Category The Italian Job

The 2023 Vintage across Italy

Emma Bentley 1 Comment

Two days ago, a notification pops up on my phone: “2023 confirmed as world’s hottest year on record.” It’s a headline which is saddening rather than surprising. Anyone who poked their head outside in 2023 probably felt the effect of climate change.

Personally, I feel rather helpless in the face of such a huge battle, but, should you want to get a better understanding of who is valiantly fighting the cause, you should see what Nick Breeze is doing with his series of interviews called ClimateGenn (available to stream on YouTube and through the website.)

As we know, each passing year is becoming more and more volatile, with extreme weather events occuring in places where previously there had been no such issues. An industry like viticulture and winemaking, like all forms of agriculture, is fundamentally intertwined with the weather. After the drought of 2022, we had been hoping for a relatively straightforward 2023, but that wasn’t to be the case. This latest vintage will go down as one of the most complicated in Italy in recent memory.

The technical information in this blog post comes from the annual report provided by agronomic consultants Vitenova and the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (IASC), while the anecdotes come from recent conversations with winemakers.

It’s little surprise that 2023 was the warmest year ever recorded in Italy (IASC) because already the winter of 2022-2023 was the fifth hottest since records started in 1800 and was characterised, by and large, by a continuation of the drought of 2022. (Tuscany is the exception here where the winter saw far more rainfall than usual.) The month of March was very warm – the average temperature was up in the top ten hottest averages for March ever recorded – but then we felt the chill in April with temperatures lower than the average, almost -2°C in Friuli and -1.5°C in the Veneto.

Spraying with a preventative treatment of AQ10 at La Biancara, April 2023.

May was the month in which the rain fell for most of us, and you may remember the heavy flooding on several occasions in Emilia-Romagna. Maybe it’s because I spend most of my time in the Veneto where they’re known for swearing*, but it was in May when I heard some pretty choice swearwords from winemakers all over the country as they realised they needed to step up the fight against downy (and to a lesser extent powdery) mildew.

Flooded vineyards in the Veneto plain, May 2023.

You may remember a post from Corrado Dottori of La Distesa in the Marche, who wrote on Facebook at the end of June 2023 that he’d lost 70-80% of his production, and he’d never seen anything like this in his 25 year career as a winemaker.

Domenico Rinaldis of winery Nasciri in Calabria told me: “it was a very complicated year with all the rain that fell in April, May and the first half of June. We had to fight back with sulphur and copper but in the end, we only lost 25% of the production and then, the grapes we harvested were excellent.”

It was a similar story for Marco Merli in Umbria who also lost 25-30% of his production because of the impact of the rain from budburst until flowering.

Spraying organic prosecco vines, May 2023. — Last week, I spoke to the winemaker photographed here. He sprayed a record 30 times in 2023. That’s not good news.

As an aside, it’s worth noting that despite the abundant rainfall in 2023, there is still a state of severe or extreme drought across 9.3% of Italy (and 10.5% in France.) There’s a hypothesis (again from Drought Central) that the higher temperatures during the summer and autumn meant for higher than expected levels of evaporation, which then caused the intense rainfall in late October and, in turn, the floods and landslides in Tuscany at the beginning of November.

The month of July was possibly the very hottest ever recorded, with temperatures of 47°C in Siciliy and 42°C in Calabria (I confirm, I was there and my gosh, it was hot) and +2,9°C above the average for the Castagneto Carducci weather station near Livorno, Tuscany. In the north, however, while the temperatures were also high, the rain did not let up: with 100 mm above the average in Veneto and Friuli. In the centre of Italy and further south, rainfall was more sporadic; some areas were hit, others not. Marino Colleoni told me over lunch during the Christmas period that over the summer, his vineyards near the panoramic town of Montalcino in Tuscany received the lion’s share of rainfall, whilst in the next valley, it stayed bone dry. But, between the constant rain and two bombardments of hail, his production in 2023 is 80-90% less than usual.

And this is why I choose to talk only about quality grape growing winemakers; this ugly mess of garganega (photographed in Gambellara) was harvested and will have become cheap bulk wine.

There was hail in the Veneto and Friuli too; on 12-13 July and 24-25 July, large swathes of vineyards stretching from Verona to Friuli passing through Treviso were hit. La Biancara was not spared but the damage was mercifully quite light.

Whilst the summer was the 8th hottest since 1800, the autumn was hot too. Up and down the boot, the months of September and October were dry and +0,93°C e +0,85°C respectively hotter than the average. It was a saving grace. Winemakers who chose to wait it out and harvest later were able to reap the benefits of this clement weather. Marco Merli confirmed: “the grapes that survived the downy mildew were almost perfect. They hadn’t suffered any heat stress and thus the fermentations were strong. The situation in the cellar – in terms of reduction and volatile acidities – is nicely under control.”

Garganega grape bunch at La Biancara on 29 Sept 2023
Garganega at La Biancara on 29 Sept 2023

I asked them too what they learnt in this complicated year. Domenico at Nasciri said “the main lesson we learnt was of the importance of prevention. We learnt that treating preventatively to protect the grapes was very effective in years like this… and not to give up in the face of bad weather!” Marco Merli is more specific: “I need to improve the availability of tractors and manpower in order to be able to go and spray in the very narrow windows of possibility.”

I also sent a message to Thomas Niedermayr to find out how the year went for his eponymous winery in the Alto Adige, and the answer is rather interesting, so much so that it really merits being expounded upon in its own blog post at a later date.

“For us, it was a fantastic year; good weather, even though it rained, it wasn’t too much. The temperatures were above the average so we started harvest earlier than usual but the grapes were really healthy and there was a generous quantity too. It is further confirmation that resistant varieties are the way forward. We didn’t do a single treatment with copper [i.e. against downy mildew] this year but the grapes were good and healthy. It just shows that us winemakers need to adapt to the conditions in which we find ourselves right now.

* Venice is apparently the city where they swear the most in Italy: 19 times a day, against the national average of 8.91 times a day. It’s said that this prevalence for cursing is due to the frequent logistic headaches involved in living or working in this magical but doomed city. (link)

L-R: Daniele Piccinin, Alberto Mori, Mateja Gravner, Angiolino Maule

A Drop Of Italian History

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I was at a dinner last night, the like of which has never happened before and probably will never happen again.

It was an evening dedicated to three natural winemakers: Josko Gravner, who showed the light to Angiolino Maule, who, in turn, taught all he could to Daniele Piccinin. Three generations, if you will, of natural winemaking in the north-eastern corner (not the trendiest part) of Italy. I didn’t learn anything new: I’ve been part of the Maule family for long enough I suppose, I’ve seen all the family photo albums, but now that all this has been said aloud in public, I feel I can relate them to a wider audience without feeling like I’m airing dirty laundry.

Angiolino Maule starts. He talks of a time in the 1970s and 80s when his pizzeria restaurant was booming, when money was literally burning a hole in his backpocket, when he was able to pay the construction company for the restauration of the house that I now live in all in advance. He recounted all that because a decade later, in the 1990s, he was in the middle of an existential crisis. What kind of wine should he make? What did the market want? What did his values say he should make? What was he capable of making?

Many times during his speech, he refers to his wife Rosamaria who is sitting in the audience, as a linchpin even when times got very rough and he wanted to chuck in the towel.

Had he not – by chance – tasted a wine in the Bere Alto wine bar in Vicenza and then gone to meet its maker, a certain Josko Gravner and had the circle of friends (with Stanko Radikon, La Castellada, Dario Princic, Edi Kante…) which formed shortly afterwards, we would not be sitting here today.

I knew too that Angiolino had regular crises – pruning by yourself in the foggy winter really doesn’t help anyone’s mental health – but I hadn’t connected the dots that when this was happening he was 35 years old with two young children. I’m 36 with two young children.

The connection with Josko Gravner, and with that group of friends, was his lifeline and gave him the strength to continue. Next to speak is Mateja Gravner. Always composed and delicately referential, she draws on memories of her father with Angiolino. Josko is such an interesting, multi-faceted person whose professional journey shaped the course of Italian wine… but she couldn’t go into all the details or the food would have gone cold; so I’ll save that for another blog post too.

Last but certainly not least is Daniele Piccinin, a magician working with pinot noir, durella and chardonnay in the Monti Lessini, above Soave. He had been inspired drinking a wine of Angiolino’s, which, at the time, was the only wine running agaist the mainstream in this area. Daniele came to meet Angiolino in a similar way to how Angiolino went to meet Josko. Deciding he wanted to switch from working in restaurants to making wine, Daniele used the La Biancara cellar for his first vintages and learnt all he could from Angiolino. He also recounts how he was there at the founding of the Arke distribution company (originally destined to import French wines into the Italian restaurant channel, which is now run by Francesco Maule, my brother-in-law…) and how he was the link-piece in connecting the natural wine association which was looking for a home for its flagship event with the Villa Favorita venue twenty years ago. It was the perfect way to understand how these three figures intertwined in this complex viticultural tapestry.

Daniele Piccinin addressing the room.

Finally, a big thank you to Alberto Mori, chef and owner of Al Callianino for hosting the event. Bringing together these three protagonists had been in the works for close to five years, pushed back time and time again by the pandemic but finally, on what should have been his day-off, Alberto donned his chef attire and crafted a most thoughtful menu to accompany the liquid offering. Alberto takes local and seasonal ingredients, combines them in sometimes rather untraditional ways, and offers balanced, precise dishes, often with a contemporary twist. The parmesan risotto with snails, salsa verde and pestled lard, paired with the Gravner Ribolla 2007 was simply inspired.

Risotto with snails, salsa verde, pork fat and parmesan – the perfect pairing for Ribolla 07.

I enjoyed the Maule Pico 2013 with the corn-base pizza and baccala mantecato from I Tigli (Angiolino’s brother-in-law and a discreet nod of the hat both to the Maule pizzeria heritage and to Alberto Mori’s formative years working at I Tigli.)

But the surprise wine of the evening was an intruder bottle. A magnum of Bianco dei Muni 2008 which a restaurant industry veteran called Paolo Pozza had brought unannounced: chardonnay and durella, one year in barrel (in Angiolino’s cellar), evolved but elegant, with a little CO2 on the palate keeping the taste fresh – it was exquisite!

Magnum bottle of Bianco dei Muni 2008
“Questo vino e’ stato realizzato grazie alle conoscenze di Angiolino Maule.” “This wine was made thanks to the knowledge of Angiolino Maule.”

A Mission for the New Year

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I’m not one for resolutions. Resolutions are susceptible of breaking at the first opportunity and then because they’ve been broken once, they subsequently lose all their power. I prefer to think about a mission, a channelling of motivation, but even then, sometimes January is not the right month for finding inspiration and motivation.

There is a pile of books on my bedside table, with a bookmark in each of them as a testimony to my good intentions but lack of perseverance. So, I’ve been using the downtime between Christmas and New Year to catch up on some of this reading. One of the books I’ve just dusted off again is Jamie Goode‘s “The Goode Guide to Wine – A Manifesto of Sorts”. It’s an easy read, which often puts onto paper thoughts that I have been harbouring myself, without ever having expressed in such black and white terms.

This is one of these such passages and it was after reading it this afternoon that my mission for this blog in 2023 finally crystallised.

“As wine drinkers, we are lucky to be living in times like these. We are not, of course, lucky that lots of very famous excellent wines have leapt in price over the last decade, taking them out of reach of the likes of me and many of my friends. But we are lucky because never before have so many interesting wines been made. Go to pretty much any wine region and hunt around, and you will find keen, talented winegrowers prospecting for special vineyard sites and then trying to make wines that express these privileged patches of ground.

This occurs in the new world, where pioneers have established great terroirs but also in the old world, where a new generation of growers is emerging, shedding the complacency of their forebears, respecting the life within their soils, and making superb wines. For these brave souls, wine is a vocation rather than a job.”

Jamie later cites Swartland and Stellenbosch in South Africa and Loire and Beaujolais in France. My mission for 2023 is to use this blog as a platform to shine a light on what’s happening in the less trendy, but just as deserving stretch of northern Italy where I’m setting down roots. From Piedmont to Friuli passing by Lombardy and the Veneto (but not exclusively limiting myself to these regions) there are new winemakers making terroir-driven, minimal intervention wines, at very reasonable prices.

Some of these winemakers I’ve already mentioned – e.g. Sieman (Veneto), Thomas Niedermayr (Alto Adige), Uros Klabjan (Istria, Slovenia) and Olek Bondonio (Piedmont) – but there are many more who are languishing in my Drafts folder and require dusting off and a quick lick of polish… much like those books next to my bed.

Exactly how Joe Dassin describes the Champs Elysees in 1969, in this small strip of the globe, il y a tout ce que vous voulez: big reds, bubbles, macerated whites, volcanic soils, maritime influences, mountain wines. I’m going to turn a blind eye to the commercial wines that are omnipresent and focus on the interesting wines that are affordable for anyone with a passing interest. I hope you’ll join me for the ride.

P.S. Given the recent spectacular decline of the bird-site, please sign up to receive new blog posts directly in your inbox. The link is in the toolbar on the left. You can also keep up-to-date on Mastodon where I go by @emmabentleyvino@epicure.social, or if you have more time on your hands, head over to Substack (emmabentleyvino) for musings on food and life in Italy.

Veneto Update / 14th July 2021

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It was a long, slow spring this year; cold and rainy until the very end of May. As you may remember from the headlines at the time, larges swathes of Europe were hit by frost in April and then a couple of localised hail storms rumbled around the Veneto in mid-May. The area which produces grapes for Prosecco DOC was particularly badly hit by both phenomena. Where we are, in the town of Gambellara, only the low-lying lands were affected by the frost… and producers who work with the garganega grape were let off more lightly than those working with glera or pinot noir because garganega is a relatively late-ripening variety and therefore the buds were barely formed at the time.

Finally, the month of June brought high temperatures and thus ensued a game of catch-up in the vineyards between the rampant vines and the overwhelmed vignaiolo. The cold spring had meant that the vines were two to three weeks behind where they would normally be at that time in the year, but they were given a new lease of life by the sunshine.

A conscientious grower has one main job in June – canopy management. Garganega is a wild beast which likes to grow up and out. In Angiolino Maule’s vineyards, they like to remove the leaves which give shade to the grape bunches hence the carpet of leaves you can see on the ground in the “after” photo.

  • Angiolino Maule’s garganega – BEFORE
  • Angiolino Maule’s garganega – AFTER

I’m writing this paragraph on July 15th – the day after a violent storm drove across most of the foothills in the region bringing hail and strong winds. In some areas (nearer to Marostica, near Bassano del Grappa) trees were uprooted and roofs were ripped off. In Gambellara, damage was widespread, especially in the westerly facing vineyards (the storm, like most do, arrived from the Lake Garda area) and particularly in guyot-trained vineyards rather than pergola where the generous canopy provides some protection.

Estimates of how extensive the hail damage was depend largely on the mindset of the person doing the estimations… but they range from 5% to 50%… Time will tell what this means for the harvest because – the silver lining – it’s too early for sugars to be formed in the grapes.

As if to compensate for last night’s violence, the skyline this morning is stunning. Dark blue hills, with fluffy white clouds lying low, dipped within each valley. The scene looked rather as if it were some child’s school project to stick cotton wool on a broody landscape.

2020 was such a tumultuous year because it made us reassess how we live our lives, but it turns out to have been an excellent vintage in Gambellara – one of the best in recent memory. 2021, while arguably less anxiety-ridden in terms of the pandemic, will be a year where no winemaker will have got through the growing season with their nails in tact. It is only the middle of July and already I can hear another violent thunderstorm that is starting to rumble around the hills, threatening to cause damage left right and centre.

Wine of the month:

Marco Turco’s “Lucifer” Pinot Noir 2020 from the Colli Berici, drunk at Osteria Bertoliana, a small restaurant in central Vicenza with a menu loaded with offal and local natural wines.

Very hard to get hold of, it would seem, because Marco doesn’t appear to have a website or even a list of the wines he makes, but if you find it, drink it!

Harvest 2018 – A Bumper Crop

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Harvest 2018 is well underway and it’s looking like one of the very best years in recent memory for winemakers across most of Italy and France.

Despite a worrying amount of rain in the springtime and outbreaks of mildew/peronospora, the summer was hot, constant and mercifully allowed the grapes to come to maturity.

Largely because of last year’s frost but also because of this year’s gentle flowering season, the vines have produced a much larger quantity of grapes than usual.

So much so that winemakers have more grapes than they know what to do with! My boyfriend’s phone keeps ringing with nearby growers trying to sell him grapes because their cellar is already full. Theirs is full to the brim too!

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Stamping down on the grapes in order to fit them all into the press!

Today, Monday 24th September, the cantina sociale of Gambellara (a small town near Soave) didn’t open its doors to its members because it needed a day of downtime to sort and make space. It has been completely overloaded and it’s not the only one.

It’s not hard to imagine how busy the cooperatives are when you watch the video below showing the street leading to one of the Prosecco coops. A traffic jam of tractors!!

There’s another video which has gone viral because it shows a man machine-harvesting his grapes but leaving them on the ground. “You realise this is a sacrilege,” the guy filming says to the driver of the tractor. Better than seeing them rot on the plant, is the unsaid message.

One of the consequences of having so many grapes on the plant is that the sugar levels remain relatively or unacceptably (depending on your point of view) low.

We’ve heard of prosecco vineyards near us which were harvested two weeks ago (i.e. early September) but which only yielded a sugar level of between 9 and 12 babo. That means between 6 and 9% potential alcohol. Insane.

What can you do? Well, like many quality winemakers, in the summer, you do what is called green harvesting. In some of Angiolino Maule’s vineyards, he removes 50% of his grape bunches in late June/July when he’s got an idea of how the year is going. Crop thinning allows you to manage the yields better; you lose quantity but you gain quality, sugar and complexity in both the grapes and in the resulting wine.

Alternatively, you can do what we know some conventional producers in Soave are doing this year: reverse osmosis.* In this case, you keep as many grapes on the plant as possible but once the grapes have been brought into the cellar and are being vinified, you pass the must through a membrane which separates some of the water content and allows you to concentrate the sugar. All the quantity and now a wine which you can bottle at an acceptable 12% ABV.

Where I am (in the Veneto, Italy) we’ve just about finished 40% of our harvest…. and we’ve been harvesting since the last few days of August. It’ll be at least another (long) three weeks until we’ve brought the last of the grapes into the cellar.

* n.b. I know that reverse osmosis is more commonly used for reducing alcohol content, but unless I’m mistaken, it can also be used for increasing the ABV.

 

Shock, Horror and a Golden Lining for De Bartoli

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My alarm clock seemed louder than ever this morning. I got back from Paris late last night and having enjoyed every baguette crumb, every bite of cheese and every drop of wine, I was running a high sleep deficit.

The alarm sounded at 6.30am. Half an hour later, I was standing at the top of a vineyard, secateurs in hand, admiring the view down the Val d’Alpone and over to the Soave hills.

We were picking garganega grapes for our recioto today. The Recioto di Gambellara is a traditional dessert wine made in my adoptive town by letting the grape bunches dry out over a period of about 4 months. Gambellara’s Recioto is not like other passito or straw-wines, because we hang our grapes on vertical nets…… which is exactly what we then spent the afternoon doing!

Brutal as my wake-up call was this morning, it is nothing compared to the shock, 3 days ago, when the De Bartoli family in Sicily discovered that someone broken into their winery during the night and stolen 600kg of passito grapes.

Screenshot of their Facebook post. Click for full-screen.
Continue reading “Shock, Horror and a Golden Lining for De Bartoli” →

Harvest 2016: The Final Week

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We are (finally!) approaching the end of Harvest 2016, up here in Castelcerino, in the Soave hills. It’s been by far the longest harvest that anyone here at the winery can remember. Since the 1st September, between 3 and 6 people have been hand-harvesting the 15 hectares, meticulously arranging the precious bunches of grapes into small boxes.

Looking Back Over Harvest 2016

The Preparations – starting the yeast pied-de-cuve.

Early September – at the beginning of the harvest, when I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

Mid-September – at this point I still had plenty of energy and had concretised my place in the team.

End of September – with the end of harvest in sight, I was feeling tired but happy.

Continue reading “Harvest 2016: The Final Week” →

I’m Hanging In There!

Emma Bentley 1 Comment

Apparently, it’s the 27th September; however, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. All I know is that we started harvesting on Sept 1st and we’re only just over half-way. I’m now one of the old hands – one of two people left from the original team of pickers.

At the weekend, the team of Polish labourers arrived.

You can say what you like about the EU but in the agricultural sector, free movement of people is essential.

We started harvesting with a team of Italians. Half were friends and family of the winery; the other half were hard-core contadini from the local area. Continue reading “I’m Hanging In There!” →

Harvest 2016: the second week

Emma Bentley 1 Comment

We’re approaching the end of the second week of harvest here – Day 12, to be precise – and I can’t tell you how exhausting it is.

I fall asleep at 10pm and dream about tractors and trailers until 6am when the alarm goes off and it all starts over again.

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The Turbiana vineyard – the highest vineyard in Soave and completely surrounded by woodland.

The morning routine is so comfortable now that I don’t even need an espresso to locate the same old trousers, trusty straw hat, water bottle and my forbici (secateurs.)

We’ve moved from the guyot-trained vineyards to the more traditional Veronese pergola. It’s gone from being absolutely back-breaking (I even googled “hunchback” at one point) to being an Ironman workout for the shoulders.

The last two weeks have been seriously hot: over 30°C every day. However, today the weather changed dramatically and a heavy thunderstorm meant that we’ve had to take a break from harvesting. I’m now making the most of this overdue “down-time” to get bash away at my computer keyboard in a futile attempt to whittle down my burdensome inbox.

It’s also an opportunity to reflect on the past three weeks. Culturally, linguistically, and also personally, I’ve learnt so much in this short time.

If you’re planning on moving to Italy and/or learning Italian, there are two really essential verbs that I hear all the time here but which I hadn’t seen in the textbook:

spostare: to move something. i.e.  we need to move the pallet – dobbiamo spostare questo bancale

=> spostarsi: to move (or relocate) yourself

buttare: to chuck or throw away. i.e. butta il grappolo – throw away the bunch

I’d always used gettare – because it is more similar to the French word jeter – but buttare is what I hear most commonly here.

There’s so much more that could be said but I’d better sign off this blog post and go back to the cellar to do the final rimontaggio (pump over) of the day.

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Tasting wines just off the press. Photo to prove that not every wine tasting has a sexy or idyllic setting.

 

Harvest 2016: the first week

Emma Bentley 4 Comments

Harvesting started last week here in Soave. We’re not actually picking the garganega (the emblematic grape variety here) for at least another ten days but the chardonnay, merlot and trebbiano is done.

If you were wondering what life is like here at the winery, here is a run-through of my day today:

08.00 – I’ve just wolfed down breakfast, which, this morning, consisted of just a coffee and a couple of biscuits. My boots are on and my water bottle has been refilled; I’m ready to jump on the tractor and head out to the vineyard. Normally we start at 7am, but last night we got home at 1am (after the Soave Versus tasting in Verona) and such an early wake-up call would have been very difficult.

Until 13.00, there’s a team of five of us in the vineyards picking the last of the chardonnay grapes. There’s an experienced Polish guy, a local Italian, winemaker Filippo and his nephew (on work experience) and myself. The banter back and forth doesn’t stop. Continue reading “Harvest 2016: the first week” →

The Italian Job

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It’s been a remarkably busy week. It’s the case for many people across Europe as they come back from holidays and go back to their office jobs. I always quite like this time of year because it’s full of good energy and many new projects are undertaken.

It’s a stressful week if you’re a winemaker because you’re carefully watching the weather and judging when to start the grape harvest. 2016 has been a disastrous year in France and I think most vignerons are just happy to have made it to the finish line. In Italy, however, it’s been a very hot and dry summer and it’s shaping up to be one of the best vintages of the decade.

For me personally, it was the week that I finally packed up the car and rode off into the sunset…

sunset

Well… except, in my case, riding off into the sunset means crossing the border between France and Italy. Continue reading “The Italian Job” →