Leap into Luxury: Super-Tuscan 2007 Messorio from Le Macchiole

Some Super-Tuscans scream luxury but the 2007 Messorio from Le Macchiole is a quiet wine that opens before you as you taste it, to give the feeling of falling forward into space: like a confident step from a plane into silent velvety dark below, the fruit billows outwards on the palate like a slow-glide on a silk parachute. Afterwards the tongue is literally left frozen in shock from hundreds of tiny pin-pricks of acidity, which may sound bad, but tasting at this very young stage (en primeur/anteprima), it is only the tingle of expectation for a profound experience in the long-term.

The 2007 is considered a "tropical vintage" in Tuscany, which may explain the richness in the fruit, but this Merlot from Bolgheri has all the hallmarks of developing well and is completely and smoothly in balance. I long to see this wine, or any Messorio for that matter, with 10-15 years of bottle age. Even at Anteprima stage, I have no hesitation in recommending taking a self-assured leap.

Tasted at Lea & Sandeman Italian En Primeur tasting 30 March, 2011.

More: Antonio Galloni review of 1994-2006 (not 2007 vintage) "A Study in Greatness" (Robert Parker subscribers)

Image: Yves Klein, "Obsession de la levitation (Le Saut dans le vide)" Obsession with Levitation (Leap into the Void), 1960

Also posted on www.vinissima.net

2006 Brunello di Montalcino Report from Benvenuto Brunello on TimAtkin.com

My report from Tuscany on the beautiful, but dramatic, 2006 Brunello di Montalcino vintage can be found on Tim Atkin's website: here.

image @winewomansong

Go a little crazy Arneis

First published on VINISSIMA.NET

In local Langhe-Piedmont dialect, the name of the white grape Arneis means “crazy, weird, introverted, whimsical, bizarre”. But what’s really crazy here is that Arneis is not more well-known as a white wine. In a similar way to Viognier, its individuality was once blended away into red wines and production was limited to a small parcel of land. Reminiscent of Viognier with its hint of apricot, good Arneis has an unmistakeable note of delicate white flowers and great Italian texture on the palate. Good humoured, light and original, I won’t say I have never seen crazy-as-in-psychotic examples of Arneis before – I have; that is, when they taste like a simple watery lemon and almond – but, when Arneis is on form, the white flowers, minerality and sapidity are a stroke of crazy-as-in-genius.

Take a bite: Aglianico del Vulture DOC

First published on VINISSIMA.NET

Aglianico del Vulture dei Feudi di San Gregorio 2007

The first taste of Aglianico is like a volcanic eruption in rewind: a hundred blasts, shreds of mineral rock followed by a fierce lava cooling down into black smoke puffing backwards into the top of the mountain, overgrown with herbs, cool as graphite and purring, velvet and deep, as if nothing had happened.

How to do the new austere: a baby Barbaresco

This is how to do the new austere well: with a light, baby Barbaresco style wine from a near-abandoned region in Piedmont. Beautiful perfumes and tight tannins somehow make austere seem rich.

A fabulous wine yet with an honest country heart: violet, roses after rain, stewed cherry, and fresh-smelling wet forest twigs and gun shop, the expansive feeling of the perfume slowed down by refined tannins, like stopping on a mountain path to take photos of a richly-coloured sunset with a super-sharp lens.

From a once thriving wine-region 1-hour drive North-West of Milan, vineyards deserted in the 1950s for the textile industry, the Colline Novaresi DOC is in the highest and most eastern part of Piedmont. This is made near the town of Boca from the Nebbiolo grape which gives the wine a beautiful pale colour and perfume, also seen in expensive Barolo and Barbaresco, but contains up to 30% Croatina grape, a local variety which gives a violet colour and tannic quality slightly deeper than Dolcetto.

Three word review: Dramatic Luxury Lite

La Maggiorina Le Piane 2009 (Colline Novaresi DOC, Piedmont) from Lea & Sandeman, £12.95 per bottle

Changes in Rosso di Montalcino DOC race ahead

The red colour of Italian cars is not just any red. It comes from a long history of rules, mostly developed between the World Wars, from when car racing began. Different countries were assigned different colours: blue for French cars, white for German cars and, of course, British cars were racing green. Red was assigned for Italian race cars and now, the red colour of Alfa Romeo, Maserati and Ferrari is instantly recognisable as a "race red" (or Rosso Corsa).

All these rules have a history, which gain sense from the time, but most people today know what is meant by Ferrari Red. Just as with Italian car colours, and a lot of things in Italy, Italian wines have many rules. So it is worth considering what the proposed changes in the rules mean, especially when on the 15^th December, the 15 board members proposed to change Rosso di Montalcino from 100% to 85% guaranteed Sangiovese.

The One that Got Away

This wine had the place smelling like Christmas for a week.

Can I give you a tasting note from broken bottle? At around £120 - £140 per bottle, I have to at least try... I was down on my hands and knees licking the floor. Risking shards of glass in my tongue just to have a taste.

Vino Nobile di Montepulciano DOCG vs European Union

Some headache! The morning after the party to celebrate 30 years of DOCG status in the ancient Tuscan town of Montepulciano, winemakers were making their way to Brussels to confront the European Union’s decision to change Vino Nobile di Montepulciano DOCG to simple “Montepulciano”.

Lunch with the Marchesi de Frescobaldi at new Harrods Wine Department

Being a family with a well-recorded ancient past must not always be pleasant, but at least, like old photos or tear-stained letters, the evidence does not require many words. True, such things as archives, documentaries, and fashion can cause trouble over the years. And it definitely has for the Frescobaldi family at one time or another in its 700 year history.

Three Wines for Xmas Freeze Relief

I always know it is coming but I never really believe it when does. Winter. Each day seems to deepen my shock. I thought I'd share with you these three wines I easily found, EXCELLENT for freeze relief.

Last of the True Romantics: Lacryma Christi del Vesuvio DOC

Often my friend from Rome, perhaps while we are walking down the street to the supermarket on a grey Saturday morning, will abruptly stop, hold his hand over his heart, grab my elbow to jolt me back and say with eyes wide open in shock, "Did you see THAT? That's IT! I AM IN LOVE!"

Laughter in the Dark: Salice Salentino Riserva 2005 (and some tips on enjoying Italian wine)

Last night I tasted the Salice Salentino 2005 Riserva by the Candido family in Puglia. Salice Salentino is the name of a style of wine made from the Italian grape, Negroamaro, found on the Salentino plain located in Puglia, the heel of the "boot" of Italy.

As Nabokov puts it, "This is the whole of the story and we might have left it at that had there not been profit and pleasure in the telling..."

Sicilian, Sartorial, Sensual: Planeta Dinner, W1

Sitting at dinner with Francesca Planeta, it did not surprise me when she told me her wine had run out at Milan Fashion Week.

The Self-Assembler: Hofstätter Pinot Bianco, Alto Adige

Alongside a glass of champagne or a cab ride in the rain, a good bottle of wine is one of life's affordable luxuries. Yet low-key, easy luxury is the most difficult thing to achieve; partly because it involves an element of effortlessness.

Fifth Dimension: Movement in Taste

It's a fact that when you are truly dehydrated, the impulse for thirst in the body shuts down. So you never really know if you are dehydrated even though you desperately need water. In a similar way, sometimes with wine, you don't know a good one, or the idea of what that may entail, until you have one.

dark sunglasses required: sexy Sicilian wine

There’s a stuffy image to the wine industry. It’s where middle-aged men with cigars who imagine themselves out every night patting strippers on the bum between glugs of Bordeaux as they discuss wine like stock prices.

Sicilian wines are not for them.

There’s also the people who go to the supermarket on the way home from work, get home and perfunctorily open a bottle to watch television for a few hours before going to sleep to do it all again the next day.

Sicilian wines are not for them, either.

Sicilian wines are

TROPPOOOO BUONNNOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Amarone: This is not a love song

If logic applied, I would not love Amarone della Valpolicella. To say it’s a big style of red is an understatement; it’s dramatic, high in alcohol and generally quite expensive. It has been said, Amarone “is seductive, sexy, confounding… an aphrodisiac”. Naturally, in the face of slavish devotion, I tasted it many times with regulation thin lips and furrowed brow. However, despite my best attempts to be cynical, I could not help but love the slightly debauched characters of licorice, smoke and dark fruits. Before long, I was singing the same love song, too.

Controversial Freisa: why this is an important wine varietal

“They can be fussy, unreconstructed; most of them don’t want to go along to get along. They have an attitude, an edge.” – Randall Grahm, Preface to Wines of Italy, Been Doon So Long: A Randall Grahm Vinthology

There comes an evolution in the taste buds when tasting wine and that can be summed up in one word: bitterness. Bitterness is an acquired taste. A five year old does not like bitterness. Did you ever mistake a cold bottle of Indian Tonic Water with Schweppes Lemonade on a hot summers day as a child?

What is a 'vino da meditazione'?

I love reading wine tasting notes in Italian. I always want to sing it back. For example, What is a vino da meditazione? It's an intriguing term often seen in Italian wine notes.

It looks like the word "meditation", but it's not quite.

From wine to widget (or, my Bordeaux sulk in Rome)

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. – Marcel Proust

"What I don't understand," said my Roman friend as we walked through the ruins of the ancient city of Rome, "is how these high prices of Bordeaux wine (En Primeur) can be in the public good?"

Yesterday I was on holiday in Italy. Frankly, I needed a holiday. After waiting weeks for the big names of Bordeaux to release their wines, and just a torturous drip drip drip, I was officially in a Bordeaux sulk.