Muller Thurgau? How Unexpected.

Sometimes, you just don't know what to think of a wine.

When you think "southern Italian white" maybe you think Chardonnay from Sicily. Maybe you think of a more acidic white made to be sipped with seafood fresh from the Mediterranean.

Here's what you're probably not thinking: a blend of Muller Thurgau and Gewurztraminer.

From northern Italy--yes. From Basilicata? No.

Muller Thurgau is one of the "new" grape varieties that was created in the 19th century after phylloxera devastated European grape stocks. It's a cross between Riesling and Silvaner, and as a result it has some of the qualities associated with many wines from Germany and Alsace: good fruit, a flavor profile that can fit anywhere from dry to sweet, and nice acidity. Mix it with some spicy, aromatic Gewurztraminer, and you've got a wine that's big on fruit with a distinctive character.

The only analogy I can make to the 2005 Re Manfredi is that its not unlike a dry Sauternes. ($16.99, Biondivino; between $16 and $28 from other merchants) Made from grapes grown on Monte Vulture, Basilicata's famously extinct volcano, the vines are tucked in around more widely populated Aglianico vines that produce the region's distinctive red wines. The Muller Thurgau seems to like the volcanic soil, and the warm temperatures and marine influence help to shape a wine that smelled deliciously of cocounut, pineapple, and spice. When you sipped the wine, you were bowled over by tropical fruit flavors that had a lot of acidity (so think starfruit, pineapple, and slightly under-ripe papaya). There was a juicy, pineapple-inflected finish and notes of stone and iron. Unlike Sauternes, this wine is medium-bodied so it's not as mouth-coating, nor is it as sweet. If you serve it straight from the fridge the sweetness is actually emphasized, so I would recommend letting this wine come up a bit in temperature so that you can really enjoy the aromas and flavors.

As you can imagine, this wine is a honey with spicy food--and would be especially delicious with Indian food, since its medium body would stand up to dishes made with coconut milk (like South Indian curries). We enjoyed it with some homemade Kung Po Chicken that really went well with the tropical fruit flavors. And the spice in the dish was very nice with the spicy notes that the Gewurztraminer brings to the wine.

No matter how much you know about wine, there's always a surprise around the corner. And I love when a bottle of wine's flavors are unexpected--in a good way.

An Italian Rosé--Perfect for Summer

I probably shouldn't admit this in polite, wine-loving society but my records indicate that this is the first Italian rosé I've ever had that didn't have bubbles in it. I'm not sure how it happened, but you need to take this whole post with a grain of salt because I'm going to give you pronouncements in it that are based on my first experience with this kind of wine.

If this is Italian rosé, it's certainly not like rosé that I've had from France, and it even makes Spanish rosé seem pale in comparison. This was more like drinking a very light Gamay from the Beaujolais--which was unexpected, but turned out to be kind of fun in the food and wine department.

The 2007 Torre dei Beati Montepulciano d'Abruzzo Cerasuolo was a rich, throaty, and full-bodied rosé wine. ($16, Biondivino; available elsewhere for between $12 and $19) Made with the Montepulciano grape, it was a very dark rose in color, and had a slight bit spritz when it was first opened up. The spritziness disappeared, and there were pronounced strawberry-rhubarb aromas and some wet stone. The strawberry-rhubarb aromas turned to pure raspberry flavors as you sipped it, and there was a surprisingly long, juicy aftertaste that I don't often get with rosé wines. The overall impression was dry, despite all that fruitiness. The wine costs more than many rosés in the market, but it was delicious and did have the deep color and richness (albeit in rosé form) of the Montepulciano grape. I consider it a good QPR wine because is retained so much varietal character, and I think you would too so long as you weren't expecting a salmon-colored Tavel to go with your salad.

Instead, think of robust fare, like grilled sausages or try it with our dish that night: pasta amatriciana. I did some reading about pasta amatriciana, and it turns out that even though the dish is associated with Rome, it originated in Abruzzo where the grapes for this wine were grown. For those of you who haven't had it before, you make a spicy sauce with garlic and/0r onions, white wine, tomatoes, hot red peppers, and guanciale or pancetta and it's traditionally served on the hollow spaghetti strands known as bucatini. I couldn't get pancetta for love nor money on the Mendonoma coast (and guanciale? no to that, as well), so I used center cut bacon which I know isn't authentic but it was delicious. If you'd like to try the recipe, you can use Vic's recipe that he modified from Marcella Hazan. The rosé's chilly fruitiness was terrific with the red pepper, and the raspberry flavors didn't overwhelm or clash with the tomatoes but were a nice counterpoint to the smoked meat.

I discovered this rosé searching for wines from Abruzzo to sample this month. I'm hoping the regions I have yet to drink my way through have some more rosés in store for me. If you've got a favorite Italian rosé let me know, because I really would like to have some more before summer is over.

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Wine Shopping in San Francisco, Italian Style

I'm warning you right now that you may feel a little shlubby if you wander into the chic wine store Biondivino in San Francisco's Russian Hill neighborhod wearing worn-out yoga pants and a sweatshirt. I was wearing one of my more presentable vacation-type outfits, which is not saying much admittedly, and I still felt underdressed. Biondivino is staffed by young, good looking, and hip people who can climb ladders and pull wine off of vertical displays gracefully. This does not precisely describe me, so I kept pulling at my shirt tails and hoping that no one noticed that I was solely responsible for raising the average age of people in the store by about a decade. (photo of the store's owner, Ceri, doing the death defying ladder crawl at Biondivino, courtesy of Yelp!)

The reason to go to Biondivino is not to feel dumpy or old, however. The reason to go is this: they have an astonishing range of affordable Italian wines for sale. What's more, handy little bright orange tags on the bottles indicate (even if the bottles are way up there and you are way down on the floor) that the wine is under $20.

Because of the layout, the store is not a browsing kind of store. It's not that browsing is prohibited--they were happy to let me stroll around--it's just that you can't just pick up and put down bottles on your own and read the back of labels given that some of them are accessible only by the aforementioned ladder. Instead, you are dependent upon the sales staff to help you out, which might frustrate you if you are used to anonymity in the wine shop. The good news on this front is that the staff knows what they're talking about. I waltzed in and started asking for Sardinian reds and roses from Abruzzo, and (!) a white wine from Basilicata and there was nothing that the store didn't have and the staff knew where it all was, too. At Biondivino they arrange the wines from the north of Italy to the south on vertical shelves, so as long as you (or they) know the geography you can head for more or less the right part of the display. I kept insisting that maybe the Pecorino I reviewed yesterday was actually from Le Marche, and they just shook their heads, smiled, and said firmly that it really was from Abruzzo. (Once I got the bottle in my hands and checked the back label I had to admit they were right.)

You can find a regional list of their offerings here and see for yourself what an excellent assortment of Italian bottles they have. I can't get the search function to work on their website, so you have to browse this list for a sense of what the store carries. They are happy to special order wine for you, and the day I visited the shop a special party was being arranged for some customers--so it's definitely a full-service wine store. They even do private tasting events for 10-15 people at their big, central table. If you are in San Francisco and looking for a fun idea for a birthday, anniversary, or even a "just for the hell of it" event, this might be a good option for you.

Biondivino is located at 1415 Green Street at the intersection of Green and Polk--aka the food and wine danger zone. If you're out and about in the Russian Hill neighborhood one day, stop in and see what Ceri's got in stock. I would have no hesitation in contacting her with any Italian wine questions you might have, and inquire about whether she can ship to you if you aren't in the area. I saw wines in that small store that I have not seen anywhere else, and I've not had a bad bottle yet from the small stash I purchased.

Abruzzo Mistaken Wine Identity, Case #1: Pecorino

As I mentioned in my first post about wines from the Abruzzo region, some of them have a bit of an identity problem. Some of the grapes used are masquerading as wines--or even cheese--from other parts of Italy. In the Abruzzo, no doubt they will tell you that it's the Tuscans and Romans who are stealing from the Abruzzese. Take today's wine from Abruzzo: Pecorino. Type it into The Oracle (i.e. Wikipedia) and all you will get is the Roman cheese. You have to specify "Pecorino Grape" to get it to cough up some viticultural information. And if you are looking for information on the grape, I'd skip the 1-line Wikipedia entry entirely and head to this article at Wine Library Terroir.

If you head to that article, you will discover that the variety was thought to be extinct until it was found growing wild in Le Marche, that sheep liked to snack on it which may be why it's named Pecorino, and that it's now grown mostly in Le Marche and Abruzzo.

This was my first Pecorino, but I can assure you right now that it won't be my last. It was made by Cantina Tolla, an Italian wine cooperative founded more than 40 years ago that now has 1200 partner growers and makers involved in producing a wide range of wines.

The 2007 Cantina Tollo Pecorino was clear straw yellow in color with a slightly greenish tinge that made it very summery in appearance. ($18, Bion Divino; unfortunately, I haven't been able to find it online elsewhere) Fresh aromas of Crenshaw melons and white nectarines continued the summer appearance of the wine into the aromas, and these elements were echoed in the juicy flavors of melon, peach, and nectarine. The wine picked up a briney, saline note in the aftertaste that really carried the wine over from very good into excellent QPR territory. The wine had all the medium-body and fresh citrus flavors that I was led to expect given the varietal characteristics, but that little saline kick at the end made it the latest example of a charming yet surprising Italian whites.

We had our Pecorino with a cheesy pasta dish made not with Pecorino but with goat's cheese dreamed up by Mario Batali: orecchiette with hazelnuts and goat cheese. It combines those little ear-shaped pasta with olive oil, goat cheese, parsley, a pinch of red pepper flakes, some toasted hazelnuts, and some toasted breadcrumbs in a dish that is so fast, so comforting, and so easy that it should be in everyone's repertoire for "what's for dinner" emergencies. Basically, it's like the best mac and cheese you've ever had, and for 20 minutes I considered becoming vegetarian and eating this every day. The salty goat cheese and that saline note in the wine were divine together, and the hazelnuts and breadcrumbs picked up a little bit of a nutty note in the wine that I hadn't noticed before. The fresh melon and summer fruit flavors cut through the richness of the cheese and the wine's medium body kept it from being overwhelmed by the pasta or tasting too sharp in the mouth.

I'm sounding like a broken record, I know, but in January I was not prepared for the delicious diversity of Italian white wines that I've encountered so far this year. I've just had my 7th Italian white and I know that they are in my wine cellar to stay--even if I have to get rid of some Italian reds to make room for them.

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Cannonau: Proving "Rustic Wine" Isn't a Bad Thing

I'm wrapping up my month of Sardinian wines today with a wine that exemplifies the wine description "rustic."

What is a rustic wine? It's a topic of debate, and some people use it as a put-down to describe wines they find simple, unsophisticated, and lacking in the fruitiness that might make a wine "quaffable" (that's a subject for another day). Like my esteemed colleague Tyler Colman of Dr. Vino, however, I think it's a good thing. In a post made way back in February 2007, he entered into a spirited discussion with some readers about the definition of a rustic wine. Dr. Vino described rustic wines as "off-the-beaten-path varieties or regions that maybe have some quirks or rough edges but also have a certain undeniable charm, particularly in the face of a pasteurized, homogenized wine in an “international” style."

This definition certainly fits the Sardinian red wine that I tried. I was made from Cannonau grapes--which is what Grenache is called on the island of Sardinia. Turns out there is a bit of controversy these days about the origins of Cannonau. We used to say the Spanish brought it to Sardinia, but now experts wonder if it isn't indigenous to Sardinia ,and the Spanish took it back with them after they invaded the island in the 13th century. Whatever you call it, Cannonau from Sardinia has retained the idiosyncratic rusticity that can make you feel that you are drinking wine from a different age. Craig Camp had a Cannonau a few weeks ago, and likened it to an old-fashioned Chateauneuf du Pape from the Rhone.

The 2003 Santa Maria La Palma Le Bombarde was one of those wines that reminded you that rusticity is something that you happen upon all too infrequently these days when drinking wine. ($18, Bion Divino) Upon first sip, it smalled and tasted like iron--overwhelmingly so--with some gamey notes that made me think I had made a serious mistake with this wine. I left it alone in the glass for 15 or so, then sipped it and the iron tang had gone, replaced by flavors of meat and leather. Another 15 minutes and the meat and leather had melded with a strong, cherry liqueur flavor. In the end it was very much like an older Chateauneuf du Pape, with all the rusticity and funkiness left in and none of its opulence of plushness. This wine had great varietal typicity, but it may not appeal to New World Grenache fans. Good QPR for a wine that has oodles of character, but may cost more than you want to spend on a wine with lots of rough edges.

Like most rustic wines, the Cannonau was much better with food than without. Our favorite pairing was with a BLT and some sweet potato fries. The sandwiches were made on some toasted sourdough made by our friends at the Twofish Baking Company, and the sourdough tang was perfect with the any remaining iron notes. The smokey bacon was terrific with the meat and leather tastes, and the tomato and the cherry flavors sparked off each other without clashing.

Listening to Lynne Rossetto Kasper's The Splendid Table podcast for June 21, I discovered a new reason to love this rustic wine: Dan Buettner discovered that is has 3 times the antioxidants of any other grape on earth. It's one reason why Sardinians (who love their Cannonau) are one of the five groups highlighted in his book Blue Zones, which studied communities with exceptionally long-lived members to learn about life habits that could contribute to health and wellness.

Sardinian Cannonau will be one of the reds that stands out from my Italian regional tour. Like one of the centenarian Sardinian sheep-herders interviewed in Dan Buettner's book, it proves that rusticity is not such a bad thing, after all.