lie to that, you know, the essence of the wine is the grape, but it is also the place and the people and the collected wisdom. And you know, the whole transcends the sum of the parts, and, you know, anytime I do a deeper dive into geology, I'm always reminded of, you know, just how, you know, variegated, you know, these individual topics are. And how complex, you know, these ecosystems are for the sake of ultimately how they express in the glass, and how perfectly some wines like Nebbiolo ultimately embody that. And, you know, I think, you know, it forces, you know, those of us who love the wines to, you know, live in that mystery.

And it doesn't stop us from wanting to understand, you know; it doesn't stop us from wanting to map things out and share those maps, you know; but we have to accept that we never will fully understand. You know; it's that old 'a man's reach should exceed his grasp' and, you know; we live in this, you know, edifying journey and live in the mystery, and, you know; hopefully that very process is illuminating and enjoyable. And I thank you for going on that ride with me today. Socially distanced wherever you are, alone together as always. Cheers to you. Cheers Nebbiolo. What do you got, Dov? Dov? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Did I mute you? Are you muted? Yes. Oh, it took, it took an hour, but it finally happened. It took an hour.

What do you got Zoe? Could you touch on the difference between Chiavenesca and the difference between the Arpepe? Oh, yeah. So Chiavenesca is another name for Nebbiolo derived from a place name, Chirena. And so that is in Lombardy, actually. So that just to. Yeah. So that would essentially be off of our Piedmont AC map. And I meant to talk about that. And that is truly one of my favorite ones. So that would be, you know, kind of here. That would be, you know, kind of up near the hip of the boot. It is an east-west kind of oriented valley. And all of the vineyards essentially are on the northern side of that east-west valley because, you know, nothing on the southern side. With Northern Expedition, one could properly reckon, you know, those are, you know, incredibly lovely wines.

They're very Burgundian. You know, that's such a bullshitty adjective that wine, you know, kind of connoisseurs love to throw around for anything that, you know, embodies some of the elegance that good red Burgundy does. But, you know, it's a useful word in time. And, you know, those wines are lower alcohol in the same vein as the the Cianarese. Yeah. And the, you know, the Cianarese, the Canavesi and, you know, the Gattonara kind of equivalent that we, that we sampled earlier. There's an added kind of wrinkle there in that there's a local tradition of making wine from dried grapes, from dried Nebbiola. I call it Sforzo. And, you know, so it's kind of like their own answer to like Amarone and, but from Nebbiola, as opposed to Corvina, Ranonella.

Molinari you see in actual Amarone. And those are weird wines. They lean into more of this kind of like tarry, spicy, earthy realm, and they get higher in alcohol because you're, you know, concentrating the fruit that much more. But locally, it was a response to the fact that, you know, if they didn't dry the grapes, then, you know, they couldn't, you know, make satisfyingly potent wine. But Arpepe in particular, that's a - those are the first two letters of the producer's name who revived the estate in terms of bottling their own wine after many generations as growers, and really is the leading light in the region. And, you know, you talk about the most beautiful wine regions in the world, and certainly, you know, Valtellina belongs up there.

It is, you know, just really like at the foot of the Alps, at the foot of, you know, 12,000-foot peaks. And, you know, again, you know, with a lot of those wines, you know, when they're on, you get full ripeness of fruit and that, you know, red fruit qualities that we talked about, that, you know, cherry fruit quality you get with Nebbiolo. But it's like, it's very different. It's like a medicinal cherry. It's not like the, you know, candied cherry that you get sometimes with Pinots. It's more medicinal. And in the Alpine wines, it's got this lovely herbaceous, like Amaro, you know, bitterness to it that, again, like, it sounds like a strange endorsement, but, you know, encapsulates so much of what I love about Italian reds.

And, you know, we're going to cover Sangiovese next week and Alianico the following week. And, you know, in so far as there's a through line between those disparate regions and those, you know, widely different varietals from north to south throughout Italy, you know, that herbaceousness, you know, that bitter elite that all three of those wines, you know, kind of have when they're firing all cylinders. That's the continuity for me. Could you speak a little bit about how the DOC system was created after the AOC system in France and any lessons learned, how it's different, how it's the same? Yeah. So France is the model, you know, for pretty much all appalachian-based wines. You know, the most kind of famous first classification was by a state in Bordeaux, but the modern system really evolved, fascinatingly enough, around Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

And as a, you know, famous community of growers who were worried that, you know, people were trying to trade in their name, you know, essentially, you know, they were trying to trade in their name, you know, essentially diminish the value of their product by passing it off as something that it wasn't. And they wanted government regulation, benevolent government regulation for the sake of certifying the quality of their wines. And that happened in the 20s and 30s in France. And it happened as world markets plunged and growers faced, you know, kind of more pressure to maintain a solid, fixed price for their fruit. And if they could sell it as a government-certified, you know, kind of more special thing, then they could get more money for their fruit.

So that's kind of like the birth of the AOC system. The Italians just kind of copied it in the 60s. And, you know, Barolo Barbaresco was the first among the DOCs. The Italians took this kind of approach of saying, you know, if there isn't already a DOC, let's make one. So there are hundreds upon hundreds of Italian DOCs, just like Italy has, you know, more recognized varietals than almost any other country in the world. You know, it has more of these designations of origin than any other region of the world that I can think of off the top of my head. I mean, I certainly don't know them all. You know, I can't think of anybody. You'd have to be, you know, some kind of, you know, Rain Man-ish individual to know all of the DOCs.

They further complicated things. So that, you know, the fact that there are, you know, these hundreds, you know, people in the, you know, more storied regions of Italy, you know, they look around and say, you know, 'You've got Canavesi is a DOC.' And, you know, you can't tell me that, you know, this Canavesi is as good as my Barolo. You know, what are you going to do to, you know, how can we, you know, create some kind of, you know, better hierarchy? And so, what the Italians did is they added another layer. So, they had the DOC system, which was kind of equivalent to the French AOC system. And they said, you know, we're going to add, you know, so not only is this a designation of origin that's controlled, it's a DOCG.

It's a designation of origin that is controlled, wait for it, and guaranteed. We're going to one-up that control with a guarantee. And so, the DOCG system was a response to essentially the proliferation of DOCs. And Barolo was one of the first DOCGs. And they're just regulated more stringently than a DOC. And they're much fewer of them. So, and then you have in Barolo this added vineyard-based movement. So, in Barolo, they're saying, like, we have vineyards that are on par with the Grand Cru, the Premier Cru, the Burgundy, but they're not regulated as such. And so, they've started to move toward a system like that. But it is very much kind of ensconced in that, you know, DOCG system. And, you know, it's all in Italian.

And there are all these, you know, vineyard names that are really only, you know, locally well-known. So, it gets very maddening. But there is now in Barolo a government-sanctioned, you know, criteria for wines coming from a particular set of either one of the 11 communes or one of, you know, dozens of individually recognized vineyards within those communes. But it's still developing. And people are still kind of getting a fuller appreciation of what, you know, from one vineyard to the next these sites have to offer. And they're still codifying, you know, this, you know, centuries of peasant wisdom, you know, that hadn't been codified the way it had in Burgundy. So, it's very much evolving. And I think, you know, to the extent that people buy wine there, they buy more by producer than they do according to a government stamp of approval.

We lost you, Ginza. Man, that's all my fault. That's not my fault. That's not me with you. Sorry. I have one last question, but then I'm going to pop up and go over to the lot. But if you could just talk a little bit more about how Nebbiolo can be a thin-skinned grape. They need to macerate those skins to get more color, more retention, but how it can have so much high tannin and not as much body. Yeah. So, that's, those are, that is a hashtag. Excellent question. So, bingo to everyone out there. I would, yeah. So, that, that is, those are a series of, you know, seemingly conflicting terms, you know. It's not necessarily, you know, as I understand it, it's not necessarily a thin-skinned varietal in so much as it is, you know, lighter in color and doesn't retain color as well.

So, you know, there are multiple different pigments in grapes that ultimately color a wine as red. And not all grapes possess all of that. You know, there are a couple dozen, and Nebbiolo possesses fewer than, as does Pinot Noir, fewer than other varietals, which is why it goes from, you know, ruby red to, you know, brick and orange so fast. You know, for me, you know, bitching and moaning about the color of a wine always seem to miss the boat. Like, who gives a rat's ass what color it is? You know, you know, I mean, it can be instructive, but, you know, I'm not deriving pleasure from this wine because it's fuchsia or it's blue. Or polka dot, you know.

Ultimately, you know, the maybe, maybe rosé, you know, maybe the occasional orange wine, you know, they're amber, the golden, yeah, I get it. But, you know, the great joy of it all is in, you know, for me, it's a lot like judging a book by its cover or judging a wine by its label. Although, you know, that can be instructive. You know, sometimes the label, the book cover, they say something about the contents, but tannins are a different matter altogether. And tannins develop differently over the life cycle of a grape. And just the, you know, the anthocyanins, the pigments that ultimately determine the color of a wine are not synonymous with the polyphenols, the tannins that determine the astringency of it. Those are, you know, just distinct, you know, biological markers that are, are separately related, one from the next.

And then, you know, I think in terms of the alcohol levels. A lot of that is just about Nebbiola being a late ripening grape. So it's not that necessarily that it's not capable of bigger wines or higher alcohol levels. You know, maybe not as quite as much as some, some other varietals that are more precocious, but it's just that it needs a longer growing season. And historically, it hasn't, you know, done that year in and year out. So, you know, and especially in cooler regions like the Alta Piedmont. You know, even at full ripeness, you're only at, you know, 12 and a half percent alcohol. So, you know, that says much, you know, as much about, you know, the innate, you know, kind of, kind of characteristics of how the grape ripens and its ultimate ability to make bigger wines.

Because you are finding as a result of climate change in some of these, you know, south-facing, you know, historic important vineyards in Barolo that you're getting wines that are honestly too big. For a Barolo purist, that start to lose some of the, you know, some of the roses and the, you know, feminine wiles that Nebbiolo should have. And they're just brutish and, you know, fleshy and, you know, they start to taste like something else. And so, you know, you know, I think it's less of, you know, kind of an innate ability to ripen, to ripen as such and hit a particular, you know, ceiling than it is, you know, this, you know, kind of need for an extended, you know, ripening window that it may or may not have always gotten in a marginal climate in Barolo.

That's all I got. I do want to just do a small shout out to Bill and to Diane, who we finally got to meet in person this week as they moved out Vani and a good and sweet. Bon voyage. Cheers to her as she starts a new chapter of her life. We'll miss her. It should be said the whole family, they fixed their mover and moving schedule around today's lesson. So cheers to the Hempels. Cheers to you, Vani, as you undertake a new, new journey. And cheers to you all for the weekend. Thank you so much for joining us.