Wine Notes: Piedmont producers share vat of knowledge

If there’s a Portland zeitgeist manual somewhere, it’s got to include a page (I’d say somewhere after “cycling” but maybe before “knitting”) on our predilection for Italian wines. And that love is most evident in our tendency to zealously collect the great reds of Piedmont: Barolo and Barbaresco. From Wizer’s Oswego Foods to Liner & Elsen, you can find Stumptowners far and wide salivating over bottles from La Spinetta, Angelo Gaja and the like.

When a group of Italian vintners came through town recently to pour for the trade, I snagged three of Piedmont’s most interesting producers to ask them some questions about their craft as part of my ongoing quest to discover what makes their wines so appealing to us.

If you’re new to Barolo and Barbaresco, you should know that both are made from nebbiolo. When grown in vineyards near their respective villages, in the hillsides overlooking the town of Alba, this grape makes a soul-moving red, redolent of tobacco, licorice, dried leaves and sweet chocolate.

The following three are producers you should know. And even if you are already an aficionado, you’ll enjoy reading about what makes these guys tick.

Their responses have been edited for length and clarity. The pity is, you can’t hear their glorious Italian accents.

The boundary-pushing classic: Luca Currado, Vietti
It may be a historic family producer of Barolo, but Vietti has always rocked the boat. For example: Beginning in 1970, a group of artist friends of the Currado-Vietti family began painting original works, often depicting animals, inspired by each wine. The precursors to the now-ubiquitous “critter labels,” these images shocked a wine market accustomed to labels printed with nothing more than standard black script. Today, Vietti’s labels continue to be among the most beautiful in the world. And the wines? To die for.

Your father, Alfredo Currado, married your mother, Luciana Vietti, in 1957 and became the winemaker for Vietti. Then, in 1961, he was the first in Barolo to release single-vineyard bottlings. How did that come about?

You really have to go back two generations. In 1870, there were two Vietti brothers. The eldest, my great-grandfather, became an engineer in Torino, then like many Italians at that time, he left Italy and spent 35 years in America, in Boston. Then in early 1910, his brother in Italy who was managing the family vineyard passed away. So my family came back from America to work in the vineyard and take care of the family business. Now, my great-grandfather had traveled overseas and was much more open-minded. He understood the meaning of the word terroir and the importance of biodiversity. So he began cherry-picking the best grand cru (or the most prestigious) vineyards in the Barolo region. This was very unusual at that time. Now — thanks to my great-grandfather — of the 20 grand crus of the region, we own parts of 15. So in 1961, my father said, “We have all these great vineyards; why don’t we start to vinify them all separately and see, really, what they show?”

And in 1967, your father was the first to start bottling the flavorful traditional white grape of Barolo, arneis, on its own as a dry table wine.

Yes. In the mid ’60s, my father and mother were looking to make a white wine. They felt that if a variety had been planted in our region since Roman times, it must be there for a reason. But arneis was being made in a sweet style, almost like moscato, or blended with leftover pints of nebbiolo after harvest to make a simple rosé. It was called “il vin de la suocera” (the wine for the mother-in-law). I am sorry, but it was not really a very good wine. There were just a few vines, here and there, in the middle of the nebbiolo vineyards. My father wanted to make a wine with a little less residual sugar, like a fine German riesling. He collected the grapes from 55 different growers; some only picked just one basket, because the variety had almost disappeared. Then, by an error, the fermentation went totally dry. My father was very disappointed. He left it in the tank all winter, on the lees. And then in the springtime, the wine journalist Veronelli came to the winery to taste the new vintages. He said, ‘What is that? … Oh, let me try!” My father said, “No, no, it is a bad experiment.” But then he took a carafe and said, “OK, let’s try an aperitif before lunch.” And the wine was fantastic! He planted the very first vineyard in 1968; all the growers took cuttings from our vineyards, then the university selected clones from our vineyards, and now today it is one of the most popular foreign varieties.

(Note: The Ponzi family here in Oregon are longtime friends of the Currado family; so for a fun side-by-side tasting, try the 2011 Vietti Roero Arneis alongside the 2011 Ponzi Willamette Valley Arneis; $23 and $25, respectively; E&R Wine Shop, Pastaworks NW (City Market), Zupan’s Burnside and Lake Grove.)

You are considered to be a Barolo producer in the traditional style. Knowing all that you know about winemaking, why do you use old-fashioned techniques in the cellar?

For us, the vineyard has always been more important than who is making the wine. I think it would be arrogant, egocentric, even stupid to impose your ego, your own modern style, on a historical vineyard — like Lazzarito, Brunate, Rocche or Villero — that has been known for 300 or 400 years to make a great wine. When I worked my first harvest in ’88, I was a young winemaker. I had studied in France and California; I used a lot of scientific analysis to understand the wine. And then, as time passed, I realized this is all (hogwash). For sure, some analysis is important, but only a very small amount. Wine is made, for me, with your eyes, your nose, your tongue, your stomach. You need to feel it.

http://www.oregonlive.com/foodday/index.ssf/2012/05/piedmont_producers_share_vat_o.html

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