Winefriend by David Way

Writing about the wines of Piemonte, Italy and France

Diary 68: Piemonte in Texas

I was hugely honoured to present ‘Piedmont: off the beaten track’ at Texsom in a tasting/seminar in Dallas. If you had told me even a few years ago that I would present Piemonte in Texas, I would not have believed you. My session was on the Monday of the two-day event and was followed by a ‘meet the author’ session mainly for the Académie du Vin Library authors. Texsom is an annual conference, perhaps the most important wine event in the southeast of the US. It was attended by about 600 people, mainly sommeliers, wine shop owners, educators and others in the trade. There are three seminar slots each day with three options in each slot. These are interspersed by walk-around tastings and lunches sponsored by wine companies or regions. It is James Tidwell MS’s brainchild and is run very professionally and precisely. When they say you have 1 hour and 15 minutes for your session, they mean just that and no more.

It was great to see the level of professionalism of the teams of sommeliers and volunteers who ran the tastings. Wines were poured accurately and at the correct temperatures. The wine lists were accurate and the glasses were clean. I was amused to see the volunteers even checking that the spittoons were aligned to be in a straight line when seen from the back or front of the hall. Now that is attention to detail.

Piedmont off the beaten track

My session, in short, summarised themes from my recent book, The Wines of Piemonte. The first wine was Enrico Serafino‘s Alta Langa, a fine example of the region’s re-emergence of traditional method sparkling wine. This allowed me to tell the story of Carlo Gancia who pioneered this method in Italy long before Franciacorta or Trentodoc. This was followed by three lesser-known white varieties, all native to the region. Erbaluce (Azienda Agricola Mazzoni) is perhaps the least known of these. It can make convincing versions of still, sparkling and sweet wine. This was followed by two of Piemonte’s rising stars, Nascetta (Diego Conterno) and Timorasso (Vietti). While the region is famous for its red wines, it has great white wines too. Wine lovers should know about Nascetta and Timorasso alongside the better-established Arneis (Roero) and Cortese (Gavi).

Three red local varieties followed the white varieties. Grignolino (Castello di Neive) is a perfumed, lighter red that can be chilled in summer. Freisa (Vietti) and Ruchè (Bava) are both weighty, structured red wines. The Freisa encapsulated an important trend. In the past, many red wines in Piemonte were lightly sparkling and sometimes off-dry. However, today the demand, especially outside the region, is for dry, still wines. Our 2019 example was the last ever Freisa vivace (lightly sparkling). The next vintage is a more conventional still red wine. It is just too difficult to sell a wine that is made with a little-known grape variety and is red, sparkling and tannic.

MGA wines in Barolo and Barbaresco

The final wines were indeed made with Nebbiolo. We could perhaps have had something more off the beaten track, a Carema DOC, something from Alto Piemonte or even from Monferrato. The last named area is much more famous for Barbera and Moscato but given the popularity of Nebbiolo, producers are planting Piemonte’s most famous variety right across the region. But the point of the Barolo and Barbaresco was to explain the subzone system in Piemonte, technically the MGA system. Here are the labelling options within Barolo. Similar systems are to be found in several Piemontese DOCGs and other denominations such as Chianti Classico or Soave.

Labelling options in Barolo DOCG

Note: there are no municipality-level MGAs in Barbaresco, just named subzones.

In the presentation, I went on to evaluate the positives and negatives of this system. The positive is that an MGA wine is made with fruit from that MGA alone. Just as in Burgundy, this allows the consumer to compare site-specific wines. For the producer, it means that he or she can bottle a range of Barolo wines with subtle but noticeable differences. As the MGA system does not include a classification (unlike Burgundy), there is no presumption that MGA wines are better than the so-called classico wines, but they may be more expensive. The negatives are easy to list: some MGAs are tiny (1.5 hectares) while others are enormous (380 hectares), the latter undermining the idea that the wines can be site-specific. Some large MGAs overrode famous historic subzone names while others are unknown. Sadly, it is not legal to put both the municipality name (easy to recognise) and the smaller MGA name on the same label. But in general, this has been a good development. In particular, it has helped subzones that historically were not recognised as great (e.g. Ravera or Monvigliero).

All in all, Texsom and Piemonte in Texas was a truly great experience.

Dallas: more than a wine conference

Some non-vinous highlights from my visit to Dallas included the amazing guacamole; visits to the Dallas Art Gallery and the Meadows Spanish art collection in the Southern Methodist University.

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