[wine] Varietally correct at Town Talk

MOstly an update: We are in at Town Talk Diner for Thurs. May 15th. The res is for 10 people and no corkage. The wine is +Identifiable Varietals. One big guessing game! Warren was kind enough to set this up for us-and Bill picked the wine! Thanks guys! Contact Jim for who's going to be there. Bill's wine wym is this: Bring things you feel are good arch types of style and source. Sounds like fun! Posting from todays NYTimes on Soave. Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 12:05:52 -0500 From: "Jim L. Ellingson" <jellings(a)me.umn.edu> To: wine(a)thebarn.com Subject: [wine] Got Wood, Town Talk Looking to be at Town Talk this week. Back up is Arezzo. Vin du jour is in Bill's able hands. Bill Dave Lori Russ/Sue Jim/Louise Warren/Ruth Betsy Bob I'll be off line until wedesday. C, J May 14, 2008 Wines of The Times Soave Challenges Its Easy Image By ERIC ASIMOV ON the face of it Soave would seem to be about as controversial as a carrot. It.s a white wine, right? An Italian white, which to many people means a crisp, cold, characterless quaffing wine for knocking back, not for savoring. Yet there we were, the wine panel, completely divided over the merits of the 25 Soaves we had just tasted. I had been looking forward to this tasting for a while. The conventional attitude, that Soave was a synonym for insipid, was out of date, I felt, and needed to be re-evaluated. In recent years a small cadre of producers in Soave territory, in the northeastern Italian region of Veneto, had started to take the wine much more seriously. Instead of the bland mass-produced white of the 1960s and .70s that Americans had become familiar with, these producers were making delicious wines with a pronounced minerality that I had enjoyed tremendously. What was different? Instead of the large-scale farming techniques that had emphasized quantity over quality, they had drastically reduced yields in the vineyards, resulting in grapes with more character and intensity. They focused their efforts on the garganega grape, the most interesting of the Soave blend, rather than on the dull trebbiano Toscano. In fact, new rules for the Soave Classico appellation, which covers the best hillside vineyards, prohibited the trebbiano Toscano and required that Soave Classico be at least 70 percent garganega, with the remaining 30 percent made up of pinot bianco, chardonnay or trebbiano di Soave, the local name for verdicchio. I.ve had some good Soaves in recent years, and I thought the tasting bore out my feeling that Soave was a wine on the upswing. I found many well-made wines of strikingly different styles. Some were steely and dry, not conceptually distant from the Soaves of memory yet startlingly improved in quality. Our No. 1 wine, the 2006 Soave Classico from Monte Tondo, is a good example of this type of wine. It.s 100 percent garganega, though, picked by hand instead of by machine, and fermented in steel tanks. It.s a lovely wine, and a steal for $12. Other Soaves, like our No. 4 wine, the 2005 Soave Classico La Rocca from Pieropan, a rich, golden wine with a fleshy texture, clearly show the effects of aging in oak barrels, a technique not usually associated with Soave. By effect, I don.t mean the overbearing aromas or flavors of vanilla and chocolate that typically come from new oak. I mean the gentle effect of the microscopic amounts of air that penetrate the wood, which adds complexity and richness to the texture of the wine. To me, this was all to the good. Stylistic divisions in wine are often presented as traditionalism versus modernism, and I regularly find myself on the traditionalist side because modernism is often code for diminishing what makes a wine distinctive. But in the case of Soave, I sensed no such division. Both the Monte Tondo and the Pieropan seemed to me examples of enhanced Soaves, wines that were improved over what they might have been, say, 25 years ago but that still retained their fundamental Soave character. To my surprise, not everybody on the panel felt this way. .I was really saddened by what we tasted,. said Fred Plotkin, who has written numerous books on Italian culture as exemplified by its food, wine and music. Fred, who joined Florence Fabricant and me for the tasting, termed the changes in Soave .the alleged revival.. .The new point of view seems to be to mask the wine with weighty, heavy elements that are not friendly with any of the food of the area,. he said. .I was shocked at how many of the wines I didn.t like.. Needless to say, I disagreed with Fred. We did find some overbearing examples of Soave, redolent of butter and caramel like bad New World chardonnays, and we rejected them. But the wines I liked, whether of the leaner or richer variety, go wonderfully with food, at least in my experience. One wine on which we disagreed was our No. 10, the 2005 Strele Soave. Admittedly, this was an extreme wine in this tasting. It was oaky, which I would generally not like in these wines, and oily in texture, yet it had a pronounced minerality, with flavors of lemon and almonds that I felt made it focused and satisfying. But Fred felt it tasted of sour cheese. I had no answer for that. Florence and our second guest, David Lynch, the author with Joseph Bastianich of .Vino Italiano: The Regional Wines of Italy. (Clarkson Potter, 2005), took something of a middle ground in the debate. David said that while Soave should not be held to a sort of classic ideal, the region was in a profound identity crisis. .What Soave should be, nobody knows,. he said. And while Florence was not as disapproving as Fred she said too many of the wines were burdened by heaviness. These sorts of disagreements are an important reminder of how subjective the perception of wine can be. Clearly, we were all expecting something different from these wines. Yet even Fred and I found common ground on some favorites. Our No. 2, the 2005 Soave Classico Monte Carbonare from Suavia, was intense, juicy and well balanced, while our No. 3, the 2004 Soave Classico from Pieropan, was rich, complex and delicious, and was Fred.s favorite, by the way. And while we all felt that our No. 8 wine, the 2006 Classico from Inama, was pleasing, we also agreed that two more expensive bottlings from Inama, one of the top Soave names, were too hot and heavy. One well-known name, Anselmi, was not in our tasting but is worth seeking out. Quite simply, Roberto Anselmi, the proprietor, no longer uses the Soave designation because he disagrees with the appellation rules. Of our 10 favorites, seven cost $12 to $18, including our No. 1 wine, the Monte Tondo, at $12. Most are inexpensive enough to warrant taking a chance to find out how you feel about them. Tasting Report: An Old Acquaintance That.s Grown Nuanced With Age BEST VALUE Monte Tondo Soave Classico 2006 $12 *** Light, lovely and threaded through with flavors of minerals, nuts, lemon and flowers. (Importer: Clyde Thomas, New York) Suavia Soave Classico Monte Carbonare 2005 $24 *** Deep, intense and juicy with an enticingly rich texture. (Vias Imports, New York) Pieropan Soave Classico 2004 $26 *** Rich, honeyed and complex with aromas of flowers, anise, almonds and minerals. (Empson & Company, Alexandria, Va.) Pieropan Soave Classico La Rocca 2005 $36 ** 1/2 Deep, intense and even richer than the .04 Pieropan; aromas of honeydew, flowers and minerals. (Empson & Company) Coffele Soave Classico Ca.Visco 2006 $18 ** Fresh, tangy and refreshing; cries out for seafood. (Bacchanal Wine Imports, New York) Pràoave Classico 2006 $16 ** Rich and honeyed, with lemon, floral and mineral aromas. (Vinifera Imports, Ronkonkoma, N.Y.) Tedeschi Soave Classico Monte Tende 2005 $13 ** Steely and tart, with lingering flavors of lemon, flowers and nuts. (Dreyfus, Ashby & Company, New York) Inama Soave Classico 2006 $12 ** Creamy texture with fresh fruit and mineral flavors. (Inama U.S.A., Napa, Calif.) Santi Soave Classico Monteforte 2006 $13 ** Creamy, floral and focused. (Frederick Wildman & Sons, New York) Strele Soave 2005 $18 ** Rich, deep and controversial, with oily texture and flavors of minerals and lemon confit. (Weygandt-Metzler, Unionville, Pa.) WHAT THE STARS MEAN: Ratings, from zero to four stars, reflect the panel.s reaction to the wines, which were tasted with names and vintages concealed. The wines represent a selection generally available in good retail shops and restaurants and on the Internet. Prices are those paid in shops in the New York region. Tasting Coordinator: Bernard Kirsch