La Dolce Vita: An Italian wine odyssey

A few weeks ago, I spent a very pleasant Friday evening in Calgary, fighting the crowd to sample from among more than 100 different Italian wines. The venue was Willow Park Wines and Spirits (WPWS) in Calgary. It the country’s largest retailer of wines and spirits and almost certainly among its leaders in organizing events and educational opportunities.

Before I settled into a random sampling of red wines, I tasted a couple Proseccos, those lovely white bubbly wines that lend themselves to celebrations. Their light, subtle flavours would be lost if I sampled them after drinking the big-bodied and more overt red wines that were my primary interest.

The festival was set up in what once served as the WPWS basement warehouse. Twenty-one tables were set up, each staffed with one or two people, who are typically sales reps for wine importers. Most are knowledgeable and more than happy to talk about just about any aspect of wine.

I am mostly a red wine guy and, having spent time in Italy, I have my favourites. But it is great fun to have the opportunity to sample wines I haven’t tried. Interestingly, looking back at my notes, of the two wines I put at the very top of the list, one was familiar to me and one wasn’t.

My notation of “Best!” was placed beside the listing on my program for Zenato Amarone. I suspect that my enthusiasm was at least partly due to the fact that I have met Alberto Zenato, son of the winery’s founder. As well, Amarone is a great wine for people who love big, and I mean big, red wines.

Officially, it’s called Amarone della Valpolicella. The wines are made in the Veneto region in northeastern Italy, from corvine, rondinella and molinara grape varieties. What makes Amarone unique isn’t so much the grapes, but in how they are handled after harvest. Traditionally, grape bunches were picked, then laid on straw mats to allow them to shrivel and dry, leaving a concentrated and intensively flavoured juice  after pressing. Tannins and colours are also intensified in the drying process, which can last four months. Modern production methods now dictate that the drying is primarily done in kilns, which reduces the likelihood of moulds like botrytis.

One of the cool things about Italian winemakers is that they took the process of making Amarone one step further and began to use the lees, too. Added to the lees — seeds and skins — is regular Valpolicella wine, and a secondary fermentation is allowed to take place. The result is Ripasso, more intense in flavor than Valpolicello but lighter than Amarone. It is a happy medium that is priced somewhere between the two and can be a nice option for those who like red wines with intense flavours, but don’t want to spend $50 and upwards for a bottle of Amarone.

At the WPWS tasting, I enjoyed each of the Amarones I tasted, but none more than the Zenato offering.

Another wine I particularly enjoyed was Donna Olimpia 1998 Bolgheri, a Tuscan wine made from grapes that are typically found in Bordeaux and Meritage wines. Merlot, cabernet sauvignon and petit verdot are blended, then aged in French oak barrels for 24 months and given another six months to age in the bottle before their release. Bolgheri should raise eyebrows among Italian wine drinkers because it is the region where the famed Sassicaia wines are made. Super Tuscans is the term used to describe wines made in the Chianti region that don’t meet the Chianti requirement of containing at least 70 per cent sangiovese grapes. The climate lends itself to growing merlot and cab sauv, though, and these wines can be spectacular and very, very pricy.

The Donna Olimpia version could be best described as the poor, but still very tasty, cousin to Sassicaia.

I should also mention that the WPWS Italian Wine Festival also offered a mouth-watering selection of snacks, ranging from bread and cheese to roast pork and meatballs. Italian wine is, after all, made to enjoy with food.

Lorne Eckersley is the publisher of the Creston Valley Advance.