The Prosecco Project: an Italian sparkling wine odyssey
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Le Marche:  Non Solo Verdicchio (Not only Verdicchio)

3/17/2015

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Too much of anything is bad, but too much champagne is just right.  Mark Twain

Le Marche, Italy's best kept secret, lies east of Tuscany and Umbria along the Adriatic coast.  Sometimes referred to as Italy in one region or the new Tuscany, Le Marche is replete with hill towns, olive groves, beautiful beaches, and of course, many vineyards.  The region produces a variety of fine wines from a number of lesser known grape varieties.  We have lived in Le Marche for nearly 5 years now in the heart of the Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi DOC appellation.  Verdicchio, as I have discussed in earlier blogs, is one of the best known wines of Le Marche and makes an exceptional sparkling wine.  As Verdicchio is so prominent in my area, and so relatively inexpensive, it is sometimes hard to remember that there are a number of other locally grown grapes varieties that make very distinctive wines and sparkling wines.  A recent visit to Moncaro, a  winery whose still wine, Verde Ca' Ruptae, was served at our son's wedding in California a few years ago, reminded me that not all local sparkling wines are made from the Verdicchio grape.  

The Moncaro winery is located in the neighboring town of Montecarrotto, a town that my husband drives through with continuing trepidation because this is where a few years ago he spent several hours in the police station as they cited him for driving without a license.  (Well, who knew that our American drivers licenses were no longer valid in Italy, leaving us in the unenviable position of not being able to drive our car until we secured Italian drivers licenses - a monumental,  multi-month task if you are an American especially if you do not speak the language fluently. But, that is another very long story.)

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The Moncaro winery, Montecarrotto, Le Marche, Italy
Moncaro, is one of the area's larger wineries having been established 50 years ago by a cooperative of grape growers.  Today, Moncaro produces a wide selection of quality still wines from various grape varieties grown throughout the Marche region, and several unique sparkling wines.  If you ever visit Le Marche, I would definitely recommend a stop at Moncaro to taste their wines.  Here you can get a good introduction to the numerous grape varieties grown throughout the region. 

We stopped by the Moncaro cantina earlier in the week to buy some of their sfuso.  The term sfuso is generally translated as "loose" which in the case of wine means it is pumped directly from the tanks into your 5 liter bottle.  In Italy, this is the very affordable wine the locals drink daily.  While Jim and I were waiting in the cellar, the sound of merry voices floated down from the tasting room above, and that was enough to convince me that we should head upstairs and join the party.  There were several Moncaro sparkling wines I wanted to taste, so I was on a mission - taste them all. 

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The tasting room at the Moncaro winery, Montecarrotto
Our tasting line up for the day was as follows:

1.  Fiori di Seta, a frizzante (Frizzante is not a term generally used for sparkling wines in the U.S, but it is one of two classifications of Italian sparkling wine the other being spumante.  The difference is in the level of pressure in the fermentation process.  The frizzante, made under less pressure, produces fewer bubbles.  In general, frizzante is of lesser quality and costs less than a spumante which can be made in either the charmat method or the classic champagne method. )

2.  Opale, a methodo martinotti (charmat)

3.  Madreperla, a methodo classico (the classic champagne method)

4.  Ametista, a sparkling dessert wine


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I was anxious to try the Fiori di Seta which is made from 100% Passerina grapes.  I seem to have a love/hate relationship with the Passerina grape.  Sometimes I try a wine made from Passerina and it is exceptional, but on other occasions, I pour the wine out.  Passerina is an ancient grape variety generally grown in the southern Marche in the province of Ascoli Piceno.  If you have not heard of this grape, you are definitely in the majority.  The name Passerina means little sparrow, apparently because sparrows like to devour these grapes. 

As the Fiori di Seta was poured into the glass,  I was expectant.  I watched the very pale yellow liquid filling the glass and the sparse bubbles rising with a yawn like a sleepy child.  As is typical of the Passerina grape, the bouquet was aromatic with subtle notes of flowers and herbs and a balance of sweetness and acidity.  On the palate, the wine was very approachable, crisp and clean with a hint of citrus and herbs.   I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by the Moncaro Passerina frizzante.  We brought a few bottles home and drank them with everything from antipasti to chicken and pasta, and now it is time to return for more.


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The second sparkling wine in our tasting line up, the Opale, is probably Moncaro's most popular sparkling wine.  Opale is made from 100% verdicchio grapes by the charmat method with both the first and second aging in stainless steel tanks.  Opale is a pale yellow, and in the glass  the perlage danced the tarantella.  The nose emits citrus, flowers, and a hint of honey.  On the palate it maintains some of the mineralness of the Verdicchio with hints of fruit.  It is fresh and easy to drink.  I will serve this as an apertif or with fish.



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Next we moved up to the Moncaro methodo classico, Madreperla, aged 36 months in the bottle.  This is a unique sparkling wine as it is a combination of Verdicchio and Montepulciano, the most popular of the Marche red wine grapes.  Montepulciano is the second most prolific indigenous red wine grape variety in Italy after Sangiovese.  In Le Marche it is used in the DOC wines of Rosso Conero and Rosso Piceno, but it is also an ingredient in approximately 50 other DOC wines.  In general, Montepulciano (not to be confused with the wines from the Tuscan town of Montepulciano, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, which are made from a different grape variety) is used in still red wines, and I was surprised to see it blended with a white wine to create a sparkling.  In the glass, the perlage was refined like a Viennese waltz.  The color was straw yellow with only a faint hint of copper which surprised me considering 20% of the mix was a red wine grape.  The Montepulciano gives the Madreperla a distinctive bouquet mixing wild berries with almonds and bread crusts.  And the taste is very much of almond.  The secret to this wine is in the liqueur d'expedition which is added to the bottle after the disgorgement.  While the recipe for the dosage is proprietary, it includes Verdicchio spirits aged in old barriques for a minimum of three years.  This is definitely a fish wine, but I can also see it paired with other white meats, fettuccini alfredo, or a risotto.


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Finally, it was time to try the dessert wine, Ametista.  Ametista is a very particular wine, made from 100% Lacrima di Morro d'Alba grapes.  Lacrima is a grape that is only grown in this small hill top town in the province of Ancona in Le Marche.  It's name means tears, and it is said that when ripe the grapes weep.  The wine from Lacrima is distinctive with a deep purple color and an intense bouquet of roses and violets.  In this sparkling version of the wine, these features are dominant, however, the pallet is sweet with the taste of fresh berries.  This was an interesting surprise.  I am sure it will be wonderful paired with chocolate.  I am already planning to serve it with a torta caprese.  But it would also pair well with other desserts such as fruit tarts.  (You can find a recipe for torta caprese here www.channelingnonna.com.)


After the tasting, the Ametista stayed with me.  As we drove the 20 minutes back to our home, I was feeling a great contentment.  Watching the vineyard covered hills of the Le Marche pass by, a sense of satisfaction overwhelmed me.  And I knew I would return often to Moncaro for various of their sparkling wines.
For more information about the Moncaro winery, visit their website at www.moncaro.com.

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Return to Colognola

3/1/2015

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"Wine is one of the agreeable and essential ingredients of life." Julia Child

It was more than a decade ago now that my  husband Jim and I had our first introduction to the Colognola winery at a Fancy Food Show in San Francisco.  At this particular show, the Le Marche region hosted several food and wine producers.  It happened this was the first year of production for the Colognola wines, and we were impressed with the quality and potential.  So, we took down contact information, and several months later we found ourselves in Le Marche at Hotel Fortino Napoleonico on the Conero coast meeting with the owner and staff of the Colognola winery over an amazing seven course fish dinner.     This is the night we first met our friend, Gabriele Villani, the current director and winemaker at Colognola and his lovely wife Olimpia.  As the famous line from Casablanca so eloquently captures,  "this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship."  It was also the beginning of our love affair with Le Marche.
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Before leaving the cantina, we interrupted Gabri's lunch to say goodbye and pose for a photo.
Today we live about 45 minutes from the winery, but as so often happens life and the winter weather got in the way of things; and thus, it had been many months since our last visit.  I was becoming very anxious to go and taste the new 2014 releases.  So when the fog had finally lifted, the rain had stopped for a while, and the sun made its first appearance in weeks, Jim and I took the leisurely drive through the winding hills of Le Marche toward the hill town of Cingoli to visit Gabriele and the Colognola winery.  From its position on a hill in the little hamlet of Colognola, the winery offers a beautiful vista of vineyards and  hill towns. 

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The view from the Colognola winery
Ten years ago the cantina was a small, nondescript  facility, but today, under the aegis of a new owner, the Cantina Colognola occupies a beautiful new building distinguished by the massive bronze horse that greets you before you enter the tasting room.   As luck would have it, on the day of our recent visit, the new sparkling wine was being put in bottles to undergo the second fermentation.
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Cantina Colognola, Tenuta Musone, Colognola, Italy
We arrived at the winery and headed down to the cellar where Gabriele was supervising the bottling.  We watched as the machines put the still wine (which had undergone a first fermentation in stainless steel tanks) into the bottles and then capped them with the same type of metal cap used on beer bottles.  As we watched the bottles move along the conveyer belt, we were advised that part of the bottling process is unique to Colognola and proprietary, and Gabriele requested that no photos of this portion of the process be used in this blog.  Sorry!
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Bottling the wine for the second fermentation, February, 2014
The filled and capped bottles were then meticulously piled row upon row into large containers to be transported to the special room designated for resting the sparkling wines.  As I watched the assembled crew carefully handle each bottle and place it into the container, transport the container to the room used for aging the sparkling wines, and then reverse engineer the process to lay the bottles to rest, I recalled the first time I had watched this process at Colognola many years before, and I experienced the same awe as that first time.  If you are like me, when you pop the cork on a bottle of sparkling wine made in the classic champagne method, you do not think of the very labor intensive process it undergoes before it is ready to drink.  All you think about is enjoying the wine with friends.   While machines now facilitate the bottling, the making of champagne remains a very time and labor intensive process, and I can now, more than ever, appreciate the fact that the costs reflect this.
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Stacked along the wall, the wine will rest here for months, perhaps years before being ready for drinking
Standing around and watching all of that wine being bottled suddenly induced an overwhelming thirst, and I knew it was time to go and taste some wines.  After all, it was after 11:00 am, not too early for an aperitivo in Italy. We headed up the winding staircase from the cellar to the tasting room. 

Over the past several years, Colognola had experimented with both the charmat and the classic champagne method to produce sparkling wines.  This year, however, Colognola was not offering a wine aged solely in stainless steel tanks.  I was somewhat disappointed as their prior year's charmat offering was remarkably good in a light and highly drinkable sort of way.  But, now the winery was focusing on in bottle fermentation, and I was anxious to try the results.  This year there are two sparkling wines available.  First, Musa, or the Muse in English, a wine aged in the bottle for 9 months.  By definition, this wine is not truly a "methodo classico" as it has been aged in the bottle for fewer than 12 months.  Only 2500 bottles of Musa were produced. 

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Musa, fermented in the bottle for 9 months
The second wine, Darini, named for the owner, is another new addition to the Colognola wines.  It is a classic champagne method wine aged in the bottle for 24 months.  Only 1000 bottles of Darini have been produced.  Both the Musa and Darini are made from 100% verdicchio grapes grown in the Castelli dei Jesi DOC area located in the Le Marche province of Ancona. 

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Darini, a methodo classico fermented in the bottle for 24 months
Matteo, whom we had met on a previous visit, met us in the tasting room where we told him that today we wanted to taste the sparkling wines.  He went off and returned with a bottle of Musa.  First, I have to comment on the label for this wine.  They say you can't judge a book by it's cover; however, I know that I often pick my books by the cover.  Sometimes it works out, and sometimes it does not.  The Musa label is a stand out among wine labels with beautiful art work depicting the muse and her lyre.  I know that if I saw this bottle on a shelf I would be very tempted to try it just based on the label, but would I want to try it a second time after I tasted the wine?  After Matteo poured the wine, I breathed in the nose and was greeted by a very pleasant, somewhat light, fruity and almond scent with perhaps a hint of honey.  One taste, and I was ready for a second.  In the mouth the almond and honey is apparent but lighter than a true methodo classico.  While the taste is soft, the perlage is more robust than a longer aged sparkling  wine.  Yes, I would drink this wine again and again.  As I was looking for a sparkling wine for an upcoming wine tasting dinner, I was very happy to find Musa.  It became one of three sparkling wine offerings that evening and was paired  with chicken crepes with a gruyere cheese sauce.  

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Matteo pouring the Musa for tasting
My only disappointment during this visit was when I was told that I could not taste the Darini.  However, as soon as Matteo advised me that they only made 1000 bottles, I understood the dilemma.  So, I bought a bottle to taste at home and waited patiently (well maybe impatiently) for Sunday lunch to try it.  Sunday finally arrived, and Jim popped the cork and poured the Darini into the glasses.  The color, a very light, straw yellow.  The nose, citrus, apple very much the scent of verdicchio which is somewhat unusual for a wine aged this long.  And the taste, young, fresh characterized by the acidity of the verdicchio.   The perlage, while somewhat more refined than the Musa, still dances the tango.  Finally, sated with food and wine, I think it's time for the traditional siesta. 

For  more information about the Colognola winery visit
www.tenutamusone.it

Ciao, tutti and salute!  Maree

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    In Venice with my best friend, Luca

    About Me

    I am an American ex-pat who lived most of a decade in Le Marche, Italy.  A former Italian wine importer, I am an Italian wine enthusiast.  And sparkling wines are my passion.  Back in California, I continue my quest  to discover the wide variety of sparkling wines made in Italy and elsewhere.

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    Luca does Vinitaly - official canine representative, 2015
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    My book, Dog Days in Italy about my humans' 20 year love affair with Italy is available on Amazon.  www.amazon.com/Dog-Days-Italy-Became-Expat/dp/B09JYP2M27

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