Robert V. Camuto's Blog, page 4
August 7, 2023
Don’t call it Ver----------!
August 7, 2023
Don’t call it Ver----------!
French Vermentino is having a deserved boom. Too bad they’ve got to call it something else.
The heat wave of summer 2023 finally did it to me.
I’ve become a white wine person – at least when it feels like it’s well above 80 degrees Fahrenheit – at night.
Still, sparkling – as long as it’s chilled and not oaky. (This obviously excludes the entire overhyped rosé category.)
And I love Vermentino – particularly from Liguria (aka Pigato), Tuscany, French Provence and Corsica (Vermentinu) and as far afield as California.
A semi-aromatic grape with its citrus notes and its mineral and slightly bitter edges – Vermentino is a great response to climate change – as it keeps its fresh acidity in the punishing heat.
Word needs to be spread. But an unfortunate EU rule taking full force with the just-bottled 2022 vintage – bans the Vermentino label from wines other than those from Italy, and three countries with negotiated exceptions: Australia, the U.S. and Croatia.
The obvious target here is France, Italy’s neighbor that’s rivaling it as the world’s biggest Vermentino producer.
See my discussion of Vermentino and So. France white wines in the latest Robert Camuto Meets… from one of the world’s most beautiful seaside estates: Clos Ste. Magdeleine in Cassis.
Read with something cool and white.
Jonathan Sack of Clos Ste. Magdeleine in his Vermentino vineyard
July 24, 2023
Philosophy and beauty. (And wine too)
July 28, 2023
Philosophy and beauty. (And wine too)
Inside Brunello Cucinelli’s ultra-boutique red wine
There are lots of famous people – accomplished in other fields – who decide at some point that they ought to make or at least bottle wine.
In Napa, Bordeaux, or Tuscany, they are a dime a dozen.
Now you have – in a category of his own – Brunello Cucinelli, the luxury Cashmere King who lives his brand of “humanistic capitalism” while producing very high-end sportswear from his base in Solomeo in central Italy’s Umbria.
About 15 years ago, Cucinelli began thinking about making olive oil and wine as part of his singularly impressive restoration of Solomeo and its valley.
Brunello Cucinelli overlooking vineyard. Photo by Robert Camuto
His oil is deliciously strong. But as you can imagine, the wine had to smooth as a Himalayan (Cashmere) goat’s under chin fur.
He’s just released the first vintage – 2018 – of his Castello di Solomeo Umbria Rosso, and I visited Brunello in June for the launch.
The price is set high – for Cucinelli’s “quiet luxury” buying public of butter-soft threads.
What justifies it ? Read the latest Robert Camuto Meets… at winespectator.com
July 20, 2023
Lunch with Bacchus! (Sort of)
July 20, 2023
Lunch with Bacchus! (Sort of)
A pair of Valpo vintners pairs wine (and food) with unearthed spectacular Roman mosaics
I hear it all the time: Wine is culture. Wine is history. Wine is this territory.
But what does that mean when your local history is so old it’s unearthed by archaeologists?
I am speaking of the Roman Villa mosaics unearthed under vineyards and a fruit orchard in Valpolicella.
Giuliano Franchini of Franchini on the Villa site. Photo by Robert Camuto.
All around it’s been a great thing. The two vintners who own different parts of the land, have spent hundreds of thousands to fund the excavation – which is handy as the Italian State is more-or-less broke.
In what could be a model for future digs, the owners get to bring guests free of charge to the site and get to use the mosaic images found under their properties.
The owners of Benedetti La Villa and Franchini, are smart businesspeople. And the presence of an archaeological site adds another element to wine tourism. Franchini went so far as having a local chef consult with archaeologists and prepare an ancient type meal from local wild ingredients.
But basically the wines in the bottles adorned with those ancient images are the same modern wines. Should they be? Or should they too be an effort at something like an authentic recreation? And if so, how authentic? Would we even find Roman wine (often preserved with seawater) drinkable?
Read about this piece of Romans-in-Valpolicella history in the latest Robert Camuto Meets… (free) at winespectator.com.
Twin brothers Matteo (left) and Simone (right) of Benedetti La Villa. Photo courtesy of the winery.
July 5, 2023
A Mondavi’s Italian Dream
Carlo Mondavi and wife Giovanna launch a boutique winery in their Piemontese “heaven”
It’s been nearly 20 years since the late Robert Mondavi and his family were forced to sell their pioneering California wine company. And with that sale the Mondavis’ dream of making great wines on European soil also vanished.
Now Robert’s grandson Carlo is realizing that dream with a small project called Sorì della Sorba in the Piedmont.
He and his Piemontese wife, Giovanna Bagnasco, (who runs the Barolo producer Brandini with her sister) farm “beyond-organically” to make about 20,000 bottles of a pair of wines from Nebbiolo and Dolcetto.
In June I was the first journalist to visit the couple at Sorì, which Carlo calls their “Slice of Heaven.”
Read about the couple’s ambitions and project in the latest Robert Camuto Meets… at winespectator.com
Carlo Mondavi and Giovanna Bagnasco at their Sori della Sorba vineyard
June 14, 2023
Fifty Years of Superb Soave
June 15, 2023
Fifty Years of Superb Soave
Pieropan’s Calvarino should be one of the coolest whites you’re drinking
There are great wines and there are cool wines. Sometimes the two categories meet. Sometimes, for hard to explain reasons, they don’t.
Soave producer Pieropan’s Calvarino was an avant-garde revelation when it debuted 50 years ago as one of Italy’s first single-vineyard cru wines.
From left to right at Calvarino's 50th anniversary tasting Dario Pieropan, wine educator Filippo Bartolotta, MW Gabriele Gorelli, Andrea Pieropan. Photo credit Robert Camuto
The wine, bracingly fresh and minerally with a long and graceful aging potential, still is on the cutting edge.
As ever, it’s organically grown, on volcanic soils, fermented in vitrified concrete, using local yeasts, aged there on lees, with minimal sulfites added, and not exposed to a stick of wood.
It’s delicious stuff that’s well priced at less than $30.
And yet….
It’s simply not fashionable wine, which tells you more about wine fashion than it does about wine.
Maybe it’s a lack of understanding of Italian whites (Italy’s secret weapon!) in a country better known for reds. Perhaps its Soave’s lackluster image forged by a lot of mediocre wine from big producers. Or maybe the fact that Pieropan’s U.S. distribution is handled by the rather un-cool E&J Gallo winery.
Whatever the reason, Pieropan and Calvarino merit more attention among Italy’s greats.
Read about it in my latest Robert Camuto Meets… at winespectator.com
Sala Calvarino Cement tanks in which Pieropan's Calvarino cru is fermented and aged before bottling. Photo courtesy of Pieropan
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May 25, 2023
California’s real Alt- wine scene
This year was the second running that I’ve visited California vineyards, and I’ve been impressed by the spirit of adventure among a generation of freewheeling winemakers.
Far from the derby of who can produce the next elite Cab, Chard or Pinot – or the next cutely branded beverage – comes this growing bunch interested in trying anything and everything in Italian, French or other grape varieties to see what works.
One of their leading lights and mentors is Steve Matthiasson, the organic agronomist turned vintner, whose life took a turn about 20 years ago when he planted a vineyard from a dozen cuttings of Ribolla Gialla from Ribolla master Josko Gravner in northeastern Italy’s Friuli.
“It’s been a big effort to communicate that there are different expressions of California,” Matthiasson says.
From Vermentino to Trousseau; Frappato to Fiano, it’s an exciting time to be drinking those expressions from the likes of Matthiasson, Ryme Cellars, Arnot-Roberts, and my Cicerone of this voyage Sam Bilbro of Idlewild Wines.
When it comes to wine, I am an Old World traditional drinker. But I find the exchange between intrepid producers on both sides of the Atlantic to be refreshingly positive. Both groups benefit.
Enjoy the latest Robert Camuto Meets… at winespectator.com
Steve Matthiasson, organic agronomist turned vintnershare this
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May 11, 2023
Super Darrell
May 12, 2023
Super Darrell
How the Sacramento grocer developed his global influence and following
It’s been said that California grocer Darrell Corti knows more about food and wine than the rest of us, which I think is true.
He also has a quick mind and encyclopedic memory that put younger people to shame.
And he’s built his knowledge and influence from the most unlikely of places – his family’s Corti Brothers market on Sacramento’s east side – a temple to a bygone era family run supermarkets with its vintage trappings: the linoleum floors, the old school signage and food shelves and Darrell who shows up to work every day in his tie and blue pressed smock.
On my recent trip to California, I visited The Wizard of all things food and wine to talk about many of his areas of influence from Barolo to Balsamic vinegar; from olive oil to a whiskey collection that includes Prohibition era hooch (complete with Doctor’s prescriptions). For more see my Robert Camuto Meets….column at wine spectator.
Corti with a bottle of sweet fortified 1875 Angelica Wine bottled during Prohibition from the "Private Stock" of Banker and philanthopist Isaias W. Hellman. Behind him is Corti Brothers General Manager Rick Mindermann.
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April 18, 2023
CA’s Old Vineyard Heroes
April 19, 2023
CA’s Old Vineyard Heroes
Promoting the wildly varied vines of pre-Prohibition days
Long before the era of high-end California Cabs and Chard (and more lately Pinot Noir), there were lots and lots of other wine grapes grown in the Golden State.
Prior to Prohibition (1920-1933) gutting America’s wine traditions, many growers planted Zinfandel alongside dozens of other Old-World grapes in vineyards that added character and complexity to the final “field blend” that was all fermented together. In such a way – one variety could add power, another (sometimes white) could add acidity, another aromas, spice and so on.
These hand-worked head-trained vineyards, of course, varied from year to year – without the use of modern technology.
Today, making wines from what’s left of these antique vineyards is exciting stuff.
Tegan Passalacqua (left) with Morgan Twain-Peterson in the 19th-century Nervo vineyard south of Geyserville (Sonoma Co.)
On my recent trip to California, I caught up with two important players in the movement to preserve old (Pre-Prohibition) vineyards and make delicious field blends: Tegan Passalacqua winemaker at Napa-based Turley and his own Sandlands label, and Morgan Twain-Peterson of Sonoma-based Bedrock Wine Co.
Beyond the romance of preservation, their wines changed how I think about California wine and its great potential.
To learn more, read my latest Robert Camuto Meets at winespectator.com
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April 10, 2023
Sicily’s “Unfinished Poem”
April 10, 2023
Sicily’s “Unfinished Poem”
A return to Sicily’s Marsala and Az. Marco De Bartoli
When I first visited Marco De Bartoli in Marsala in 2008, I was struck by all the drama surrounding this great figure of Sicilian wine. So much so that I included a chapter on him in my book Palmento: A Sicilian Wine Odyssey.
De Bartoli loved – and I mean loved – Sicily and Marsala – a once-great lost cause wine (fortified and fractionally aged like fine sherry) that had developed mainly into a cooking condiment sold in supermarkets for dishes like Chicken Marsala.
But De Bartoli, son of a prominent Marsala-producing family who raced Alfa Romeos on the European Targa circuit as a younger man, didn’t give up.
Renato De Bartoli in the Samperi vineyard
He revived old sets of Marsala aging barrels (like Sherry’s Solera system, called “In Perpetuum” in Sicily) to carefully craft Marsala. But for one of his wines, he rejected the Marsala definition developed from the tradition of 19th-century British merchants who added alcohol and sweet wine must. For that wine, called Vecchio Samperi, De Bartoli sought to make something purer – a real “pre-British” product without the fortification.
This got him in a lot of trouble. The wine didn’t fit any category of the Italian wine bureaucracy. It wasn’t “Marsala”, but it was too potent to be “table wine”. A magistrate sequestered his stocks for a while.
Still, eventually, Marco was able to release his Vecchio Samperi – a deep, complex wine that smells and tastes of the passage of time and hot, arid Western Sicily by the sea. If you haven’t tried it, find it and do so.
A lot has happened since then. Marco died in 2010. Eldest son Renato (the enologist) went off to work elsewhere for a while. But in the last few years the three De Bartoli offspring have united in carrying on the legacy with Vecchio Samperi (now classified solely as “Vino”) along with a range of Sicilian whites made from their Grillo vineyards, and their prized sweet Passito from Pantelleria called Bukkuram.
A must read (and drink) for those with an interest in Sicily and Southern wines: my latest Robert Camuto Meets… on the De Bartolis at winespectator.com.
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March 30, 2023
Prince of a guy
March 30, 2023
Prince of a guy
A solitary life and compelling wines in NW Sicily
Francesco Spadafora is one of the more compelling characters I have met this year – and not just because he shared with me one of the most exciting recipes I’ve discovered in a long time.
Spadafora, 67, lives on an isolated hilltop near Monreale, Sicily, helped by a winemaking team and his daughter, Enrica. Here he makes some delicious and elegantly restrained Grillo, Nero D’Avola and Syrah wines. (Yes, Syrah really achieves something in Sicily’s high hills!)
Francesco Spadafora in his vineyards near Monreale Sicily
The estate and label are Dei Principi di Spadafora – though the noble title of “Prince” belongs to an older cousin. His wines can be hard to find but are worth the effort.
Spadafora is a true nobleman, more attached to land and nature than to other currency. And he’s a great cook who tipped me to the amazing combination of blood orange reduction (slow cooked over two hours) with anchovies (I use Cantabrian in oil) over pasta. Mamma mi che buono! I add some other things as well.
For now check out my latest Robert Camuto Meets… column at winespectator.com
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