Orvieto

The region around the Umbrian hill town of Orvieto produces Italy’s most famous white wine, found on Italian restaurant menus everywhere. What about Orvieto, that ubiquitous, innocuous dry white, possibly be considered unusual or obscure? As is so often the case, we must look back to the 1960s to find the answer.

Before then — indeed, ever since the Etruscans carved wine cellars out of the tufa underneath the city — Orvieto primarily produced sweet wines. These wines were not immune from the tradition-averse 1960s, and as tastes drifted towards dry whites, Orvieto winemakers drifted as well. Today, just 5% of Orvieto’s wine production is sweet.

As their wines became drier, winemakers moved away from the Grechetto variety which had given Orvieto much of its character, using ever more Trebbiano in their blends. And, as The Oxford Companion to Wine notes, “Like most blends with a Trebbiano base produced in substantial quantities…dry Orvieto tends to be a bland, pedestrian product.” Ouch.

But it’s not all bad news. The pendulum has begun to swing the other direction, and in the last 20 years, some Orvieto winemakers have been experimenting with using Grechetto blended with well-respected international varieties such as Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay.

On a recent stay in the area, I had the opportunity to taste some of these newer blends. They weren’t your mama’s Orvieto.

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During the dark, cold days around the winter solstice, it’s a great comfort to drink rich, hearty red wines. They warm the soul and tend to pair well with the similarly rich, hearty foods served this time of year.

I’d been saving a bottle of 2005 Tabarrini Montefalco Sagrantino, received as a free sample at the Wine Blogger Conference, for just this season. Having already sampled this wine at the Conference, I knew I wanted to try it with some steak. A recent visit to my rather carnivorous parents provided the perfect opportunity.

The Tabarrini family has tended their 55 acres of vineyards just south of the Umbrian town of Montefalco for four generations, according to their website, but they have bottled their own wines only since the late 1990s. Half of their vineyards are dedicated to Sagrantino, a thick-skinned local variety which almost died out in the 20th century. The varietal really came into its own in 1992, when it lent its name to the Montefalco Sangrantino DOCG (as distinct from the Montefalco DOCG, which produces more “basic” wines, according to The Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia).

I found conflicting opinions about the current state of Sagrantino-based wines, oddly in two books by the same author. In The Oxford Companion to Wine, Jancis Robinson argues that with some notable exceptions, “the overall level of viticultural and oenological sophistication in the production zone is not high…” But The World Atlas of Wine by Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson describes Sagrantino as “packed with flavor and potential longevity,” and goes so far as to hail the varietal as one of Umbria’s two “great gifts to the world of wine” (Grechetto is the other).

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Dessert wines get short shrift in this country, perhaps because sweet wines are often perceived as unserious. It’s a shame, because a good dessert wine makes for an elegant finish to an evening. But lower demand means lower prices, which is a boon to those of us man enough to drink sweet wines.

We recently opened a bottle of 2009 Ipsus Moscato Passito di Pantelleria, a charming maple syrup-colored wine from a tiny island between the coasts of Sicily and Tunisia. Although it’s part of Italy, the volcanic speck of Pantelleria is actually closer to the sands of Tunisia than the shores of Sicily. It seems fitting then, that the island’s most famous variety should be Moscato di Alexandria, called Zibibbo in Italy, an ancient variety thought to have originated in Egypt. (Note this variety is distinct from the more highly regarded Muscat Blanc à Petit Grains, also simply called Muscat Blanc.)

Wikipedia describes how the island acquired something approximating its current name in A.D. 700, when conquering Arabs called it “Bent El Riah,” meaning “Daughter of the Winds.” These winds have led to quite an unusual style of viticulture on Pantelleria; gobelet-trained vines are actually buried in holes to protect them from fierce gusts that sweep across the island, according to The Oxford Companion to Wine. If you’re having trouble picturing these semi-subterranean vineyards, as I did, this photo will help.

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Andrew Knowlton (center), with the rest of the Bon Appetit team

I interrupted my grazing at Chicago Gourmet to interview Mr. Andrew Knowlton, the Restaurant and Drinks Editor of Bon Appétit Magazine. (Chicago Gourmet, for those unfamiliar with the festival, is like a smaller, $150-per-person version of The Taste of Chicago. Thank goodness for press passes.) 

Knowlton looked far too trim for someone with his enviable job title, and I couldn’t help but wish he had been a bit more portly. Putting these ungracious thoughts aside, I asked Knowlton if he had discovered any off-the-beaten-track wine regions lately.

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