After a quick trip to “The Good Marshalls”, where we were trying to find some replacement luggage for jon (don’t get me started on how much I hate TSA and how un-empowered air travel makes me feel), we hurried back to the city for a wine tasting.
Jon’s utterly fantastic. I talk about this fairly often, but I want to say again how happy I am with the person I chose to spend the rest of my life with. Here’s today’s reason: a few months back, I had found this Italian wine class, offered by a wine bar downtown. After working at Le Central & Poco, and drinking a fair amount in Seattle, I believe that I have a pretty solid base of knowledge for both French and northwest wines. I’ve always shied away from Italian wines because, quite honestly, they intimidate me. They are a mystery which I have yet to unravel. So I see this wine class, then see the price, and decide that I’ll file that away in the “boy that’s never going to happen” category.
A few months back, jon finds a good deal on wine classes at a wine bar downtown. Knowing that I have a giant hole in my wine knowledge when it comes to Italian wines, he signs us up. It was his intention to keep it a surprise, and I’m not sure that he knew I had seen it in my own wanderings around the Internet, so he was a little disappointed when I meekly suggested it.
Oh my, I can’t even describe how happy I was. Surprise or not, I was *stoked* and really anticipating the event. I heart jon for having stumbled upon the exact same thing as I had, and thinking it’d be something rad to do on my birthday.
They tasted us on 3 whites and 3 reds from Italy. The class, led by the sommelier, talked a little bit about a lot of things, answering questions as we went along. A few things that I realized:
- Italian wines are crazy confusing because they sometimes have multiple names for the same grape
- Italians grow a LOT of different grapes.
- I’m not sure that you could ever have a complete understanding if Italian wines
- If I learned anything, I learned that I know nothing at all.
- Italian wines all tend to have a lot of acidity. He talked about how this makes them especially good for pairing with foods – a lot of the wines from Italy taste rather flat when drunk by themselves, but as soon as you pair them with something, they often open up really well. like a flavour explosion in your mouth!
The three whites were;
- a pinot grigio from the northern region: the sommelier said that because it was so close to the border, this tasted much like a German pinot grigio. He called it a picnic wine that goes well with everything, very user friendly, orange zest, pale colour slightly pink, VERY acidic. Because the climate is cooler than Oregon, the pinot grigios will tend to be a lot more green fruit-driven: unripened pears, green apple, etc. Oregon pinot gris tend to be much more full body, lower acidity, ripe, etc.
- a vermentino: very sauv-blanc like but without the pink-grapefruit notes, grassy, buttery, malo but very light, citrus, slightly creamy.
- falanghina from Campagna: (favourite) duller, more “new world” in character, very subtle, toffee, balanced with good acidity which will help the wine cut though cheese like mozzarella.
On a side note, when the heat turns on in our apartment, it sounds like there are people in the walls trying to escape. Every apartment/condo I’ve had in the past 5 years has had hot-water heating, so I should be used to this, but it still startles me. (ohmygodwhosinthere?)
The three reds were:
- a grenache from Sardenia (but they don’t call it grenache there, they call it cannonau: if you took a bucket of cherries, buried them in the dirt, and sniffed them, that’s what this wine tasted like. tremendously earthy and musty. this was my second favourite red, and the one we ended up coming home with a bottle of.
- a chianti classico, which was 80% sangiovese and 20% merlot.
- oh, barolo. Barolo is to Italy, what Bordeaux is to France. They’re the Big Boy Wines of the region. They get a lot of the fame, and justifiably so since they taste so darn good, age really well, and command a huge price. This wine was three times as expensive as all the others that we tasted that day. I had heard about barolos before, but knew next to nothing about them. They’re made from the nebbiolo grape, are very tannic, brick red in colour, it really reminded me of a cab/cab franc kind of deal, the tannins softened up a lot by the end of the glass. Barolos tend to have herbal (sage) and anise notes.
So here’s an unanswered question: do all nebbiolos taste like this? or is it just the barolos?
He talked about how wine naturally pairs well with the food that’s made in the region. Pairing soft cheese with whites and firm cheese with tanic wines. Sangiovese goes really well with the tomato-based dishes from southern Italy (the acidity matches and the fat from the cheese will help to cut the tannins of the wine).
We also talked about Amarone: a style of wine making in Valpolicella, where the grapes are allowed to shrivel before pressing. This allows higher sugar content (read: higher alcohol content), and really intense flavouring: cocoa, fig, raisin, dates, etc. He said they really need food or they just a bit too intense.
okay. that’s enough. Thanks for hangin in there. 
