Winemeisters Weekend: Nicoletta Canella of Casa Vinicola Canella

Ever since the wonderful “Vino in Villa” Prosecco tasting I attended in San Francisco last week (see recent posts), I’ve been introducing you to this fine Italian sparkling wine and its producers. www.prosecco.it Today we’ll meet the gracious, *simpatichissima* Nicoletta Canella, whose family (like the Bortolotti/D’Anna family, whom we met last weekend) is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year as pioneers in Prosecco. www.canellaspa.it

At the Vino in Villa tasting, Nicoletta welcomed me to her table, pouring herself a taste of her lovely Prosecco, the “synonym of conviviality,” after filling my glass. (BTW, this is quite rare at “trade” tastings: winery principals hardly ever kick back and sip along with their guests. I felt tremendously flattered!)

We took in the knockout view of the Golden Gate and the splendid city below us, raised a toast to all good things and sipped the delicious Canella Prosecco together as she modestly described her family’s history and wine production.

Nicoletta’s father Luciano established the family winery in 1947, in the Conegliano hills. (Luciano had started very young: as a ten-year-old, when his father died, he helped his mother keep her restaurant in business, and in his teens, began to seek out wine to serve alongside her specialties.) Today he remains at the reins of the company, joined by Nicoletta and her three siblings.

Since the beginning, the Canella family has been instrumental in establishing and elevating the quality and reputation of Prosecco throughout the world. Luciano is renowned as an innovator in wine technology, and even the highly distinctive graphics of the Canella brand have won acclaim. The Canella Prosecco is the first sparkling wine, in fact, to win the “Gran Medaglia d’Oro” (Grand Gold Medal), in 1994, at Vinitaly’s international competition. And at the 1997 Vinitaly, it took the “Best Packaging” award.

A visit to the Canella website reveals a “who’s who” of Italian notables (including Oscar-winning composer Ennio Morricone) enjoying Canella’s Prosecco, and an array of glowing articles about the wine, in Greek, Japanese and Spanish as well as English and Italian.

Nicoletta Canella may travel the globe, but her heart remains in the Italian countryside. While we were talking about Prosecco, she kept returning to descriptions of the hills, the vineyards, and her home. She mentioned a favorite peach orchard, then asked me if I had ever tasted a Bellini. “Yes,” I answered. (I have very fond memories of enjoying a Bellini or two—it’s the quintessential local afternoon sipper—in a canalside café in Venice.)

As it turns out, the peach orchard has more than sentimental value for Nicoletta. She and her family grow a special variety of white peach to blend with their Prosecco, and they bottle it in a single-serving size. (The label reads: BELLINI—Il Cocktail di Venezia.) It’s immensely popular; Canella even hosted a “Bellini Bar” in Piazza San Marco during Carnevale this year.

Canella also produces a Bellini peach eau-de-vie, a strawberry-flavored “Rossini” sparkler (continuing the motif of Italian bel canto composers), and a rosé sparkler in addition to their top-flight Prosecco.

Mille grazie, Nicoletta Canella—I enjoyed our conversation tremendously, and I continue to enjoy your lovely wine. Splendido!

Arrivederci, e salute—
Cheers,
Rosina
gilded fork, wine, wine writing, Welcome to Wine Country, Rosina Tinari Wilson

FoodPairing Friday: Winemakers and their Pinots (Noir and otherwise…)

Yesterday we visited with several Pinot producers at Pinot Days in San Francisco, www.pinotdays.com and tasted a few of their wines. (Podcast(s) soon!) Today I’ll fill you in on their food-pairing suggestions—and we’ll also tie up a few loose ends from earlier posts.

Let’s start with the pink stuff! Quite a few of the winemakers at Pinot Days also produce a rosé of Pinot Noir, and we all agree that it’s one of the most food-friendly wines on the planet. Milla Handley (founder/proprietor of Handley Cellars in Mendocino County and a frequent guest on CPN, www.handleycellars.com) enjoys hers with everything from roast chicken to Asian food (“not too spicy!”) to pork to “just plain sipping with cheeses.” In the South of France, she noted about a recent trip, they drink their rosé with everything, including lamb. Her astute summary of Pinot rosé: “It’s the essence of Pinot without all the oak… you’re getting the fresh-fruit flavors of Pinot Noir, and it’s really versatile with a lot of things.”

Ramona Nicholson of Nicholson Ranch www.nicholsonranch.com also makes a wonderful Pinot rosé—“delicious, refreshing, and dry,” and she too finds it tremendously versatile. With her husband Deepak, Ramona recently hosted a winemaker dinner featuring Indian food, and she singled out their pairing of tandoori chicken with the Pinot rosé. Although the wine isn’t actually sweet, it’s fruity enough to balance off the spice—“almost like chutney in a glass!”

While I was in between Pinot-tasting tables, I ran into Ty Mahler, the executive chef at Roy’s in San Francisco. www.roysrestaurant.com We agreed that Pinot Noir is an excellent red-wine candidate for the Asian, East-West and “Hawaiian Fusion Cuisine” specialties that are the hallmark of the Roy’s “restaurant family.” Chef Ty made my mouth water as he described an innovative seafood entrée on his current “specials” menu, with a Bing cherry, goat cheese and Pinot sauce. Pinot is one of his favorite wines too; like me, he loves it with fish as well as meat, and we shared stories while we waited to taste at the next table.

There, Craig Haserot of Sojourn Cellars www.sojourncellars.com described an “Asian spice” component in his Sonoma Coast Pinot. (Craig, like Milla Handley, is a CPN regular: see Chef Mark’s videocasts from Pinot Days New York, as well as several of my upcoming Welcome to Wine Country podcasts.) When I mentioned that I love to pair Pinot with Chinese take-out roast duck, he grinned. “Duck, as most of my friends know, is one of my favorite foods,” he said, agreeing that the Asian spice on the Chinese-style duck and the Asian spice “that’s (also) aromatically present in the Sonoma Coast (Pinot)” make a truly great match.

Now for the “loose ends.” First, about the food-pairing ideas from the SF International Wine Competition: www.sfwinecomp.com In random conversations, several fellow judges and I kicked around some thoughts about what would taste good with the wines we were tasting. (At this point, you may recall, all we knew about any given wine was its varietal/vintage.) Rosemary lamb for the slightly herbaceous Cabernet. Meaty braised shanks in spiced tomato sauce for the brawny Petite Sirah. Duck with berry sauce for that jammy Zin. Steak with mushrooms for the black-peppery Pinot. (Guess we were hungry…)

The second loose end is Prosecco. www.prosecco.it But instead of looking at food pairings for it now, why don’t we save ‘em for next Friday, the eve of Bastille Day—an ideal time to talk about bubbles. I’ll fill you in on some great matches for Champagne and other sparklers, including the tasty Prosecco that we’ve been enjoying together this past week. Meanwhile, as always,

Cheers,
Rosina
gilded fork, wine, wine writing, Welcome to Wine Country, Rosina Tinari Wilson

Wine 101 Wednesday: Prosecco and the “Metodo Italiano”

We’ve been bouncing back and forth between Pinot and Prosecco for the last few days, thanks to a couple of quite wonderful tastings I attended in San Francisco last week. When we left off yesterday, I promised you more about the specialized methods of Prosecco production in the Veneto region of northeastern Italy.

First, I’d like to say thanks for all *your* inquiries about Prosecco, and since this is our first “First Wednesday,” when I answer *your* questions, I’ll field them here, as part of my wrapup. (Thanks, Jim in OR; Ben in SoCal; M.A. in NY! And “mille grazie” to the many members of the Consorzio Tutela Prosecco Conegliano Valdobbiadene, the Prosecco governing body, who personally provided me with detailed descriptions at the Vino in Villa tasting. Their excellent website,
www.prosecco.it filled in lots of extra details, as well as the quotes.)

Back to the Prosecco how-to. At harvest time, the members of the Consorzio carefully monitor grape maturity in the vineyards throughout the zone. When the time is right, the Consorzio holds a public meeting to give the many growers the go-ahead to start picking.

The grapes then move to the various wineries, where special crushers gently press them to extract only the “free-run juice from the heart of the berry.” (The remainder eventually gets distilled into Prosecco grappa.) Generally, a winery keeps different “lots” of grapes from different vineyards or areas separate, to preserve the unique character of each one.

This free-run juice rests for 12-14 hours in stainless-steel tanks to let the sediment settle out, and then is allowed to ferment, becoming Prosecco “base wine.” The winemaker tastes the various lots, then blends them “in precise proportions, so as to achieve a perfect balance of all the components.”

Now comes the “Metodo Italiano”: Italy’s version of the Charmat process, in which a sparkling wine’s secondary fermentation takes place in large, pressure-sealed vats. Also used in the Piemonte region to make the famed Asti Spumante, this method works better for Prosecco than the more time-consuming (and more expensive) Methode Champenoise, in which a wine ferments in individual bottles with lengthy yeast contact.

Why? Because Prosecco, and the Muscat-based Asti Spumante, are fruit-driven. Their charm is all about freshness and bright flavors, and the yeast-based characteristics of Champenoise sparklers just aren’t necessary. (Some producers, in fact, actually argue that these flavors would detract from their Prosecco.)

What’s more, since the Metodo Italiano is faster and less costly, the Prosecco can come to market sooner, with a price tag that suits it to celebrating every single day. And that’s a win-win in my book!

BTW: I also promised you more info about the term “DOC” (Denominazione di Origine Controllata). This refers to a set of quality-assurance rules for Italian wine production, in force throughout the country. Established by presidential decree in 1963, DOC is comparable to the French AOC, which was instituted in the 1950s for the same purpose.

The DOC concept is so important that I’ll bring it back soon for a Wine 101 Wednesday of its own. Meanwhile, we’ll taste some Pinots tomorrow. Until then,

Cheers,
Rosina

PS—Apologies for this late posting. As you can see, it’s now Thursday the 5th. I took a looong walk on the beach yesterday morning, and between that and the 100-degree afternoon, I was so wiped in the evening that I actually fell asleep at my laptop…
gilded fork, wine, wine writing, Welcome to Wine Country, Rosina Tinari Wilson

Tuesday Travels: Passport to Wine (PtA) #1—Veneto Region, Italy

Benvenuti in Italia! (Welcome to Italy!) And welcome to our very first “Welcome to Wine Country” Passport to Wine. As their name implies, these virtual visits whisk us across borders and oceans to wine-growing areas in other parts of the globe.

Today we’re visiting the Wine Country of the Veneto region, right outside Venice in the northeast between the Dolomites and the Adriatic Sea. Hilly and somewhat chilly, the Veneto is the home of Prosecco, www.prosecco.it Italy’s delightfully fruity-fresh sparkling wine.

The vintners who produce this bubbly treasure have very wisely banded together to form a consortium to establish quality-control guidelines for Prosecco. The wine, in fact, has earned DOC status (more tomorrow) for its terroir-focused standards of excellence.

Although I love to travel, this time I didn’t have to deal with jet lag, airport hassles or an actual passport to taste Prosecco: Italy came to San Francisco last week with a wonderful “Vino in Villa” tasting, featuring members of the consortium and their wines. (Here's a pic of Daniele D'Anna in the Crown Room of the Fairmont Hotel with his Bortolotti Prosecco. www.bortolotti.com)

As they poured me their lovely libations, the visiting vintners described the unique growing conditions of their region. Stretching across a series of hill chains in the province of Treviso, between the town of Conegliano in the east and Valdobbiadene at the western edge, the Prosecco production zone comprises about 45,000 acres in 15 separate communities. Farming the steep hills is labor-intensive and difficult to mechanize, and much of the acreage is in the hands of small growers, with several co-ops and only a few large producers.

Much of Prosecco’s character comes directly from the vineyards. The grape does best (BTW, “Prosecco” is the name of the grape varietal as well as the sparkling wine made from it) on hillsides, at altitudes of up to ~1650 feet. This makes for dramatic cooling at night, which helps preserve and build the necessary acidity in the grapes. On the other side of the coin, Prosecco vineyards are planted on south-facing slopes (often with woods on the northern side) to achieve optimal ripeness.

Several other local varietals—Bianchetta, Verdiso and the “pear-shaped” Perera—are sometimes blended with Prosecco, usually in small amounts. Distinctive and especially beautiful at harvest time, the large, yellow Prosecco grape clusters make for an eye-catching golden accent on the sunny hillsides.

Grapegrowing in this region dates back to ancient times: Prosecco may possibly trace its ancestry to the “Pucino” of the Roman era. In its modern form, Prosecco production began about 200 years ago. Nowadays, thanks to successful programs of clonal selection, vintners plant different “biotypes” of Prosecco in the various microclimates of the zone. A top-flight research facility, in fact—the Experimental Center for Viticulture, along with the excellent School of Viticulture and Enology, both in Conegliano—provide research and education within the Prosecco community.

Tomorrow, on Wine 101 Wednesday, we’ll look at the how-to of Prosecco production. Until then,

Cheers (Salute)—
Rosina
gilded fork, wine, wine writing, Welcome to Wine Country, Rosina Tinari Wilson

Monday Mix: Pinot Daze at Pinot Days San Francisco

Welcome back—hope you’re enjoying this long summer weekend! In the last few posts, we’ve been tasting and talking about Prosecco, Italy’s sparkling superstar, and we’ll come back tomorrow in Tuesday Travels for some more bubbles.

Today, I’d like to bring you to Pinot Days, www.pinotdays.com which took place yesterday at Fort Mason in San Francisco. This full-day tasting featured wines from 170 producers, representing several countries and many states beyond California. I tasted and enjoyed Pinots from New Zealand, Australia and Canada; from Oregon, Pennsylvania, New York and more. The differences among all of these highly individual growing regions added an extra layer to the already unparalleled diversity and complexity that this finicky wine varietal can express.

In simpler terms: Pinot=Yum! It's my favorite red. And after today, I love it even more.

If you’ve been following Chef Mark’s ReMARKable Palate audio and video podcasts from Pinot Days New York, you’ve already met some of the major Pinot players: notably Milla Handley of Handley Cellars www.handleycellars.com in Mendocino’s Anderson Valley, and Craig Haserot of Sojourn Cellars in Sonoma. www.sojourncellars.com (You’ll hear even more from Milla and Craig in my upcoming “Welcome to Wine Country” podcasts from the Pinot Summit in San Francisco and the Pinot Festival in Mendocino.)

At Fort Mason, the winery tables were arranged alphabetically in several rows that stretched the length of the former Army warehouse building. (This same venue also hosts the monster ZAP (Zinfandel Advocates and Producers) festival each January, as well as the annual San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition public tasting and the Rhone Rangers and Family Winemakers events, among others.) Several local food purveyors were offering Pinot-friendly samples from their product lines. Aidells Sausage Company www.aidells.com offered “gourmet meatballs” as well as wursts from the “Sausagemaker to the Stars,” and Big Paw Grub served up olive oils, balsamic vinegars and other tasty condiments. www.bigpawgrub.com (More on both these producers in our upcoming visits to the Marin County Farmers Market.)

As I made my way through the winery alphabet, I met up with quite a few long-time winemaker friends who were pouring their new releases, and I also met many other Pinot producers for the first time. At one table, I had to specify “the *red* Pinot, please,” as they were also pouring a rosé as well as a Pinot Grigio, a *white* varietal that is genetically a mutated “pigment phenotype” of Pinot Noir. (Lay *that* on the waitperson, next time you order a glass of the stuff at your fave Italian joint!) And FYI, Pinot Grigio and Pinot Gris are one and the same: the “G” word translates as “gray” in Italian and French, respectively, referring to the color of the grape clusters.

I’ll bring you back to Pinot Days on “Thirsty Thursday.” Meanwhile, to whet your appetite for our virtual tasting (we’ll wet our whistle then), here are some of my favorites-of-the-day: Addamo Estate Vineyards of Santa Maria, Girasole Vineyards in Mendocino, Bink Wines (named after the owner/winemaker’s black Manx cat!), Canihan Family Cellars (their Syrah won “Best Red” in the SF International Wine Competition; see previous posts), Elke Vineyards and Esterlina of Anderson Valley, Joseph Swan Vineyards, Kenneth Volk Vineyards of San Luis Obispo, Nicholson Ranch in Sonoma, Papapietro Perry of Healdsburg, Philo Ridge Vineyards in Mendocino, Row Eleven Wine Company, Saintsbury of Napa (Carneros), TR Elliott of Sebastopol, Truchard Vineyards in Napa, Willamette Valley Vineyards in Oregon, and Yering Station from Australia’s Yarra Valley. Whew!

We’ll also have a visit with Appellation America, www.appellationamerica.com the online wine magazine that focuses on distinct winegrowing regions throughout the country. We’ll also catch a glimpse of Crushpad, www.crushpadwine.com a wildly popular custom-winemaking facility in San Francisco that also co-sponsored the Pinot Days event.

Until then,

Cheers,
Rosina
gilded fork, wine, wine writing, Welcome to Wine Country, Rosina Tinari Wilson

Winemeisters Weekend: Daniele D’Anna of Cantine Umberto Bortolotti

Yesterday I brought you to an amazing tasting of Prosecco, the food-friendly sparkling wine of the Veneto in northeastern Italy. The event featured members of the Consorzio Tutela del Vino Prosecco DOC di Conegliano e Valdobbiadene. Since the 1960s, this consortium of producers has established, and now maintains and enhances, the high standards of quality for their wine. www.prosecco.it

I had the great pleasure of meeting quite a few vintners, to taste at least two or three different Prosecco bottlings at each table, and to trot out my rusty Italian. In the back of the room, framed against a backdrop of San Francisco Bay and the distant Carneros wine-growing district that spans the southern edge of both Napa and Sonoma, stood the tall, charismatic Daniele D’Anna. Earlier, during my first tasting at the Adami winery table, www.adamispumanti.it the well-connected Enrico Valleferro had singled out “mi amico Daniele” and his wines as an absolute “must.”

Daniele is the grandson (on his mother’s side, hence the different surnames), of Umberto Bortolotti, who founded his eponymous winery www.bortolotti.com in Valdobbiadene in 1947. Daniele is as warm, charming, smart and fun as he is movie-star handsome. (See pic, and yesterday’s too.) And the guy makes some fine, fine vino to boot.

When I arrived at his table, Daniele was pouring his Brut—the first of several Prosecco bottlings from the winery’s “UB” line—for a small group of tasters. I quickly joined in. I loved the wine’s crisp tang and clean dry finish, with nice full fruit. We kicked around some recipe ideas, most of which involved some sort of seafood. (I immediately pictured a mound of oysters, a shucking knife, a lemon and a slew of napkins.)

His second wine, the Extra Dry, has a bit more sweetness in the dosage (pronounced doh-SAAZH, this is a French term for the sugar added to sparkling wine just before bottling; Brut generally has less than Extra Dry). This gives it a softer, rounder overall impression, and suits it to foods with sweetness, salt and/or spice. Our conversation twisted and turned from prosciutto with melon to Thai food and sushi (see yesterday’s post), with lots of tasty stops along the way.

Last, and anything but least, Daniele poured us a taste of the ultra-luxe Cartizze (named for a tiny town in the nearby hills, with an even cooler microclimate than the rest of the region). Cartizze has earned the VSQPRD (Vini Spumanti di Qualita’ Prodotti in Regioni Determinate) designation. Refined, subtle, elegant: bring on the salmon and caviar. (And instead of springing for the sturgeon stuff, I’ll pick up some tobiko (flying-fish roe) at the Asian market for this beauty.

Mille grazie, Daniele D’Anna, for the delicious pours, the lively conversation, and all your great ideas on pairing Prosecco with a world of food. Thanks also for the great “to go” boxful of bubbles—my friends, family and I will be enjoying your wines, and toasting you and your Consorzio colleagues, for quite a while. (And happy 60th anniversary to the Bortolotti winery!)

Ciao for now, e salute—
Cheers,
Rosina
gilded fork, wine, wine writing, Welcome to Wine Country, Rosina Tinari Wilson

FoodPairing Friday: Prosecco ROCKS! (in both senses..)

Well, I know I promised you some tasting notes, and some food-pairing ideas, for the “Best Red” wines from last week’s San Francisco International Wine Competition.

Sometimes the best-laid plans… well, you know. OK with you if we put that on the back burner for a (very short) while? ‘Cause I went to a stop-the-presses Prosecco tasting yesterday, and the Italian winemakers/winery owners and I talked food-and-wine-pairing the whole time. Then they filled the ‘vertible with lotsa bottles, and…

In case you’re worrying, I aced the sobriety test. The winemakers/winery owners (let’s just call them “vintners”) and I decided that if you can say “Il Prosecco di Conegliano e Valdobbiadene” without a hitch, you’re OK to drive home. (BTW, it’s “eel proh-SEHC-coh dee coh-neh-LYAh-noh eh vahl-doh-BYAH-deh-neh.”) www.prosecco.it

If I hadn’t already been in love with Prosecco, I would have fallen head over heels at this tasting. First of all, it was held in the Crown Room, high atop the Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill, with postcards-on-steroids views out the many windows. (Here’s one of Coit Tower.) You could do a water tasting here and feel intoxicated.

At any rate, the vintners and I agreed that neither the view nor the Prosecco *needed* any improvement, but each of them really did (at least seem to) enhance the other, the way a wine can enhance an already-delicious food, and vice-versa.

Which leads me to… today’s FoodPairing Friday musings. As I spoke with the vintners about their favorite food pairings with their own bottlings, I reminisced about the first time I ever tasted Prosecco, in the early ‘90s, on a very romantic evening in Venice. The wine was barely a blip on the American-export-market radar at that point, and it took several years for me to be able to find any decent examples of Prosecco here at home.

Today there are dozens of them, in beautiful, classy packages, and at amazingly reasonable prices. Between Italian Prosecco and Spanish cava, which I also love, I have my value-priced-bubbly needs covered. Virtually all of them cost less than $20.00 a bottle, and I often find excellent ones for $10 or less.

On that night in Venice, at a friend’s “piccolo palazzo” (tiny palace), we were welcomed with some nuggets of local cheese and some tangy cured olives to go with the never-empty flutes of Prosecco. Great start. Prosecco is fruity enough to handle salt (the “peanut butter and jelly effect”!), and its crisp acids plus lively bubbles cut right through fat. We stayed with Prosecco through a lovely main dish of pasta with asparagus and turkey breast, lightly seasoned with olive oil and fresh local herbs. Both the wine and the pasta dish were at the same level of intensity: neither overpowered the other, and each one let the other’s flavors show through.

Yesterday in San Francisco, the Italian vintners regaled me with the culinary specialties of the Veneto region where Prosecco is produced, including seafood from the Adriatic coast, light pastas, creamy risotto, salumi (cured meats), vegetables such as zucchini and eggplant, and local fruits and cheeses. My palate memory, meanwhile, had hopped a flight right back to Italy.

Then one of the vintners, Daniele D'Anna of Cantine Umberto Bortolotti, www.bortolotti.com mentioned Thai food. And sushi. And we started to riff on things like dim sum, Vietnamese spring rolls, and East/West fusion food. At home, I generally drink bubbles (or beer) with that category of salty/sweet/tangy/spicy ethnic specialties, so we were definitely on the same page. What my new friend didn’t realize was that I had already planned to stop for take-out Thai on my way home. And when he generously gave me a six-pack of his Prosecco, that sealed the deal for me. (That's tall Daniele in the pic, squatting down to bottle level, with a quaffable quartet of Bortolotti Prosecco. More on Daniele tomorrow!)

So as not to develop chronic blogorrhea, I’m going to sign off in a moment, and then pick up next Friday with my Prosecco-with-Thai-food dinner. (BTW, since there was a sushi place around the corner from the Thai restaurant, and they had some great stuff on their “specials” list…) For now, I’ll finish up by telling you how I chilled down my Prosecco when I got home, starved and thirsty.

Putting a bottle in the freezer helps, but it still takes about 15 minutes. And I didn’t have any of those little plastic ice-ball-thingies at the ready. (They got moved out to make room for food. Priorities, you know.)

What I *did* have in the freezer was some grapes. Table grapes, frozen solid. So I improvised, filled my glass with the impromptu little edible “rocks,” and poured in the Prosecco. The icy grapes chilled down the vino before you could say “Prosecco Rocks!” (And later, after they thawed, the wine-soaked grapes made a dandy dessert.)

May your weekend rock too. Lots more about Prosecco In my next few posts. Meanwhile, you can learn more in yesterday's Culinary Roundtable #15 podcast on Prosecco.

Cheers (Salute)—
Rosina
gilded fork, wine, wine writing, Welcome to Wine Country, Rosina Tinari Wilson