A Hedonist in the Cellar_ Adventures in Wine - Jay McInerney [19]
North Berkeley Imports, 1601 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Berkeley, CA 94709; 800-266-6585; northberkeley imports.com. (Texier and Gaillard)
Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant, 1605 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley, CA 94702; 510-524-1524; kermitlynch.com; fax: 510-528-7026. (Jasmin, Rostaing)
Sam’s Wines & Spirits, 1720 N. Marcey St., Chicago, IL 60614; 800-777-9137; samswine.com. (Chapoutier, Gerin, Burgaud, others)
Rosenthal Wine Merchant, 318 E. 84th St., New York, NY 10028; 212-249-6650. (Cuilleron, Bernard Levet)
THE HOUSE RED OF THE MONTAGUES AND THE CAPULETS
When über-restaurateur Danny Meyer entertained his childhood idol, St. Louis Cardinals right-hander Bob Gibson, he thought long and hard about what wine to serve to the pitcher, whom he knew to be a serious oenophile. Gibson had arrived at Meyer’s Gramercy Park apartment with a bottle of Turley Cellars Hayne Vineyard Zinfandel, a big purple Hummer of a wine that’s always a hard act to follow. Meyer, whose restaurants, such as Gramercy Tavern and Union Square Cafe, are known for having some of the best wine lists in the country, finally decided on a 1990 Quintarelli Recioto della Valpolicella. Gibson must have been pleased. I know I was ecstatic when Meyer brought the second of his three cherished bottles to my apartment recently for dinner; it was probably the best wine I’ve had this year.
Okay, I can hear some of you snickering out there. It’s true that Valpolicella has pretty much the same image problem in this country as Soave, which is no coincidence, since the two regions adjoin each other and the same giant corporation has been shipping vast quantities of bland Valpolicella and Soave to this country since the 1970s. For some of us, the wine is a part of our history that we’d rather forget, a name associated with dim memories of embarrassing dates—like certain hair-styles from the era of Foreigner and Leo Sayer. But anybody who has recently tasted a Valpolicella from Quintarelli or dal Forno has a different impression.
Quintarelli and dal Forno are the Plato and Aristotle of Valpolicella, and the legitimate question is whether they are superfreaks who happen to make great wine here or whether they are pioneers in a region that is catching up to them. Romano dal Forno’s father and grandfather made Valpolicella on their small family estate, but dal Forno says that he knew virtually nothing about wine until he met Giuseppe Quintarelli, the genial genius who lived a couple of valleys away near the town of Negrar, back in 1981. “He basically adopted me,” the stocky and intense dal Forno told me when I visited him last year. Dal Forno speaks about wine as if it were a matter of life and death: “I tried to absorb everything.” He seems to have succeeded. His Valpolicellas are more intense than most Amarones, and his Amarones should be opened only in the presence of gods and stinky cheeses.
The Valpolicella region encompasses a series of picturesque north-south ridges that are often described as resembling the fingers of an open hand. The dominant red grape here is Corvina, which shares the hillsides with cherry trees. Valpolicella is the hometown red in Verona, the ancient city that Romeo and Juliet made famous, which has lately become the setting for Vinitaly, a gigantic trade fair that fills the hotels and ties up the streets every March. The two-story “booth” of the Valpolicella-based Allegrini winery is literally and figuratively the biggest thing at the fair. But just as Valpolicella is starting to get sexy, it’s also getting a little complicated. We’re starting to hear the phrase “super-Valpolicellas,” and some of the most interesting wines from the region don’t even carry the V-word on their label. The Recioto della Valpolicella mentioned above is a sweet version, made from dried grapes. And some dry Valpolicellas are turbocharged with dried grape skins left over