Mark Squires' E-Zine on Wine

    Italian wine lovers seem to love the art of broad brush hyperbole.    Says Matt Kramer in the November 15, 1998 Wine Spectator, "Let me be blunt:  If you don't know Italian wines, you don't know wine."  Well, let me blunter.  Until the new wave really took effect,  if you didn't buy many Italian wines, you weren't missing much.  Per Soehlke, a spokesman for Altesino, was quoted in the Wine Specator recently as saying that Italian winemaking had improved more in the last twenty years than in the last 2,000.  I wasn't here to swear against the 200 A.D. Merlot, but the fact that there has been so much improvement of late also means that...there was a LOT of room to improve.

    I've listened to the defense put up for the old style wines.  I'm   neither convinced nor impressed.  In fact, the arguments seem to me to have huge gaping holes in them.   Matt's other passion is Burgundy. How  does he reconcile the coarse Italians with the elegant, flavorful pinots?  He says he likes Barolo and Burgundy so much because they both  have a sense of grace. [See the E-zine interview and article, "Matt Kramer at Moonstruck"]  A wine collector, another Italian wine lover  with a tendency to hyperbole,  was quoted in the Spectator recently as saying that "I defy anybody to say a great northern Rhone or a great Piedmont wine does not have more flavor--more and better taste--than a great Bordeaux wine." 

    It would seem that Italian wine defenders love the preemptive attack--and also love to lump in Italian wines with varietals that are so different that they bear no resemblance to typical Italian wines.   The Spectator collector thinks the Rhones and Barolos, etc.,  have something in common.  Matt goes for Burgs and Barolos.  Well, let us leave aside the Burgs and  Rhones.  I don't know how anyone can compare the wine world's most elegant, flavorful wine (Burgundy) to one of its most brutish and reserved (Barolo).  It  also makes no sense to compare Rhones and Italians.  Claiming that the velvety, flavorful Rhones tread the same ground as Barbaresco makes no sense.  The device of lumping these disparate regions together does not give Italian wines credibility by association!

    SO.....What have I got against Italian wines?  Attending  an Italian wine tasting recently brought this question up again.  Why do I ignore them?   Why do I "diss" them?  Questions often asked.   Here's my detailed answer. Accept it or not, as you please.  I contend that Italian winemaking was simply not on a par with the French, Californians or Australians, although it is steadily improving.  Still,  the Italians as a group remain second tier winemakers, although the best of them have certainly transcended the traditional stereotypes.

      I  don't think, by the way, that I am really in a minority.   Yes,  I know that there are Italian wine devotees even here in America.  Some of them even have palates I have seen in action and respect.  But I think they are a much smaller group than they purport to be.  I remember the last time I got into this discussion with a group of people.  Even some of the most vigorous defenders of Italian wines had very few in their cellars.  Once you got past the bluster, I would find that the person had 45% French, 35% American,  and a variety of other things, of which less than 5% was usually Italian.  Some vociferous defenders had large cellars--a thousand or two thousand bottles--and could not claim to own more than a case or two of Italian wine.  Kind of speaks for itself, doesn't it? 

    And if you want to hear really harsh criticism of traditional Italian winemaking, just read some of Angelo Gaja's comments.  Oxidation, astringent tannins, poor balance, too much acid,  short on fruit---these are my views, but they   are not my inventions.   Recently, another wine writer, Robert Parker, reviewed new Italian releases, and one senses there a rather different take on Italy.    549 wines tasted, 218 recommended. [Wine Advocate, 10-30-98.] Some of the supposedly recommended wines--those that met the minimal standards-- from the "traditionalists,"  had descriptions like "austere, frightfully tannic....  [T]hey never shed all their tannin..... [T]he tannin level will be admired by traditionalists and/or masochists....." 1993 G. Conterno Barolo "Francia." This, keep in mind, was a wine he sort of liked, relatively speaking.  I might add that 1993 is a vintage in which it was easy to make softer, more supple Barolo, if one cared to do so, as much of the rest of the world does.  

    Let me not be accused of generalizing too much.  There are exceptions to everything and Italy is a big country. Of course, there are some great Italian wines.  Of course, there are some I've liked a lot.  1985 Tignanello,   1985 Sassacaia, 1993 Barolo "Bricco Rocche" (Ceretto), even lesser wines like 1994 Nebbiolo della Langhe (Seghesio) come to mind as a few examples.     Of course, there are great Italian winemakers.  (Angelo Gaja comes to mind.)  So, I'm not telling you to ignore all Italian wines, nor telling you it is impossible to find good ones.   Anyone can put together a tasting carefully enough so that the average quality is high. 

    But none of this detracts from my basic point:  Italian wines, on average, and  as a group, are the most famous underachievers in the wine world. That is, you expect a mixed bag  and some odd results when dealing with "lesser" regions, like the Czech Republic, Israel, or Chile.  But Italy, by fame and reputation, seems automatically included with the big boys.  This is a mistake.   As a group,   allowing that it is a generalization, Italian wines show major problems, or are simply bland and uninteresting. 

    This is a big wine producing country.  It seems like someone is making wine every ten feet.  So, let's focus on Piemonte and Tuscany, the two most famous regions, comprising, among others, the famous names of Barolo, Barbaresco,  Chianti and Brunello.  This is not the whole story, but it is arguably the most important part of it. So, let's look.

    The collector quoted above thinks Italians have more flavor and better taste than great Bordeaux---well, a more ridiculous proposition has rarely been asserted so confidently.   "Tastes better," to be sure, is a matter of preference to a considerable extent, and I think a lot of the rationalizations for Italian wines are simply a different way of defending a personal taste preference to which others do not subscribe.  But the amount of pure flavor? The waves of fruit  that strike the tongue?  Bordeaux, this collector goes on to say, is merely an intellectual experience.  This can't be the comments of someone who is really tasting wines from the region that produce things like 1990 La Conseillante, 1982 Pichon Lalande, 1989 Haut Brion, 1985 Haut Marbuzet,  1985 L'Arrosee, 1966 Cheval Blanc.....   These supposedly compare unfavorably to Italians even in the flavor category?   Indeed,  this collector "defies" anyone to pick such wines over the Italians. 

    Lack of pure flavor in Italian wines, actually,  is one of my central criticisms (along with lack of balance--astringent tannins, too much acidity.....) The main Italian  varietals are nebbiolo in Piedmont, and sangiovese and sangiovese grosso in Tuscany.   The nebbiolo (Barolo, Barbaresco)   seems to me usually to have a bitter almond finish, that is, when you can taste much of anything at all underneath the tannins.  In its typical style, it tends to be astringent [see G. Conterno, above], although I have encountered some more expansive ones with better texture (like the lusher 1993 Ceretto listed above).  Moreover,  the inherent flavor of nebbiolo is rather muted, without the intensity given off by grapes like cabernet, or pinot noir.   The wine usually seems forbidding, but rarely seems to offer much open, flavorful, expansive fruit. Lushness and velvet, two characteristics I prize, are hard to find in the wine's texture, at least as traditionally made.    Don't agree?  Here's a taste test.  Have a blind tasting. Pick some good Bordeaux with a few years on them, some prime time pinots, and a couple of typical Barolos.  I find the intensity of flavor in the cabernet and pinot noir and the lush merlots will usually make even relatively expansive nebbiolo seem relatively coarse, muted and dull.

    Getting back to the point regarding acidity and astringency, that is partly, at least, a matter of traditional Italian winemaking style, although the grape does seem to lend itself to tannic beasts. Writing in the Wine Spectator, Per-Henrik Mansson, no Italo-basher, notes that nebbiolo "is harshly acidic and tannic in poor vintages....[and] great vintages come around only about two or three times a decade."   Not much of a recommendation, huh?  And, by the way,  I strongly disagree that those tannin and acidity problems go away for traditionalists in good vintages.   It is the way things are.

    As for sangiovese and sangiovese grosso, these grapes are not so forbidding, as a rule, but they do tend to be bland. They don't always seem as dull as typical nebbiolo, but they are often a bit flat, and harder to assign a flavor to than a lot of other famous grapes. (Cabernet--cassis; pinot noir--raspberry, for instance).  As for typical Chianti making--and I'm not just  talking about straw bottles--have you ever noticed how acidic these wines, and many Italian wines in general,  often are?  The mid-palate sometimes seems more likely to give you heartburn than a pleasing mouthfeel.

    Now, someone will point to the stellar new wave Italians like Sassacaia.  OK.  Got me.  Some of these wines are great.  I love many of them.  I especially like the blend of sangiovese and cabernet. It is a marriage made in heaven.  The cabernet provides some flavor and intensity. The sangiovese rounds off the wine.   Still, virtually all of these wines are highly priced--often way overpriced--and a departure from anything resembling traditional Italian winemaking.   They are not typical in any respect.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a poor defense of Italian winemaking to say that its best examples are so far outside of the system that they can only usually be called "table wines."

    We could talk a lot more about traditional problems in Italian winemaking, letting wines sit in the barrels too long, the DOC rules, and so on.  Italy came late to DOC,  and continued making ridiculously astringent wines long after the prevailing viewpoint in other great regions was to make wines with more supple and riper tannins.  But "Why" is less important than the result. The result is that Italian wines as a group are less satisfying than those of other major regions in the world.   Exceptions abound, but only prove the rule, demonstrating what could be done, and isn't.

    To be sure,  Italy has been changing its traditions over the last twenty years or so, as witnessed by, for one example, the new wave Tuscans.  It is far better today than when I started collecting in the early '80s. In fact,  I'm actually beginning to warm up to a lot of the wines, believe it or not.  Arguably the turning point has already been reached.  So,  in fairness, it is admittedly an odd time to be writing this article,  since I am finding more and more Italian wines I like, wines  that have fruit, and that are decidedly modern. It is better today than five years ago.  And five years ago was better than ten years ago.  The best Italian winemakers are already world class right now.   So call this a belated effort to put my thoughts down, a memorial to my prior suffering--or, perhaps, a desire to put a stake through the heart of a winemaking style I rather detest. 

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