Wojciech Bońkowski
Master of Wine

Sky is the limit

Olio Secondo Veronelli: pushing the boundaries of olive oil quality.

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Lake Garda: exciting whites

I’ve spent a week on the Garda Lake last September, exploring the region’s wines and foods. Blessed with hundreds of thousands of affluent tourists each year, the Garda produces predominantly a serious rosé called chiaretto, followed by some interesting lightish reds from the local Groppello grape.
Garda vineyards at Padenghe.
White wine, contrarily to what you might expect from a holiday destination with delicious lake fish, takes a back stage. The area’s historical white, Tocai, has now shrunk to the 60 hectares or so of the obscure San Martino della Battaglia DOC: pithy and mineral with Tocai’s low acidity, the wine has some interest but remains a curiosity. (One good producer is Spia d’Italia whose Bianco dell’Erta 2008 I enjoyed).
Some of the Luganas I recommend.
Far more popular is Lugana, a tourist’s favourite from the Trebbiano di Lugana (aka Turbiana) grape grown on a patch of clay soils at Garda’s extreme south. Lugana is very widely available and at 8–10€ a somewhat pricey but reliable light- to medium-bodied white with good minerality. From a tasting session of roughly twenty wines, my favourites were Olivini, Tenuta Roveglia, Provenza and, last not least, the very serious duo of Luganas from San Giovanni, including the assertive, mouthfilling Busocaldo made according to a bizarre recipe where the wine is aged on twenty times the amount of its own lees (!).
However, it’s the whites wines from Garda’s western shore that have caught my eye during this stay. Curiously, the Riesling Renano (German Riesling) has a long tradition here, and appears as a varietal or blended with Chardonnay, Riesling Italico and/or Manzoni. Given the area’s mild, Mediterranean, well-ventilated climate the wines acquire a rich, broad character unlike Riesling in Germany, but the grape’s inherent acidic drive provides really good balance.
The white Gardas worth seeking come from Comincioli (Perlí blends Trebbiano with local Erbamat – exceptionally there’s not Riesling – short skin contact results in plenty of saline minerality and a really interesting profile); Monte Cicogna (Il Torrione), and San Giovanni (Reis: one of the most mineral wines I’ve had).
Today I am retasting a memorable bottle I had at Cantrina. This peculiar estate a bit further west from the Garda belongs to artist Cristina Inganni, and was originally conceived as a Pinot Noir winery. Over the years the emphasis has switched towards local grapes such as Groppello and Riesling, though the entire range is highly individual and reflects Cristina’s very free, unorthodox approach. 

The dry white Riné has also evolved: originally stronger on Chardonnay, the 2002 vintage we tasted was showing broad-shouldered and a little oaky although surely not yet another oaked Chardonnay: the heavy, stoney clay soils here gives wines with plenty of backbone and that distinctive saline taste of minerality. (They’re not too high in acids, on the other hand). The 2007 Riné has over 50% Riesling and so is a crisper, juicier white. It’s already a little advanced (consistently with Cristina’s saying: Mi piacciono vini bianchi evoluti) but has plenty of substance and an interesting interplay between creamy ripeness and mineral terroir. A very personal wine.

Cristina Inganni and Diego Lavo of Cantrina.
Disclosure
Source of wine: received as gift upon a visit to the winery.
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Rising and falling stars

Gambero Rosso is Italy’s foremost wine guide, and in a country that puzzlingly lacks an opinion-making wine magazine, has constituted the most influential voice on wine for over a decade. Its stylistic bias has effectively changed the shape of Italian winemaking. As always when a medium becomes too influential, The Red Prawn has come under critical fire for its sins both actual and alleged, and as a strong counteraction against its pro-new oak agenda has gathered momentum Gambero’s star has started to wane somewhat. (Ironically this happened when the book’s quality, in my opinion, has clearly improved, with a more nuanced coverage and an obvious if limited acknowledgement of more traditional styles).


One of Gambero’s very engaging but equally controversial activities is the Italian Wines Roadshow, showcasing leading estates that have been among the guide’s protagonists over the last years (as well as its best business partners, one should add). And so 59 big Italian names descended onto Warsaw (as well as Moscow, London and a few other venues) and provided for an afternoon of thought-provoking drinking. 
 
My feelings are a little ambivalent as there were several producers (cooperatives and not) which should never be included in what is supposed to be Italy’s 57 best wineries. And there was more than a fair proportion of estates that are doing some sound commercial work with their wines but which eventually do lack a bit of personality and expression of terroir. The latter, in fact, was more often than not missing from the equation, with red wines displaying impressive levels of extract, oak and overripe fruit but very little in terms of finesse or minerality. Whites wines were hardly better with the vast majority showing a fairly formulaic stainless steel cool fermentation profile, or decently concentrated but with utterly predictable new oak.

Daniele Cernilli of Gambero Rosso speaks at the seminar. © Piotr Niemyjski.


There were, highlights, too, including the various mineral facets of Cantina Gallura’s surprisingly good Vermentinos, and Nals Margreid’s transparent, impeccably balanced wines from Alto Adige (including an admirably restrained Merlot). On the red wine front there was the unquestionable greatness of Sassicaia 2006, seamless, elegant, juicy, with not a millimeter of excess, and the deliciously unpretentious Cirò Duca San Felice 2007 from Librandi, almost rosé in colour with real Mediterranean finesse. Some good fun was had with Nino Franco’s Proseccos. 
 
And then four stunningly good wines from what is probably the Gambero Roadshow’s least-known winery, Provenza from the shores of Lake Garda. In the Lugana and Garda DOC appellations, some hopelessly unfashionable grape varieties are grown including white Trebbiano di Lugana, red Groppello and Marzemino. Their obscurity and provinciality are likely incentives to work really hard in vineyard and cellar, and these were truly very well-vinified wines including the Lugana Selezione Fabio Contato 2007, fermented in oak yet showing none in its flavour (and that’s quite an exploit with Trebbiano, an unaromatic grape that seems to absorb oak like a sponge), mineral, deep, balanced and elegant at the same time. The simpler Lugana Molin 2008 sees some skin contact on the Trebbiano giving it an unseen complexity and depth of mineral flavour, and the red Garda Classico Negrasco 2007 was equally good with earthy fruit and respectable depth while keeping a clean, crisp, very drinkable style that is really the essence of what Italy does so well. Whatever you say, it’s good of Gambero Rosso to endorse wines such as Provenza’s.

Disclosure: The Warsaw edition of the Gambero Rosso Roadshow was co-organised by the WINO Magazine where I am employed. I am occasionally invited to vineyard tours to Italy organised by Thompson International Wine Marketing who organise the Roadshow for Gambero Rosso.

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