Solving an Italian wine list
Italians are fiercely chauvinistic about their wines, even worse than the French. Not for them the ecumenical list with a smattering of foreign wines -- an Italian wine list is a place for Italian wines. But to an American, traditional Italian wines are unappealing. The whites are grassy acidic pinot grigios, the reds an expensive parade of Barolo, Barbaresco, and Brunello di Montalcino -- heavily oaked, ferociously tannic, and breathtakingly expensive (because, after all, the prices are set by demand among affluent Italians). Confronted with a flowing extensive list of Vini Italiano Ignoto, what's an American to do? Four indicators will guide you:
- Varietal. Seek out wines that mention the varietal. Many young Italian winemakers get their training at UC Davis, then come back home, find a less-famous region, and start a label. To attract customers, they want to emphasize not the terroir but the grape. By doing so, they also signal a new-think winemaking style.
- Price. The young winemaker cannot command a premium. So he will give a good price-value ratio. And the restaurateur who includes such wines has a quality standard to uphold. Gravitate away from the dead cheapest but toward the lower end of the scale because the bargain element is, paradoxically, an indicator of quality.
- Label. You can partly judge a wine by its cover. Modern winemakers use bottle shape and label iconography to make a visual association with the winemaking style. Following the lead of Napa and Sonoma, they use stylish smaller labels emphasizing modernity.
- Review everything before you let the sommelier open the bottle. Make sure the vintage is right, the varietal right. Sometimes the bottle has extra information (like a pinot noir vinified as a white) omitted from the list description. You're the customer, don't be rushed.
Just as sessile flowers must attract the mobile bees' attention by signaling their nectar through color, the sessile winemaker (he's on a list, he can't move) competes for the mobile, page-flipping credit-card consumer's attention through label and pricing.
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Copyright 2002 David Alexander Smith