Verdeca - Valle d'Itria, Puglia, Italy

One of the things I really enjoy about writing this blog is that I learn so many things that I probably wouldn't ever have known if I didn't take a few minutes to research these grapes before writing about them.  When I started doing this, I figured most grapes would have similar back stories and the interesting ones would be few and far between, but it has turned out that the grapes with the boring histories are in the minority and there is usually at least one or two interesting little bits of information that I never knew about for most of the grapes that I come across.  I've written about more than 200 different grape varieties at this point, and I'm surprised at how often I'm still surprised at what I learn when I start to do a little digging into whatever particular grape I've decided to write about on a given day.

For example, today I decided to write about the Verdeca grape from Puglia and I wasn't expecting anything too exciting.  The first sentence in the Oxford Companion to Wine's entry on the grape made it seem like this was probably the correct attitude, as it describes Verdeca as "Puglia's most popular light-berried vine producing neutral wine suitable for the vermouth industry and declining in popularity."  The next sentence, though, hints at a possible relationship with a Croatian grape called Plavina Crna, and the entry in Wine Grapes expands this to say that Verdeca and Zinfandel together are the parents for Plavina Crna.  Despite the fact that Zinfandel is grown around Puglia as Primitivo, a connection between the two grapes never would have occurred to me, and, furthermore, I never would have suspected a Croatian link for Verdeca at all!  I followed the citation in Wine Grapes to read the paper cited (citation 1 below), and it does indeed appear that Verdeca is one of the parents of Plavina.

Plavina is a red grape found almost exclusively in northern Croatia and, as we probably all know already, Zinfandel/Primitivo is thought to ultimately be from Croatia as well (where it is known as Tribidrag).  This seems to point to a possible Croatian origin for Verdeca, though it doesn't appear that there is any grape grown there today that corresponds to Verdeca.  To muddy the waters a bit, though, Vouillamoz reports in Wine Grapes that his personal research has shown that Verdeca is identical to a Greek grape known as Lagorthi, which is grown to a limited extent in the Peloponnese and in the Ionian islands.  I've mentioned before my frustration with this particular tactic of Vouillamoz's so I'll spare readers another rant on the subject, but if true, Vouillamoz's finding raises many more questions about Verdeca than it answers.

It could be the case that Verdeca arrived in Puglia from Greece and then somehow ended up in Croatia just long enough to cross with Zinfandel to create Plavina, but it seems odd that Verdeca is not found anywhere in Croatia today or in any of the regions between Puglia and Croatia.  It is also possible that Verdeca arrived from Greece into Puglia and was crossed with the local Primitivo/Zinfandel to create Plavina, and then Plavina was transported into Croatia, but this explanation is no less problematic than the first in that Plavina is not currently found anywhere in Italy.  Of course, it is also possible that Verdeca originated in Croatia or Puglia and moved to these various places from there, but each possible explanation seems to have some unsatisfactory element to it and it doesn't seem possible to draw any firm conclusions from the data at hand.

What we do know is that in Italy, Verdeca is definitely in decline.  It was planted on nearly 20,000 acres of land in 1970, but this total has fallen to around 5,600 acres as of the year 2000.  Most of this decline is due to the fact that many people don't think that Verdeca is all that interesting of a grape and, furthermore, that the wines made from it are mostly neutral and forgettable.  It is typically used as a blending grape not because it contributes anything particularly memorable to the blend, but rather because it can be used as filler to stretch the quantity of the blended wine.  There are a handful of modern producers who are experimenting with varietal Verdeca wines, though it remains to be seen whether the grape can or will reward their attention.

I was able to pick up a bottle of the 2010 Masseria Li Veli Verdeca from my friends at the Wine Bottega for around $18 (though I've definitely seen this wine at several other Boston area stores like Curtis Liquors whose wine guy, Joe, points out below that this wine is actually 90% Verdeca and 10% Fiano Minutolo, which is not the same as Fiano di Avellino.  Fiano Minutolo, also known as Minutolo, Fiano Aromatico or Fiano di Puglia, is known for its grapey, Muscat like aroma and flavor, though it isn't related to any of the Muscat grapes or to Fiano di Avellino.  There are varietal wines made from it, but I haven't run across any yet). In the glass this wine was a fairly deep lemon gold color.  The nose was somewhat reserved with aromas of pear, lime peel, honeysuckle and apricot that were a little difficult to tease out.  On the palate the wine was on the lighter side of medium with fairly high acidity.  There were flavors of pear, honeysuckle flower, lime peel and ripe apple with a touch of salinity and a strong, stony mineral finish.  Verdeca is noted for its strong mineral notes, and I wonder if many tasters confuse that for neutrality, as I found this wine anything but neutral, but I can understand how minerality can be a neutral kind of taste for many.  I found this wine very interesting and characterful with a distinctive saline tang that was different and refreshing.  It's a decent value at around $20 as well.  I thought it would be an interesting match with raw shellfish or light seafood dishes, but I would be wary about paring it with very assertively flavored foods, as the wine's flavors may be overmatched.

CITATIONS

1)  Lacombe, T, Boursiquot, JM, Laucou, V, Dechesne, F, Vares, D & This, P.  2007.   Relationships and Genetic Diversity within the Accessions Related to Malvasia Held in the Domaine de Vassal Grape Germplasm Repository.  American Journal of Enology and Viticulture, 58 (1), pp 124-131.

Susumaniello - Puglia, Italy

Calling something a "blending grape" is usually a nice way to say that it has some good qualities, but just isn't good enough to be made into a wine on its own.  So-called blending grapes are usually prized because they bring one or two nice things, like color or acidity, to the table, but they tend to be seriously lacking in some other oenological aspect.  Because of this, they typically are either used sparingly to add a little something to an otherwise mostly varietal wine, or in combination with other grapes whose collective shortcomings are overcome through the blending process.  These grapes are supporting actors at their very best and mere extras at their worst and are only rarely given the opportunity to shine on their own.

In the past few years, a few blending grapes, like Malbec and Carmenere, have actually achieved relative stardom as they've been planted in new locations that have allowed them to demonstrate qualities that many didn't know they possessed.  A new climate and a new terroir has shown that these are serious grapes that are capable of making serious wines.  It's much rarer, though, for a grape to rise from blending grape to star status in its native land, and while it may be a bit premature to call Susumaniello a star just yet, it certainly wouldn't surprise me if it rose to that level in the very near future.

Susumaniello is currently grown only in Puglia, the spike heel of the Italian boot, in the southeastern part of that country.  Some sources indicate that Susumaniello is an ancient grape, but I'm not sure what the evidence is for that claim.  The name Susumaniello means something like "the load of the donkey," because it is a prolific yielder as a young vine.  The grapes from these prolific harvests tend to make unappetizing, boring wines, but after about 10 years, the yields fall significantly and careful growers can make dense, full-bodied wines from the grapes.  It has historically partnered with Negroamaro and Malvasia Nera in the red and rosato wines of Brindisi, and has been prized for its ability to add color, acidity and alcohol to the final blend.  Jeremy over at Do Bianchi notes that as recently as 2006, the editors of the landmark Vitigni d'Italia (Grape Varieties of Italy) said of Susumaniello that it was never vinified on its own and was used strictly to produce vino da taglio, or a heavy, densely colored wine used to beef up thinner, less colorful bulk wines.  Over the past 10 years or so, though, many producers have been experimenting with varietal Susumaniello wines and the results have been very promising.

Many sources indicate that the grape likely came to Puglia from the Dalmatian coast of Croatia, just across the Adriatic Sea.  I'm not sure what the source of this bit of information is, but I'm not sure that it's right.  In 2008, a team of Italian scientists conducted a study to see whether they could link Sangiovese and Garganega to a host of other grape varieties in Italy.  They found that these two grapes had parent-offspring relationships to several different Italian grapes, but most importantly for our purposes, they found that Sangiovese had a parent-offspring relationship to Susumaniello.  The scientists believed that Susumaniello was likely an offspring of Sangiovese, though they were unable to determine the second parent.  It seems unlikely to me that the grape would be from Croatia with Sangiovese as one of the parents, so it's probably the case that Susumaniello is actually Italian, and given that it really isn't grown outside of a few small areas in Puglia, it's probably a safe bet that it's from somewhere around the Brindisi area.

I was able to pick up a bottle of the 2006 Cantine due Palme "Serra" Susumaniello from my friends at the Wine Bottega for about $23.  In the glass the wine was a deep, inky, purple-black color with a very narrow purple rim.  The nose was fairly intense with smoky blackerry, charred meat, cedar wood and bitter chocolate aromas.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with fairly high acid and low tannins.  There were flavors of tart red cherry, black cherry, blackberry and plum fruit along with some smoky chocolate.  The wine actually had a kind of tart, berryish quality to it and there was some zippy dried cranberry and cherry pit flavors as well.  The wine really walked a  line between bright berry fruits and dark, smoky earthy notes and did it pretty well.  If this wine is any indication of the quality of Susuamniello in general, I think it would be a shame to relegate this grape to mere blending status, as this wine was rich, balanced and very tasty.  I'm on the Susumaniello bandwagon now and hope to see it take its place among the other star red grapes of southern Italy.

Uva di Troia (Nero di Troia) - Castel del Monte, Puglia, Italy

You might be inclined, upon seeing the name of today's grape, to assume that it has something to do with the ancient city of Troy.  "Troia" is right there in the name, you might say, so there must be some connection between the two.  While you wouldn't be alone in thinking that, you also wouldn't be correct.  It seems to happen a lot in the wine world (and beyond) that someone takes a quick look at a word and uses their intuition to come up with an explanation for it rather than doing any research.  In actuality, the name of the grape most likely comes from a town named Troia in Puglia which is west of the town of Foggia in the northern part of the region, which isn't nearly as exciting as a reference to the ancient city of Troy, but sometimes facts can be pretty boring.

It is thought that Uva di Troia came to Puglia via Greece several thousand years ago.  The name of the game in Puglia has traditionally been high volume bulk wine production so over the years growers would select certain vines that had larger grapes with more clusters to replant in their vineyards in order to increase the amount of juice that each vine could produce.  This kind of clonal selection in the field has result in a handful of distinctive clonal variants that differ primarily in the size of the grape and the compactness of the bunches.  As you might expect, those clones with very large berries tends to produce inferior wine.  The obvious reason is that the juice is less concentrated on these vines and the wine is dilute and lacking in flavor.  The less obvious reason is that Uva di Troia has a tendency for its bunches to ripen unevenly and the larger berries of certain clones cause the bunches to be more compact, making it difficult for some of the grapes closer to the center of the bunch to ripen completely since they are shielded from the sun.  These underripe grapes are tossed into the fermentation vat along with everything else where they contribute harsh tannins and acid to the finished wine.  Clonal variants with looser clusters and smaller berries are generally preferred for quality production, as the juice is more concentrated and the berries ripen more evenly and completely, making for a less harsh wine.

The grape is somewhat noteworthy for just how average it is across the board when you look at its viticultural characteristics.  It's fairly resistant to a wide variety of diseases, it yields fairly abundantly (depending on which clone is planted) and it isn't prone to dropping clusters or berries during the growing season.  It tolerates the heat of Puglia fairly well and while it's a fairly late ripener, that's not a big problem in the warm, dry Puglian climate.  Increasingly, however, plantings of Uva di Troia are on the decline.  It seems that Uva di Troia isn't quite as user friendly as the other Puglian stand-bys, Negroamaro and Primitivo, either in the vineyard, the winery or the marketplace.  Further, the DOC regulations for the most important region for Uva di Troia, Castel del Monte, are set up in such a way that use of the grape in the DOC wine isn't necessary.  The regulations stipulate that the wine must contain Uva di Troia and/or Aglianico and/or Montepulciano with up to 35% of non-aromatic red grapes added.  What that means is that a red wine from Castel del Monte can be 100% Uva di Troia, 100% Aglianico, 100% Montepulciano or any blend of the three grapes with over 1/3 of the blend allowed to come from virtually any other red grape.  There are a handful of other DOC regions that have Uva di Troia as the primary grape, but Castel del Monte is by far the most important economically and since there is no incentive for growers or winemakers to use the grape, many are moving away from it to the more recognizable Aglianico and Montepulciano grapes.

Fortunately, there are still some wines made from the Uva di Troia grape.  The Rivera winery is one of them and I was able to pick up a bottle of their 2003 "Il Falcone" bottling for about $33.  The wine is 70% Uva di Troia (called Nero di Troia by them, and supposedly made up of three different clones) and 30% Montepulciano.  The wine is from the Castel del Monte DOC, which is named for an octagonal castle in the area that was built by Frederick II in the 12th Century.  Frederick was apparently a big fan of hunting with Falcons, which is how "Il Falcone" got its name. In the glass the wine was a very deep purple-ruby color that was  opaque nearly all the way out to the rim.  The nose on the wine was very reserved with purple fruit that had a blackcurrant character to it with a hint of smoke.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with medium acidity and medium tannins.  There were flavors of ripe black cherry and blackberry fruits with smoke, leather, tobacco, cocoa and cassis.  This is a dark and brooding wine with ripe fruit flavors that are held in check by the rich, earthy flavors.  This is very well balanced, very deep and very interesting.  It's hard to call a $30 bottle of wine a value, but if I had paid $50 for this wine, I still would have felt like I got my money's worth out of it.  It's a really fascinating, deep, complex wine that would be an ideal companion for game or grilled meats.  It's probably as good as Uva di Troia gets so if you happen to run across it, definitely give it a shot.

Bombino Bianco - Puglia, Italy

Today's grape has one of my very favorite grape names of all time.  Bombino Bianco is so fun to say and makes me picture these little white bombs growing on grapevines.  Sadly (for me anyway) the name has nothing to do with bombs, but exactly where it comes from isn't totally clear.  One story has it that the grape bunches look a child with its arms outstretched, so the name Bombino comes from the word Bambino, meaning baby.  It would take a Herculean effort of imagination to picture a baby with arms outstretched in any of the images for Bombino that I've seen, so I'm extremely dubious about this particular story.

There is a slightly more believable story that relies on the grape's purported heritage for its explanatory power.  It thought that the grape may have come over from Spain, though no one offers any evidence (ampelographical or genetic) that I can find to support this hypothesis, and I'm not aware of any vine currently planted in Spain that may be Bombino in disguise.  In any case, the story goes that the Spanish name for the grape was Bonvino (meaning "good wine"), but since the Spanish "v" is pronounced like the Italian "b," the name got corrupted to Bombino once it took hold in Italy.  This story is convincing only to the extent that you buy that the grape is from Spain, and I find myself wondering if perhaps this origin story was concocted because of its linguistic convenience and is itself ultimately the source for the purported Spanish connection.

Wherever the name's origins truly lie, the grape is today known as Bombino Bianco, except when it isn't.  Bombino has a wide variety of synonyms, and these synonyms get us into trouble as we move from region to region within Italy.  The grape is known as Pagadebit or Pagadebito in some places, but this is a relatively common synonym for many different grape.  The name means "debt-payer" and is commonly used for several grapes that give very high yields and produce a lot of juice for the grower.  In particular, there is a grape in Emilia-Romagna known as Pagadebit that was (and, for the most part still is) thought to be the same as Bombino, and a lot of it may be Bombino, but at least some of it is another grape altogether (see my post on Mostosa for info on this grape and on the Pagadebit name more generally).  Some sources also indicate that Bombino and Trebbiano d'Abruzzo are one and the same grape, though this also may turn out to be untrue.  While Wikipedia lists Trebbiano d'Abruzzo as an accepted synonym for Bombino Bianco, The Oxford Companion to wine indicates that they are distinct grapes, and Nicolas Belfrage, in his Brunello to Zibibbo concurs.  Belfrage quotes two Italian writers, Salvatore del Gaudio and Domenico Giusto, who, in their Principali Vitigni, examined the ampelographical characteristics of the two vines and concluded unequivocally that the two grapes are distinct.

So our current situation is essentially this: we find ourselves in Puglia with a grape called Bombino Bianco, which is sometimes called Pagadebit, but which is different from the Pagadebit in Emilia-Romagna, or is at least different from some of the grapes called Pagadebit there, and which was also thought to be identical to Trebbiano d'Abruzzo, but is not.  Our Bombino is, as the Pagadebit synonym (and the more colorful Stracchia Cambiale synonym, meaning "tear up the invoices") suggests, a cash crop, grown primarily because it yields explosively and reliably.  Few producers bother with bottling the wine, and a great deal of it is shipped to Germany, where it is bottled as ordinary, anonymous EU Table Wine.  Nicolas Belfrage's assessment of the potential quality of the grape is summed up when he says "Bombino Bianco can make as dull and tasteless a wine as you could hope to find."  He mentions that some producers are experimenting with lower yields in an effort to coax some character from the grape, but ultimately says the wines produced even from these estates are "more for the drinker than the thinker."

Despite that lackluster endorsement, I picked up a bottle of the 2009 Cantele "Telero" Bombino Bianco from my friends at Curtis Liquors for about $8.  In the glass, the wine was a pale silvery greenish lemon color.  The nose was moderately aromatic with crisp apple, pear, and grapefruit peel aromas.  On the palate, the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity.  There were flavors of pear and lemon with a grapefruit/lemon citrus peel sort of thing lurking in the background.  There was something vaguely floral about it, but it wasn't really strong enough to pin down to anything more specific than that.  It finished with a chalky kind of minerality that I wasn't particularly crazy about.  Overall, it was pretty generic, though I wouldn't go so far as to say it was the most dull or tasteless wine I've ever had.  There's nothing here to offend anyone unless you're offended by mediocrity.  I will say that if you open this bottle, finish it the same day as it went sharply downhill on day two and became nearly undrinkable.  For people who are fans of inexpensive, mild white wines, there's probably a lot here to enjoy. It could sub in very well for some of the high volume Pinot Grigio or Garganega based wines made in northern Italy so if you just feel like switching it up a little bit geographically, give this a shot.

Negroamaro - Salice Salentino, Puglia, Italy

We've spent a lot of time in northern Italy on this blog, exploring the obscure wonders of Piemonte, Trentino-Alto Adige, and Lombardy.  We've even spent a little time in central Italy exploring some of the wines of Lazio, Tuscany, Umbria and the Marche.  I would guess that close to half of the posts I've written for this site were about Italian grapes and wines, so it came as a bit of a surprise to me that Fiano from Campania is pretty much the only southern Italian wine that I've written about.  It's certainly not because there's a lack of interesting grapes in southern Italy, but rather that I just haven't gotten around to pulling the corks on the ones that I have at home.  Hopefully that trend will start to change today, though, as the grape we're concerned with is Negroamaro from Puglia. 

It is thought that Negroamaro was brought to southern Italy by the Greeks sometime between the 8th and 7th Centuries BC (possibly by way of Albania according to Nicolas Belfrage).  How the grape got its name is a matter of some dispute.  Most books on the subject will tell you that the name comes from the Italian words for black (negro) and bitter (amaro).  Seems pretty open and shut, right?  Well, others claim that the "amaro" portion of the grape's name is actually a corruption of the Greek word for black, "mavro," while the "negro" portion is a corruption from the Latin "niger," so the grape's name would literally be translated as "black-black" in Latin and Greek.  I have to admit, this seemed like a much less likely explanation to me until I read Jeremy Parzen's take on the matter over at Do Bianchi.  The theory that he posits is that the grape was named redundantly in two different languages because the region of Puglia was a crossroads between Latin and Greek cultures so the name of the grape served as a kind of advertisement in two languages for what the drinker could expect from the wine.  It does make a kind of sense when viewed that way, but not being a historical linguist, I don't feel qualified to weigh in on the matter.  Suffice it to say that the matter is in some dispute and you can choose for yourself whether you want to call it "black-bitter," "black-black" or just plain old Negroamaro.

Negroamaro is grown almost exclusively in Puglia and, most notably, in the Salento peninsula in southern Puglia.  The vine is a favorite with growers because it's resistant to a wide variety of diseases, is drought resistant and is capable of very high yields.  It's fairly widely grown throughout Puglia (different sources quote the percentage of Negroamaro in the region from as low as 25% to as high as 80%), but not as widely grown as it used to be.  Puglia was a major contributor to the European Wine Lake in the late 1980's so in an effort to reduce the amount of excess wine being produced, the EU offered financial incentives for growers to pull up their vines.  These vine pull schemes cut the acreage devoted to Negroamaro in Puglia nearly in half from over 31,000 hectares in 1990 to about 16,000 in the year 2000.  Even with all the vine pulls, bulk wine is still where most of the action is in Puglia as only about 2% of Puglian production is DOC wine and only about 25% of the wine produced in Puglia is ever sold in bottle.

I was able to get my hands on two different bottlings of Negroamaro.  The first was a 2007 Sant'Angelo Negroamaro that I picked up for around $11.  This is an IGT bottling from the Salento region.  In the glass, the wine had a dense ruby colored core that faded to a light purple rim.  It had a moderately open nose of dusky blackcurrant and black cherry fruit with a hint of strawberry.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with fairly high acid and medium tannins (that were nicely integrated).  There were flavors of tart cherry and chocolate with a bit of earthy espresso to it.  The fruit here is very ripe and juicy and though the wine is dry, it almost tastes sweet.  It had a kind of chocolate covered strawberry taste to it that was nice at first but got a little cloying as the night wore on.  It was an OK wine but it's not something I'm likely to revisit.

The second wine that I tried was a 2007 Taurino Salice Salentino Rosso Riserva that I picked up for about $10.50.  I'm not sure of the proportions, but this wine had a little Malvasia Nera in it (DOC regulations stipulate that this had to be at least 85% Negroamaro).  In the glass, the wine had a deep, opaque ruby core.  The nose was open with chocolate, black cherries, dried cherries, black plum and leather aromas.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with fairly high acid and soft, silky tannins.  It tasted like chocolate covered dried cherries with a bit of leather and tobacco mixed in it.  This wine was much more balanced than the Sant'Angelo bottling and had a nice complexity to it for the price. It had a nice polish to it, but it was still pretty rustic at heart.

A final note of caution here.  Quality for Negroamaro based wines is extraordinarily and notoriously variable.  DOC is never a guide to quality in Italy but it especially isn't here as there are many DOC labeled wines that are thin, sweet bottles that will leave you unhappy.  The best way to shop for Negroamaro based wines is to go to a store you trust and let someone lead you to a bottle.  I can unreservedly recommend the entire line of Taurino bottlings but beyond that, it's going to be trial and error.  Luckily, most Negroamaro based wines are fairly inexpensive so your mistakes won't be too costly.  It's definitely worth seeking them out, though, as when they are good, they are very good and represent incredible value for the money.  They are great food wines as well, complementing grilled foods, red meat and tomato sauced dishes with equal aplomb.