Wojciech Bońkowski
Master of Wine

Savour Australia Day 4: Jacob’s Creek deep & wide

Savour Australia Day 4: a visit to Jacob’s Creek, with heritage sites and old vintages.

Roero: the third twin

Never heard of Roero? My extensive profile of this wine district in Piedmont tells you what’s to be known.

Amazing Arneis

Live blogging from Piedmont, part 2. Arneis is usually a light commercial wine. In an amazing tasting at Angelo Negro we taste serious Arneis back to 2001.

Nebbiolo Prima 2011: a good start

Live blogging from Piedmont, part 1. Starting the week slowly with some delicious local food and the best wine to match: white Arneis. The best Arneis is currently made by Ghiomo, a small winery in Guarene.

Simple pleasures

I’m in Alba in Piedmont for an event called Nebbiolo Prima (formerly Alba Wines Exhibition), a preview of the new vintages of Piedmont’s most important wines: Barolo, Barbaresco, and Roero. It’s a great opportunity to taste more or less all the important wines from my favourite wine region. And it’s consistently one of Europe’s best organised and most exciting tasting.


Apart from its wines Piedmont also has spectacular scenery and some world-class food which I’ll be enjoying over the next few days, from cheese through meat to chocolate and grappa. Before you think it’s a nice vacation imagine tasting around 120 of the world’s most tannic wines every day. It’s really taxing. So today I’m taking it slowly and enjoying this warm sunny Sunday on Alba’s main drag, watching that Italian wonder of social choreography called the passeggiata, and having an al fresco lunch of the local raw beef and tajarin pasta. With this, I’m drinking Vietti’s Roero Arneis 2009, a deliciously unpretentious sugary-lemony light white from the local Arneis grape, as well as the Langhe Freisa Le Naturé 2008 from Pelissero. The latter is crazy stuff like they only make them in Italy: a lightly sparkling dry red with pungent cherry fruit and masses of brett, too. It’s a challenging wine that I’d never let into my dining room with other humans but here, with the pasta under the sun, it somehow works. 


Disclaimer
My stay in Italy including flights, accomodation and wine tasting programme is paid for by Albeisa, the Piedmontese producers’ association. I paid for the above lunch and both wines.