WINE JOURNALING with MARIO
BY MARIO SPOSITO
DIPWSET | WINE EDUCATOR | WINE DIRECTOR BEDALESWINES & BOBS LOSBTER
We spent last Sunday at a friend’s house, celebrating her 40th birthday. By we I mean my wife, our little boy and me. Two families. To be more accurate, two Italian families. To be German Riesling precise, two southern Italian families coping with life away from warm sunshine and sunkissed fruit and veg after a recent trip to their homeland. And I admit it, we were desperate that the main course for lunch was a Sicilian pasta al forno, and the dessert, a Sicilian lemon cheesecake. And yes, of course we did it and we all had an espresso after the cake. The weather moaning was moderate (after all January has not been bad here in London) and Napoli was winning a Serie A match. A pretty solid Sunday!.
But all was going to change, It always does. The little ones took control of the room, imposing, on a 65” TV , one of the latest Disney Pixar fantasy productions, Luca: Set in a beautiful seaside town on the Italian Riviera, the original animated feature is a coming-of-age story about one young boy experiencing an unforgettable summer filled with gelato, pasta and endless scooter rides.
If there is one thing that can hit the morale of a bunch of Italians more than national politics it’s watching the Mediterranean on a screen: blue water that you can’t smell, steep alleys of staircases made of stone going up and down the hills, that you cannot run over.
After the shell shock of the opening scenes we started guessing if the setting was inspired by a specific part of the country or not. The island of Procida was the first guess, followed by the Sicilian Salina. But then we all agreed that the village was a recreation of the splendid Cinque Terre: colourful houses, vineyards, fishing boats and trattorias.
The kids didn’t know that, but they hurt us.
The next day, business as usual, train back to London Bridge and an exciting morning tasting (it’s crucial to start the week appropriately) with some of our best suppliers. The brief was simple: please bring us something inspiring, wines of terroir, possibly from the “suburbs” of the wine world.
And they did so: Listan Blanco from Tenerife, Robola from Kefalonia and Posip from Dalmatia to name a few.
Among them a Rossese di Dolceacqua, another of the beauties of Liguria, grown on the opposite side of the Cinqueterre in the so-called “Riviera di Ponente”, made by the excellent Terre Bianche, a small family estate founded in 1870 by Tommaso Rondinelli.
Their 10ha are spread over a wide variety of soils including blue marl and white and red clay. The vineyards are sheer, rocky and are grown at about 500m above sea level.
Rossese (AKA Tibouren) remains something of an obscurity, only planted in a tiny fraction of the world's vineyards, and while for our French cousins it is mainly a blending grape for the ubiquitous Provence rosé, on the other side of the Alps, on the hills surrounding the town of Dolceacqua, for the Ligurians, Rossese takes the main stage as the top red variety, producing Intensely aromatic, brightly coloured, lively, elegant and energetic reds.
The steep south facing terraced vineyards that surround the picturesque western Ligurian villages are as spectacular to watch as difficult to manage. Mechanisation is impossible and all operations, from pruning to harvesting are manual, leading to a very limited production. No wonder why viticulture in the area is referred to as heroic or extreme, requiring passion, dedication and attention to detail, qualities the Rondinelli family have in abundance.
The Terre Bianche Dolceacqua is a wine that tastes like bottled youth, light and deep at the same time. Lift for the spirit, joy for the nose and freshness for the palate. Wild red berries, cherry, rose and spices. Good for lunch, great for dinner, or in between or even at the end of a long day. A wine of great versatility, tasteful and trustful.
It was like closing the circle with Sunday, the sea breeze, those hills, the Mediterranean herbs, I was not there, but they were with me this time!
Terre Bianche, Rossese Di Dolceacqua 2020, will be poured by the glass as wine of the monthFebruary 2022 at Bedales of Borough!
