The Wine WhispererIt would be pretty difficult to find someone who doesn’t like Italian food…except those who are on a low-carb diet. And with all that pasta, red sauce, and Parmagiano Reggiano cheese come barrels full of wine that are made to go along just perfectly.Problem is, when we think Italian, it’s hard to get beyond Chianti and other great wines from Tuscany. Of course, we do venture occasionally into the Piedmont area way up north, enjoying the “Three Bs”… Barolo, Barbera, and Barbaresco. They’re rich reds, with a lot of body, flavor, and satisfaction. But there are some other areas, very close to Tuscany, that deserve our attention, and their wines deserve a try. Or two.Italy is the only country in the world where wine is made in every single region. But I’m thinking specifically of Umbria. Uniquely, it’s the only landlocked region in Italy: no coastline and no border with any other country. However, it does have the beautiful town of Assisi, the connection with St. Francis, and a cathedral that will knock your socks off.It also has Sagrantino – a bold red grape yielding extracted, mouthfilling wines that go beautifully with red meats and red sauces. As we know, Old World wines list the place of origin on the label: Bordeaux, Sancerre, Rioja. New World wines tell us the name of the grape. But Italian wines generally do both. In the case of Umbria, the wine is called Sagrantino di Montefalco. If you look at an Italian label and it says “Something di Something,” the first word is generally the name of the grape, and the second is the name of the place. For example, Barbera d’Asti, or Brunello di Montalcino. In this case, we’re drinking wine from the Sagrantino grape, indigenous to the Umbria region. It’s not as well known internationally as it could be, mainly because there are only about 250 acres of vineyard, and maybe 20-25 producers. Another obstacle is that the law requires the wines to be aged for almost 2 ½ years before release. So it’s a labor of love.Recently, a friend asked me to help him taste through three Sagrantinos, and I reluctantly (not!) agreed. We found the wines dark and brooding, with flavors of black berries, black plum, and earth.The first, Collepiano 2007, was deep red in the glass with a nose of smoke, earth and sweet fruit. The tannin structure was enormous, as it was in all the wines we sampled. These wines require a lot of decanting, or a long time in the bottle before they can be fully enjoyed.The Perticaia 2008 was almost the same. A bit lighter in the glass, but still offering a nose of berries and earth. Our favorite was the Tenuta Castelbuono 2007. It’s owned by the Lunelli family, and they must be selling a ton of wine, because they recently built a new winery which was designed by a sculptor rather than an architect. They call it “The Turtle,” and you should Google the winery to see why. This wine was our favorite after a very long afternoon of sampling and re-sampling. It offered the same inky, brooding color as the others, but there was some excellent blueberry, blackberry, and earth notes on the palate. Again, these wines are quite tannic, and take a while to calm down in the glass. Your patience will be rewarded.However, if you are the less patient type, here’s a somewhat heretical way to make wines more approachable sooner. Pour a decent amount into a glass, take an ordinary soda straw, and blow bubbles into the wine. I did this one night at a very fancy wine bar, and it really worked. I got some strange looks, but the wine was excellent.
