The wine merchant of Venice

The Dolomites: craggy and imposing.

‘I feast on wine and bread, and feasts they are’.
— Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), Tuscan poet, painter, sculptor, architect and engineer.

July was a very hot month in Tuscany, and while August continued in the same vein, there were some wet days too; ideal for good-quality grapes and wine. The harvest (Vendemmia) for white grapes began in the middle of August in the Maremma and for black grapes, mostly Sangiovese, this starts in September.

It seems the Parisians are a sad bunch these days, while the Burgundians are happy. Apparently Parisian baker’s holidays had been controlled by the Paris préfet since the Revolution. This meant a guaranteed supply of freshly baked bread during the summer. The industry, however, has been partly deregulated and now most Parisian bakers take holidays at the same time, leaving an acute shortage of baguettes, according to Michael Stothard in the weekend FT recently. This is a major problem in a city where people are used to buying freshly baked bread daily.

Their Burgundian brothers are happy, however, because the ‘climats’ of Côte de Beaune and Côte de Nuits have been declared UNESCO Heritage areas. As a bottle of Romanée-Conti will cost you over €1,000 even gynaecologists and surgeons might baulk at this. However, don’t despair. A restaurant that opened in Paris called ‘Les Climats’ recently received its first Michelin star and you can have a bottle of Burgundy for as little as €18 — or you can pay €8,000. This may go some way to helping the French to recover from the shock of the 1976 tastings when Californian wines outperformed the wines from France.

No mock mocha
In early September, we drove to Bolzano to visit an Italian haematologist who had done most of his training in Dublin. The road system in Italy is fantastic. You can drive all the way from Naples to Venice on motorway. Unlike Ireland, the motorways are liberally sprinkled with petrol stations and one can get an excellent cup of cappuccino served in a real cup — not a paper cup or a large bowl containing a litre of tasteless muck with some form of chocolate on top.

The air and scenery were totally different in the Alto Adige. This is a strange part of Italy known as South Tyrol in Germany/Austria. Most people speak German and Italian and it is common to see Austrian flags in houses and restaurants. Most road signs are also in Italian and German. Does that ring a bell?

The Dolomites are truly breathtaking: craggy and high, they dominate everything. We had lunch ‘a fuori’ with Andrea, his charming wife Dearbhala (a forensic psychiatrist) and three children.

The lunch was washed down with bottles of Lagrien, a grape I had never known before and which is indigenous to Alto Adige. Dessert was accompanied by late-harvested Gewürztraminer, luscious but not unctuous and a perfect accompaniment to cheese or dessert.

Venice Biennale
We motored on to Venice the next day. Although we have visited the city on a number of occasions, it still strikes us as being such an amazing place. This time the weather was kind to us, sunny and in the mid-70s, so I visited the Biennale with Chiara without a word of protest. I am not a card-carrying post-modernist so I found the exhibits in the Arsenale and the Giardini a little indifferent. The exhibition on ‘Proportion’ in the Palazzo Fortuny was truly magnificent and the Fred Sandback and Anish Kapoor installations were also magnificent. If you see nothing else in Venice be sure to visit this palazzo (S’Angelo Vaporetto).

I am very partial to wines from Soave made from the Garganega grape. You can buy Soave from Inama and Pieropan (two excellent bottlers) in Ireland but not at the same prices as in Italy! I came across three new ones, I Campi, Gini and Rocollo Grassi ‘La Broia’. The Rocollo Grassi was definitely our favourite but all were excellent and complemented fish dishes admirably.

We are back in Tuscany now where the weather is still warm and sunny although the nights are definitely cooler. The harvest for grapes for white wine has already begun in the Maremma and will start in a few weeks in the Chianti Classico area. Hopefully it will be a good year!
Happy drinking.

Tanti Saluti,
Giovanni