Undressing the Grape

Super Tuscany

The September/October 2007 issue of The American ran an interesting article on Italian wines entitled "Super Tuscany: On the trail of Super Tuscans, the wines that broke Italy's bureaucratic rules," by Amy Cortese and Robert McCanless.

The article is now online, and if you're interested in Italian wines generally, or the development of the Maremma region of Tuscany specifically, the article is worth reading.

Here's the opening paragraph:

Driving along country roads lined with Mediterranean pines, we at last reach the gates of Guado al Tasso. We ring the buzzer, but there is no answer. We are a little early, and this, after all, is Italy. We are in Bolgheri, a tiny town in the western region of Tuscany known as Maremma, to seek out the wines known as Super Tuscans.

Read the rest of the article here.

Clos del Pinell, 2001

A couple weeks ago, we joined some friends at the Spanish tapas restaurant La Tasca in DC's Chinatown district.  One thing we love about La Tasca is that they have a special every night of the week.  On Sundays, their special is half-price bottles of wine.

Last Sunday, to complement our chicken and seafood paella, we ordered a bottle of Clos del Pinell.  This wine, from the Terra Alta region of Catalonia, Spain, was a blend of 60% Garnatxa (Grenache), 30% Carinyena (Carignan), and 10% Syrah.  Intriguingly, the wine was aged in American oak for 8 months and French oak for 4 months.

The aroma of the wine contained a pleasant blend of spices and herbs: vanilla and nutmeg, and perhaps a touch of cinnamon, along with elements of rosemary and fig. We rated the aroma a solid A-.

The taste, likewise, did not fail to impress: spices of vanilla and cinnamon, herbal tones of rosemary and bay leaf, and the perfect degree of oakiness.  Most enjoyable was the cool, rainy sensation left on the palate, like a late Summer or early Fall rain in a meadow.  Overall, we considered this wine, with the perfect blend of cool, oak, and spice, to be a great wine for sitting out on the porch on an Autumn evening, and enjoying good company, the crisp air, and the changing colors of the trees.

Stephy rated the taste of the wine a B+.  Perhaps it was my mood that night, or my pining for Fall and cooler, less humid, weather, but I rated the taste an A.  So overall, the 2001 Clos del Pinell rates a solid A to A-.  I would definitely consider it a worthwhile purchase at it's normal price of $31, but at half-price this wine was a steal.

Happy October everyone!