Explore the wines of southern Italy. You visit Tuscany, home of Chianti; Campania, the source of the legendary Lacryma Christi (or “Tears of Christ”); and Sicily, whose Nero d’Avola is a rising star among red wine drinkers
I’ve heard it said that the only difference between a meal and a feast is a glass of wine now no one country embodies this statement more than Italy we’ve covered Northern Italy pedmont and the Veno and now we’re heading to Central and Southern Italy the cultures of the north versus the South vary
Greatly in my family we have a part from the Northern Italy and southern Italy and way back when at family functions one side of the family couldn’t talk to the other side because they couldn’t understand each other because their dialects were so different today’s lecture is on Central and Southern Italy
And you’ll need the following lines a oranti Classico or Brunello deino a super Tuscan here we have sasaya a white wine from Central or southern Italy such as Greco L Christi Fano fenina or even a chard Alano such as toosi or Alan Alano deur a Primitivo and
Aava so let’s start with Tuscany the home of the ancient atrans and the wine- making region of keti we have records that date as far back as the 7th Century BC um these wines were being exported from this area of Italy to all southern France so this region of Italy has a
Long long lineage of wine making Kean is the most widely recognized wine after Bordeaux and champagne and that’s according to a study done by wine intelligence in 2007 but what do you picture when I say Kean a lot of people instantly imagine at an Italian restaurant a red checkered tablecloth
And a a round bottom wine bottle with in a straw basket with a candle stuck in it you know never mind the wine for a while in this country Kean was considered nothing more than a casual entrylevel wine that’s definitely not the case any longer the quality of Kean has improved
Incredibly these are great lnes now yet still wonderful values the first producer of Kean we have here is Bonas which began around 1141 and the family’s original Castle Il Castello still stands there today theast family is credited with creating the original recipe for Kean in 1874 by blending two
Red grapes Sanji oasi and canolo with a white grape malvia and as well as tabano another white was added in the 20th century I visited the castle not too long ago it was breathtaking to sit there in the tuskin sun with a glass of Kean Classico just I as I pick pictured
It years earlier when I was standing um starting my journey into understanding lines back to understanding kianti I warned you that labels could be tricky in Italy and you’re just about to see why the original delineation of the region of Kean was officially decreed by the deedi Grand Duke Kimo III in
1716 this historic region is between the cities of Sienna and Florence and wines made from grapes grown Within These original boundaries carry the label Classico you should know that other regions in Italy also use the Classico label now although kti is a dog remember that stands for denom the
Origan Kean Classico has its own docg uh its own docg status separate from the larger area of Kean also there are seven additional sub regions of Kean they can put kianti on the label uh kianti kessi kianti kif fantini uh Kean Rina kti K artini Kean
Malano you get the idea each one has its own specific terar with its own unique characteristics did you know that Kean was supposedly Ernest Hemingway’s favorite wine I’ve also heard that uh he drank it every morning for breakfast I don’t know if that’s true but I can
Understand why loved it kean’s red wine grape is sanesi and it’s also Central Italy’s most important red grape variety sanes means blood of Jo you might remember that in Roman mythology that Jo was the king of the Gods as well as the god of thunder in the
Sky the grape sanj OES goes by different names throughout Italy such as Brunello brol Janti and Morino these different names can be confusing for example there’s a wine made with sanesi from the area of monano in Tuscan and it’s called Vin di monano but there’s also a grape
Called monano in the region of abuto called M monano duto which has absolutely nothing to do with sanoi um or the city of Montano in Tuscany I War you it might be a bit crazy um basically though you’re just looking to see if there’s not only a great mention but
Also a region which means it’s likely to be a better wine if you have a keany class to go in front of you let’s taste it as we talk now let’s take a look at the color this is a you know medium Ruby and it’s slightly opaque um this is actually
Seen uh quite a bit of of oak on it it’s a very high quality kianti Classico from Bon and um let’s smell it it’s moderately aromatic but but what you get is strong cherry-like Aromas with a characteristic that is very very herbal and the type of cherry that you
Get is is not your regular fresh cherry almost like a a sour cherry you ever have choke cherries if if you’re from the uh from the West you may know what choke cherries are they almost taste like that or smell like that you also get some strong mineral Aromas which
Again points us towards the old world because European wines generally tend to have a mineral characteristic to the wines but it smells right it smells like ripe fruit I mean this is an indication to us that it’s a a warmer climate than in the north but also some of the characteristic benchmarks I
Talked about was that those herbs almost like like basil or or oregano but it also has a a me in a glass again like like literally literally like grilled meat now let’s taste it generally a lot of Kean classicos are medium bodied but this one tends to be a
Bit more Fuller bodied and sometimes that means it has lower yield so a higher level of concentration um the body never really gets to the level of of Cabernet sovo so we’ll see that with the super Tusk and it never gets to that level of body um
Or like the amaron we tasted in the last lecture but they can be a little uh the tannins can be a little astringent and that’s one of the benchmarks for Italian wines in general and for senio V one of the benchmarks here is that the acidity
Is quite high this is what makes kianti kianti Classico uh and K classic Reserva incredible food wines I mean it was made for Italian food I mean think of a a Ragu or a meaty lasagna or or a bologan sauce and that meat will soften some of
The astringency in those tannins and and you have the acid in the wine and the acid in the food from the tomato sauce there’s nothing better nothing better than all that as I mentioned sanesi is also called Brunello especially in the region of M monino within Tuscany this is where
You get the wine Brunello the monino this area is south of Kean so the climate is a little bit warmer and drier which makes the grapes a little bit riper and the alcohol a little bit warmer on your pallet the altitude of the hill of monal Chino is also higher
Than Kean and as we discussed in lecture three the higher the altitude the smaller the berries that means a a smaller pulp to skin ratio which means a thicker grape yielding a wine of higher concentration and more tanic grip this is true for Bernell they tend to be riper more concentrated Fuller
Bodied higher in tannin than their Kean cousins this is also why Brunello deinos are generally higher in price than keanes you may have also seen the word Reserva on the label for example ke Classico Reserva the term Reserva is reserved for the wines that have met the minimum aging requirements for this
Designation to be clear these wines are aged the longest they also have an alcohol minimum of 1 and a half% higher than other Wines in a producer’s portfolio that doesn’t have Reserva on the label this doesn’t mean time only spent in Barrel it’s aging requirement total for barrel and bottle for example
Can classical producers are not required to age at all in wood to put the put the term Reserva on a label however almost all do uh aging wood but if they have Reserva on the label the wine would have to be aged longer than the non Reserva brunella deino is different of
Course it would be too easy otherwise the Aging requirement in wood is 2 years and the total aging requirement is 50 months so Reserva would require even more time than that if the wine maker wanted to label it a Brunell deino Reserva remember in the last lecture when we spoke of traditionalist and
Modern international style producers these regions have both Styles as well traditional style producers age for a longer period of time in wood and in Bottle Additionally the type of Oak that’s used is is slavonian Oak which imparts more of a subtle flavor to the wine however a group of traditionalists
Use older wood so that it imparts no flavor at all wine made this way with with longer aging and and more oxidation will have a paler color and take on more of an orange Hue in the wine also the Aromas will bend more towards uh spice and hints of leather more than fruit
Finally the pette is softer uh by aging this way the traditional producer is focusing on harmonizing all of those elements modern style producers reduce the time in wood and generally use new Oak including new French Oak to impart a vanilla toast and spice to the wine these wines will be more youthful in
Appearance meaning more red purple tones more than orange and the fruit will be more pronounced speaking of modern producers let’s talk about super Tuscan wines some producers in Tuscany wanted to create a style of wine that would would include Bordeaux grape varieties and be of such
High quality that it would rival the the top growth in Bordeaux and they succeeded the super tusin wine sasaya for example which we have here achieved legendary status when it won International tasting of Cabernet in London in 1978 now let’s take a look at the story
Behind this winning wine in the 1940s a wine maker named Mario andesa de Roa planted Cabernet s and Cabernet francc on a tiny plot of land next to his castle he called the wine made from this little plot Sakaya or place of Many Stones that’s what it means in Italian
Anyway the this wine is 90% Cabernet svol and 10% Cabernet Fran so not a lick of sanio or any Italian great varieties so well we know what happened with that wine years later the Marquees Pierro anori a relative actually created wines with Cabernet s and cabern Fran in his
Experimenting however he decided to include some sanesi and to age the in in small BS these wines are of very very high quality and today are worth about $200 per bottle however this the wine makers at first counted a really big problem with this the doc and docg laws
Wouldn’t allow these forign great varieties to be included and still designate the names Doc and dog the wine makers thumb their noses at the laws and created them anyway lucky for us initially though they could only have the designation of that lowly vinava level that we discussed in last lecture
This caused quite a revolution and thus was born a new name super tuskin you won’t see the word super Tuscan on the label but it refers to these IGT level wines and remember that’s the second of the four Italian classifications of wines and stands for indic geographica
Typ these are wines of super high quality that include Bordeaux variety grapes these wines truly put Italy on the international scene for high quality modern style wines as a result in 1992 the government was forced to recognize these wines given their incredible reputation they then allowed wine makers
To call these wines IGT wines instead of Vino daava however as we discussed in our last lecture IGT is still a lower classification level than do let alone dog you may see wines at lower price points such as in the $20 range that try to call themselves super tuskin but
These are more like baby super tuskin the term super tuskin in the trade really generally is reserved for those really high quality wines priced at over $100 that have bordo varieties included and generally new French Oak so let’s taste the super tuskin take your glass and let’s take a look at the
Color it really is quite deep you know it’s a very dark Ruby color and it’s opaque you can’t see your fingers through it again this tells us that it’s a made from a thick skin grape variety which is Cabernet svol and Cabernet Fran do the chest chin nose
Test kind of have to stick your nose in the glass here a bit I mean it’s not it’s not incredibly aromatic but it’s not mute either but you you get those Cabernet Aras the black currants the the ciss and definitely get some some toasty notes of
Of of The Oaks of the vanilla but there’s also a hint of smoke here as well as um some herbal characteristic and this is actually what points you more towards Italy more than Bordeaux if you had a Bordeaux uh wine right next to this you would be able to tell because
It has those herbal characteristics now let’s taste it definitely more full-bodied and and and powerful than the uh than the Kean Classico we just tasted just much bigger wine very powerful gripping tannant but you can also tell it’s a higher tier just in terms of its its balance it’s
Balanced but it’s powerful balanced up here as opposed to balanced down here it’s got a long length and E even as I’m talking to you the flavor is just going on and on and on it’s got many layers of complexity as well it’s a bit tight
Right now and when we say tight in the industry we we mean um it’s not giving as much as it could and that Oak is covering up the fruit a little bit and this is a very very youthful vintage so when we taste a wine that tastes like
That we say you know it needs some time it needs time to harmonize and let those flavors come through a wine like this one that’s such high quality when it’s so young is is quite masculine and unyielding so you want to decant it as we showed you in
Lecture 8 not for the sediment but to allow more oxygen to get through for the wine to soften up a bit have you ever seen anybody say oh we’ve got to let the wine breathe and they open it and they put it out and that’s all
They do it’s actually a myth that this doing it like this is letting the wine breathe because is think about the surface area that’s seeing the oxygen it’s you know if you just open it and not pouring anything it’s about the size of a quarter so you’re not getting any
Oxygen to that wine in order to properly aate the wine you have to decant it so when you decant it all that oxygen is is going through as you’re pouring and this is softening the tannins and bringing out some of the Aromas it’s also a good idea to open decant take notes maybe
Every half hour after you’ve uh decanted the w this will show you exactly how the wine evolves and Chang you you’re going to be so surprised that the flavor is going to be different a half hour later an hour later to two hours later some people have decanted wines for parties that
I’ve been to they’ve decanted them like 6 hours in advance so it’s it’s it’s quite amazing to see all that change now let’s turn our attention South we’re only going to highlight a few important regions so if you want more you’re just going to have to wait
For our next course on the wines of Italy here we have a white wine from CA called listi the ca region is home to Napoli or Naples and the ancient city of Pompei which was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 ad so it’s no wonder that these soils are very
Volcanic L Christi means tears of Christ and this wine has a legend of its own when Lucifer was cast down from heaven he fell into Vesuvius and began to destroy everything in other words he caused vvus to erupt Christ hating to see his people hurt began to weep so his
Tears fell on the lava which then caused Vines to grow then the grapes used for this wine come from The Grapes grown on that volcanic soil L Christi is made from a grape called Kora dul this is an ancient great variety and it’s named for the shape of
Its clusters which actually look like Fox Tales so let’s take taste it it’s a straw color it’s not very aromatic at all and here we get some mineral tones but more of that Benchmark characteristic I was telling you about with with Italian whites it has more of an almond kind of
Character on the pallette it’s it’s dry it’s fresh it’s crisp and it’s got some nice citrusy fruit to it but it finishes nice and clean of course there are other white wines in compa such as Greco DFO uh the the Greco biano grape was cultivated 25
200 years ago in southern Italy but as the name suggests Greco likely means it migrated from ancient Greece remember uh grape plus region Greco is the name of the grape and it comes from the region of tufo the the wine made from this grape is affected by the soil and it’s
Commonly called tufa remember when we talked about TFO in the lecture about the lir valley you might might recall that it’s the highly porous Limestone and chalk soil with the volcanic vents going through it um tufa is very similar it’s a vent based volcanic rock so tuo Tua get the connection
Gfo is known for flavors of uh apple apple peels uh with mineral tones it’s a fresh crisp and another bright wine then there’s Fano de avalino the names derived from what the Romans called vus aana a Vine loved by bees like the K of L Christi it’s on the generous side of
Body for a white and it’s a but it’s a bit more aromatic um it’s it’s got some notes of pears and and even a hint of hazelnut from Capri comes another uh wine called fenina which you might have picked up this was a prestigious wine of the ancient
World Italy’s not really renowned for its in indigenous white wines meaning they’re you know generally not creating them to rival something like the gron cruise of burgundy but many of them are very fresh crisp bright and really quite affordable they do make some from French grape varieties like charday again
Because it’s a French grape they’re not allowed to give it do or docg status regardless of where it comes from Italian chardes are quite good values as they generally tend to be riper than those found in France uh the climate is warmer and they have more
Sunshine here we have a red wine made with a grape called Alano Alano makes up the the wines of toosi in CA and also this wine called bad Dupo from pulia and that’s the the heel of the boot of Italy now let’s taste it what you may want to do is compare it
In color to the uh sasaya and notice it’s even darker uh than the sasaya it’s richer and in color just more opaque so this really lets you know that it’s a very thick skin gra variety it’s not very aromatic but what I do get is very very
Dark fruit Aromas like um like Black Plum uh blackberries but here you get a a smoky tone a very spicy tone and it smells like Earth and when I say it smells like Earth I I do mean it kind of smells like Earth um like dirt but I
Also mean it smells like a like the woods like like Bramble like we were talking about before and it it adds a layer of complexity to it and it’s kind of like exotic and I like it wow it’s also really full body and quite quite tanic Alano is a late ripening variety
It’s you know but sometimes when it’s picked earlier those tannins can get quite as stringent and they can be a little bit intense but notice the acidity as well it’s it’s quite high but it’s balanced it’s also got a very long length so you can tell
This is a high quality wine it’s got concentration it’s got the complexity everything that makes up a high quality wine and this wine and in general Alano is one of the most underrated grapes and underrated Wines in all of Italy so if you’re going to an Italian restaurant
And you can’t afford the super tuskin at over $200 a bottle but you’re looking for a masculine kind of put hair on your chest Powerhouse red wine to go with that osoo look to the alanos like toosi like the boo Dupo and Alano Del which is from basilicata uh in
The arch of the boot they’re absolutely Fantastic Finds another grape in pulia and again that’s the heel is the Primitivo grape the name comes from the ancient Latin primitivus or first to ripen this is the opposite of Alano which is late ripening the grape has seen some attention in the
Last decade so because someone noticed it was similar to a grape in California called Zinfandel which we’ll discuss in lecture 17 it turns out that the DNA testing that these two grape varieties share a common ancestor which explains the similarity and taste let’s taste the Primitivo also a very thick skin great
Variety it’s very very dark and opaque it’s a bit more aromatic than the Alano and what you’re going to find that it it has a lot of red and black fruit but it smells very very ripe and almost Jammy almost similar to what you see for zinfindel and it also has this element
Of of dried fruit in it as well which is also very similar to zinfindel no wonder they thought it was the same as zinfindel now let’s taste it and compar to the alelo this tastes almost medium bodyi and if you notice on your back palette there’s definitely a warmth
There these are generally higher in alcohol because you know they’re so is such a warm climate and it’s about 14% but these can get up to May about 18% and that warmth is due to that warm climate this is another underrated wine which means an absolute incredible value
For you now in Calabria at the toe of the boot of Italy um makes some wines as well but we generally don’t see a ton exported to this country the main red grape there is gallopo although we did show you a muscato vasito in lecture n from from this area now to
Sicily it’s the largest island in the Mediterranean and it’s the largest area under Vines for any region in Italy although the Sicilians consider themselves their own country there seems to be a rivalry between the Sicilians and those of the Mainland which even migrated over to America uh I was dating
This boy in high school and I brought him home to meet my family and my Italian grandfather um when he met him asked what his family heritage was my grandfather didn’t have a problem uh with this boy’s family being polish but he was half Sicilian he had a huge
Problem with that oh my goodness when we finally broke up my grandfather said ah well you’re better off without that Sicilian Sicily is close to the equator so it’s much hotter and drier than most of Italy since the Greeks inhabited the island in in the 8th Century BC Sicily
Has been known for its highquality produce like uh like grain Citrus and olives and for its wines which were sent to Ports such as Pompei most of what Sicily produces is white but they do have one shining star that seems to be causing a lot of excitement with Reds called Nero dava
Let’s taste it one seems to be a thick skin grape variety it’s quite Deep In Color a deep Ruby it’s not incredibly aromatic but it’s not mute either so it’s in the middle and now you really can smell that it comes from a a warm climate because
It it’s it’s really quite Jammy and you’ve got some dark fruits as well and you got a little bit of herbal characteristic it’s full bodied as well but it almost tastes like I said jamier fruer so if you like warm climate wines you’re really going to like the
Neava now what you may want to do is taste The neava Taste the Alano and go back to the Neo Dava what do you noticed about the tannins it’s probably going to be much softer right yeah the neoa has a little bit softer but that’s not saying much
Because neoa still has some pretty um gripping tants you also see some French great varieties here in Sicily like Sarah and CERN s uh the producer planeta makes some SAR Loves the Sunshine here and SAR is sometimes Blended in with neava as a blend in Sicily they have their own
Quality designation which is marked with a Q on the label so if you see that cue you know that that is designated as a quality wine from Sicily these wines can also be great old world deals and Steels especially if you like wines from warm climates with that
That Jammy fruit that Fuller body and a little bit of that warmer alcohol the back if you can take it next up we go from the chaotic and passionate culture of Italy to the precise orderly and logical wines of Germany and Austria you’re going to need
The following wines we have a leaf forch we have AA or an AA make sure that it’s a reasing a German red either a Banda which is actually P Noir from Germany or a dor felda if you can find it and then from Austria you would like a we would
Like you to have a um an Austrian reing a gruno Lina and a shmar if you can find it um and a gra variety called zelt which is a red grape variety from Austria Germany is the home of freezing the food friendly favorite of sooes they can be great entry-level wines and they
Can be some of the longest lived white wines in the world we’ll also talk of the wines of Austria which have been quite trendy with restaurants you can be up on the lingo and and talk Shop with a Som so until then AR