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By Root 629 0

stone towers, is beautiful). The wine is, like other Italian whites, crisp and refreshing—look for Falchini (Fall-KEE-nee) and Teruzzi e Puthod (Tear-OOT-see eh POO-thoad). Galestro is a brand name of an inexpensive but pleasant white named for a distinctive soil type in the Chianti Classico district. The famous Antinori family, who have been making wine in Tuscany for more than five hundred years, invented this wine when the blending of white grapes into (red) Chianti was phased out, leaving them with white grapes on their hands. Galestro has been commercially successful. Most of the other well-known Tuscan whites are brand names rather than DOCs, but Italian wine experts are paying close attention to the rise of Vermentino, the white grape from Bolgheri mentioned above.

One of a Kind—Tuscan Vin Santo

Vin Santo (Veen SAHN-toe, “wine of the saints”) is in a category we have mentioned before called dried-grape wines, known as passito (Pah-SEE-toe) wines in Italian. This refers to the practice of drying the grapes into raisins before pressing and fermentation so as to concentrate their sugar. In Tuscany, they hang them or spread them out on tiered mats, in a place with good ventilation to speed the drying. After pressing, the juice goes into very small oak barrels with a “mother” yeast that is continually nursed and fed like a good sourdough bread starter. In the barrels, the wine ferments and oxidizes (to encourage this, the barrel isn’t filled to the top). The resulting wine is rich and slightly sweet, with a tawny-gold color and nutty character from the oxidation. The Italians serve it with crisp biscotti cookies to dunk in the wine. It’s a terrific wine and I urge you to try it. Good producers include Antinori, Avignonesi, Volpaia, and Villa la Selva.

Piedmont

Tuscany, with its burnt siena–colored, vine- and olive-cloaked landscape, walled hilltop towns, and extraordinary Florentine architecture takes the trophy for visual delights. But for tastes and smells there is no contest—for me, it is Piedmont. In fact, to this day I feel practically naughty when I recall the decadence of my days there during the summer of 1990. I still remember the taste of the raza nobile (“noble race”)—a Piedmontese veal that was as sweet as dessert, figs fresh off the tree, fresh hand-cut tagliatelle with butter and sage, and truffles—on veal carpaccio, with pasta and butter, with eggs and butter, with polenta and butter. The dazzling richness of the food makes the word obscene come to mind. And then you throw the wonderful wines into the mix and, well … let’s get right into it.

The Grapes of Piedmont

We are still in Italy, so of course the important wines are red. Piedmont grows chiefly three red grapes:

Dolcetto (Dohl-CHETT-oh, “little sweet one”) A grape that makes light-bodied, uncomplicated reds for everyday drinking.

Barbera The region’s most widely planted red grape. Barbera was the wine we were drinking on Alfredo Currado’s terrace when he reminded me to “chill out, it’s just wine.” And indeed it used to be an everyday quaff, the workhorse of the Piedmontese table. Nowadays, though, many winemakers are giving the grape more serious winemaking attention, and using expensive techniques like French oak-barrel aging to make more ambitious, and expensive, styles.

Nebbiolo The prized vine behind the region’s most famous wines, the DOCGs Barbaresco, which reigns as queen to the king, Barolo, historically called “wine of kings, and king of wines.” Barolo and Barbaresco are truly majestic, powerful wines capable of long aging and amazing complexity.

This often prompts my wine students to ask, “If Nebbiolo is so great, why do they bother with the other two?” Certainly a fair question, and the answer is “survival.” Piedmont, which translates as “foot of the mountain,” is a cluster of Alpine foothills. It’s a marginal climate for the Nebbiolo grape, which struggles to ripen there. Dolcetto and Barbera both ripen earlier, ensuring there will be at least some wine crop even in years of bad growing weather. The terrain itself also plays