Fresh, Lively and Easygoing

 

 

Wines of The Times

Fresh, Lively and Easygoing

 

 

By ERIC ASIMOV

Published: August 23, 2006

 

 

PINOT GRIGIO has come a long way in the last 20 years. Just as an especially popular piece of classical music or literature will be rejected by a contingent of connoisseurs simply because of its popularity, pinot grigio from Italy, the most popular category of imported white wine in the United States, has largely been dismissed by serious wine drinkers as bland and insipid, the harmless, gulpable equivalent of a lawn mower beer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even if reflexive, the hostility rests on a truthful assessment. Most pinot grigios give many people exactly what they want: a mellifluous, easy-to-pronounce wine that can be ordered without fear of embarrassment and that is at the least cold, refreshing and for the most part cheap.

 

But the Dining section’s wine panel found recently that pinot grigio can meet these minimal criteria, yet be much more than that. In a tasting of 25 pinot grigios from northeast Italy, the best area for growing the pinot grigio grape, we found wines that were balanced, lively, crisp and subtle, with mineral foundations that supported stimulating citrus and floral flavors. None of these wines were profound. With rare exceptions, I wouldn’t expect that. Yet the wines we liked best were highly satisfying, especially given their relatively modest prices.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The pleasing results were, I think, something of a surprise to Florence Fabricant and me, if not to our two guests, Charles Scicolone, the wine director at I Trulli, and Jill Roberts, sommelier and beverage director at the Harrison, both restaurants here in Manhattan. When I think about it, though, the pleasure I found in these wines should not have been any surprise at all.

 

Just as pinot grigio has been sneered at, so have Italian white wines in general. Yet from Alto Adige in the Tyrolean Alps all the way to Sicily in the south, Italy has been producing more and more excellent white wines in the last decade or so. Many of them are highly distinctive, made from grapes that prosper nowhere else in the world, like ribolla gialla and tocai Friulano in the northeast to fiano and falanghina in Campania.

 

 

 

 

Grape vines at the Rancho Escondido

vineyard in Baja, Calif.
Luis Garcia for The New York Times

 

 

 

 

Unlike those varietals, pinot grigio is grown pretty much all over the wine-producing world. In France, where it is known as pinot gris, it is a staple of Alsace, where it makes heavier-bodied, spicy and often somewhat sweet wines of great character that sometimes have a rosy hue to them. It mostly goes by pinot gris in Oregon, where it is the principal white grape, and I recently had an excellent Canadian pinot gris from Herder in British Columbia, delicious with a sumptuous piece of Arctic char and just one of many pinot gris wines coming from that region. In Germany, pinot grigio goes by ruländer or grauburgunder, and it is popular in Slovenia and Romania as well.

 

But for Americans, none of those regions approach Italy as a popular source for these wines. Of all the Italian pinot grigios, none has been as popular for so long as Santa Margherita, the huge producer in the Veneto that churns out millions of bottles a year and did more than anybody in the 1980’s to turn pinot grigio into a popular brand name. I confess that I have been among those who have mocked Santa Margherita as an overpriced wine without character. It may well be overpriced at $22, but I will have to rethink the jeers as the 2004 Santa Margherita Alto Adige was one of our favorites, clean, crisp and minerally with refreshing flavors that lingered in the mouth.

 

 

 

 

 

A split-rail fence guards old vines at Navarro Vineyards

in the Anderson Valley in Northern California.
(Terrence McCarthy for The New York Times)

 

 

 

 

Only one wine among our top wines was more expensive than the Santa Margherita, and that was our No. 1 wine at $23, the 2004 Livio Felluga from Colli Orientali, one of the principal grape-growing areas in Friuli-Venezia Giulia. This wine, from one of the pioneers of post-World War II wine production in northeastern Italy, simply had more body and presence than the others, while retaining its refreshing purity and mineral and citrus flavors. By contrast, our No. 2 wine was, at $10, our best value, the 2004 Bollini from Trentino. With crisp, tangy apple and mineral flavors, this wine would be hard to improve on for casual drinking or as a value for large groups.

 

Most of these wines are fermented and aged briefly in steel tanks, offering not even the faintest whiff of oak. Yet the most imaginative winemakers of northeast Italy, like Gravner, Radikon and Movia (technically of Slovenia but worthy of this company) have demonstrated that oak aging and carefully managed yields can give pinot grigio rare substance and texture. Producers like these take pinot grigio into another dimension, and their wines are well worth the added expense, but bottles are hard to come by. None were in our tasting.

 

 

 

 

Grapes hang on the vine at St. Supery’s Dollarhide Ranch in St. Helena,

Calif.
(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

 

 

 

 

 

The best pinot grigios come from either Friuli-Venezia Giulia or Alto Adige, and the best areas for growing grapes are generally denominazione di origine controllata, or D.O.C., a designation that governs which grapes are used, where they are grown and how the wines are aged. But this is not always the case. Some of our favorites were indicazione geografica tipica, or I.G.T., wines that for one reason or another don’t meet the D.O.C. standards. Both the 2004 Santi Sortesele and the 2004 Kris from Franz Haas were I.G.T. wines from the Veneto, the area around Venice, which is better known for making inoffensive pinot grigios from vineyards more attuned to high yields than to producing the best possible grapes. But we found both of these wines to be pleasing and at least somewhat distinctive.

 

For the most part, though, D.O.C. wines like the 2005 MO from Piave in the Veneto, the 2005 Kellerei Kaltern from Südtiroler in Alto Adige and the 2004 Scarbolo from Grave in Friuli-Venezia Giulia tend to have more substance to them.

 

Most of the wines we tasted were from the 2004 vintage, but many stores should be carrying the 2005’s by now. With few exceptions, these are wines to be consumed young and fresh. You can sip them, guzzle them, cry with them or laugh with them. Just don’t laugh at them.

 

 

 

 

Vineyards at Old Hill Ranch in Sonoma Valley.
(Photo courtesy of Old Hill Ranch)

 

 

 

 

 

Tasting Report: Balancing Minerals With Fruit and Flowers

Livio Felluga Colli Orientali del Friuli 2004
$23
***
Fresh and substantial, with fruit and floral aromas; good texture and depth. (Importer: Clicquot, New York)

Best Value
Bollini Trentino 2004
$10
***
Tangy, balanced and perfumed with lingering apple and mineral flavors. (Kobrand, New York)

Santa Margherita Alto Adige 2004
$22
***
Clean and dry, with balanced mineral and fruit flavors. (Paterno Brothers, Lake Bluff, Ill.)

Santi Sortesele Delle Venezie IGT 2004
$13
**½
Citrus, floral and mineral flavors with a toasty, smoky quality. (Frederick Wildman & Sons, New York)

Franz Haas Kris Delle Venezie IGT 2004
$15
**½
Dry and balanced with lingering floral and mineral flavors. (Winebow, New York)

MO Piave 2005
$13
**½
Balanced and smooth with floral, mineral and citrus flavors. (Mionetto USA, New York)

Kellerei Kaltern Südtiroler 2005
$13
**½
Full, round and balanced with plenty of citrus flavors. (Omniwines, Linden Hills, N.J.)

Angelo Pittaro Friuli-Venezia Giulia IGT 2005
$14
**
Straightforward citrus flavors, yet dry, tangy and refreshing. (Great Sunsan Wine Imports, New York)

Scarbolo Friuli Grave 2004
$14
**
Balanced and energetic with gravelly mineral flavors. (Domaine Select, New York)

Il Conte Veneto IGT 2005
$10
**
Straightforward and balanced with floral and citrus flavors. (Polaner Selections, Mount Kisco, N.Y.)

 

 

 

 

Bette in Chelsea.
(Greg Scaffidi for The New York Times)

 

 

Wines of The Times: Pinot Grigio

What the Stars Mean:

(None) Pass It By

* Passable

** Very Good

*** Excellent

**** Extraordinary

Ratings reflect the panel’s reaction to wines, which were tasted with names and vintages concealed. The panelists this week are Eric Asimov; Florence Fabricant; Charles Scicolone, the wine director at I Trulli; and Jill Roberts, sommelier and beverage director at the Harrison. The tasted wines represent a selection generally available in good retail shops and restaurants. Prices are those paid in liquor shops in the New York region.

Tasting Coordinator: Bernard Kirsch

More Wines of The Times

 

 

 

Forum: Wine and Spirits

 

 

Lars Klove for The New York Times

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/dining/20060823_TASTING_FEATURE/index.html?th&emc=th

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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