These symbols are the keys to the new Slow Wine guide – finally published in English this month. For those of you wondering if this is related to Slow Food: yes.
The Snail is the Slow Food International symbol; for Slow Wine it indicates a winery that embodies the Slow Food sensibilities including “sensorial, territorial, environmental and personal values.”
In this guide, the Bottle points to wineries that have consistent high quality throughout their range of wines.
And the Coin, of course, designates wines that are “great values.”
Where can you get the guide? On Amazon.com, of course.

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For me, it’s fascinating to see a wineglass, a decanter, a wine bottle that sat on a dining table hundreds of years ago. It might be plain and thick and unevenly shaped. It might be thin and delicate and rimmed with gold. At the Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York, I was fascinated by their elaborate collection of glassware, ranging from ancient through medieval to modern times.

Whether you like to think of yourself as a former king or a former peasant, you’ll be enthralled with this collection. All the more so, because it’s glass, and there are so few glass items in the world that have lasted this long.

Bonus: take a workshop and create your own glass piece. This photo is the interior of the pulled-glass flower I made one afternoon — with plenty of encouragement from a patient teacher at the museum.

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Actually, I don’t think about Muscadet wine a lot. I’d rather it simply showed up in a glass so I could just drink it. So when I was given a chance to sample several Muscadets with oysters, of course I said yes. The SecondGlass people combined forces with Loire Valley Wines at a lunch in Boston yesterday, at the Island Creek Oyster Bar.

It’s a medium white wine, ranging from somewhat crisp to a bit fruity — elements in common with chardonnay and sauvignon blanc, meaning it can have tropical fruit, honey or grassy aromas. It’s not super-crisp, but has a strain of limestone citricity (is that a word?) running through it at the best of times, which makes it lively on the palate.

A classic pairing is muscadet and oysters – which really works. It was even more fun to have the Island Creek oysters with three choices for the first course, all in the $12-$14 range: 2009 Guy Saget “Les Clissaes d’Or” Muscadet Sèvre et Maine; 2009 Domaine de la Quilla Muscadet Sèvre et Maine; 2010 Domaine de la Louviere Muscadet Sèvre et Maine sur lie.

“Sur lie” means the wine is left on the lees, or the dregs of the yeast cells and other grape particulate matter – which sounds awful but imparts a depth of flavor to the wine. Until now, it was common to leave the wine on the lies for no longer than a few months. Now, there’s a movement to leave the wine there for 17 months, and new regulations have recently been proposed (expect an update in a year or so).

Muscadet, by the way, refers to an appellation, an area of the Loire region. It’s not a grape, but so many more people know the word muscadet and so few people know the name of this wine’s grape (Melon de Bourgogne) that muscadet is now a stand-in name for the grape.

Three more wines were served with bright green pea soup with poached oysters. These, all under $18, were Michel Delhommeau “Cuvée Harmonie” Muscadet Sèvre et Maine; 2009 Domaine de l’Ecu “Expression de Granite” Muscadet Sèvre et Maine; and 2009 Domaine les Hautes Noëlles Muscadet Côtes de Grandlieu. The best pairings for me were the first and third wines. The Michel Delhommeau started super-crisp, with the flavor almost disappearing on the palate, then finishing with lingering limestone. The Domaine les Hautes Noëlles had a big body that somehow lightened up with the food. Interesting.

For the final course, we had a few beautiful Scituate scallops with a sprinkling of gnocchi in brown butter sauce. The food was minutes old; the wines were at least a decade old. Most people think of Muscadet as a wine to drink young, but they aren’t all like that. We had three – and all were under $25 – each one a different hue of bright gold: 1995 and 1999 L d’Or de Luneau-Papin “Cuvée Medaillée” Muscadet Sèvre et Maine; and 2000 Domaine du Haut Bourg Muscadet Côtes de Grandlieu.

The 2000 Domaine du Haut Bourg was a combination of youth and evolution with a cantaloupe nose, crispness, chalk and limestone throughout. The 1995 was calm and serene, with butter and vanilla-yeast notes, while the 1999 was hearty, reminiscent of wet beaches on the nose, and a big, long finish. Each one brought out different notes in the food.

I guess that means I need to keep trying more Muscadets. It shouldn’t be too difficult. At least in Boston the whole month is Muscadet May.

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One of my favorite things about Bertani, the Amarone producer, is that they make available their vintage Amarones from just about any year in the last half-century. Anyone can order one through the distributor, and the prices are in the $$ hundreds, not $$$ thousands – great for celebrating special occasions.

Recently, soft-spoken Bertani winemaker Cristian Ridolfi stopped in Boston for lunch, on his way back to Italy. Bertani produces a total 1.5 million bottles (125,000 cases) of about a dozen different wines all from their own vineyards. They don’t buy and they don’t sell fruit, emphasized export manager Stefano Mangiarotti, who was also at this lunch. But they could easily produce more than twice this amount of wine from their vineyards, if they weren’t so highly selective.

Bertani has not made any major changes in their winemaking since they started producing Amarone in the mid-twentieth century. Ridolfi still dries the grapes for 120 days, not just the required 90. He is convinced that this is what accounts for the longevity of the Bertani Amarone wines. Incidentally, he has also found that the anti-ageing compound resveratrol doubles in these grapes in the 120 days.

He is doing one bit of experimentation, this with the large wooden casks the Amarone matures in for six years. The winery is in trials with chestnut, acacia, and possibly more cherry wood, all sourced locally.

Ridolfi brought several Bertani wines, and several vintages of Amarone della Valpolicella DOC: 2003, 1998, 1980 and 1967. His favorite, he admitted was the 1967. Mine was the 1980. Bursting with life, this 30-year-old wine had huge fruit aromas. It actually smelled young. There was some minerality, a hint of bitterness to show that there was some structure here. The wine’s fruit flavors were well developed, continuing with prune and plum into the finish. Later, I found fresh herbs and a bit of eucalyptus coming out. Suggested retail price is $230.

The most astounding thing happened at the end of the meal. We had just finished our espressos when someone called for a toast. After raising a glass, a sip from it is required, so I did. And this wine from 1980 flashed out its flavors, firm with fruit, even after the coffee. I was impressed.

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Having just returned from the annual Sicilia en primeur event, I find myself swimming in impressions about what’s happening on this island. Or is it a continent on its own? The further from the mainland you get, the more you feel you’re on a separate continent, a crosswind of cultures set out in the Mediterranean Sea, the center of the ancient world. Every province has its own character, and the wines are no exception.

The newest standout is Etna, the province around the volcano, where wineries are springing up in this unique terroir, the winemakers lured by altitude, independence and potential. With red wines, producers make a range from international to modern unoaked to ancient styles.

The white wines of Etna really stood out to me, their aromatics, crispness and minerality providing a vivid expression of the volcanic soils the grapes are grown in.

Nearby is Sicily’s only DOCG: Cerasuolo di Vittoria, the wine a blend of nero d’Avila and frappato, two indigenous red grapes. The DOCG was created in 2005, and the wines I was tasting were well thought out, and well made. Nicely balanced. This blend is traditional to this part of Ragusa, in southeastern Sicily, but now that’s been made official, it’s changing – inevitably, I suppose.

From a native wine that was on the light side, ready to drink within a year, with the “cherry” notes its name evokes, the gravitas of the DOCG label is beginning to weigh the wine down, causing producers to think and rethink, to work on making it bigger and heartier. Instead of a wine that may age, pretty soon we may find this wine requires ageing.

Is this a good idea? Not necessarily. But it might be necessary if producers want to charge more now that they have that DOCG label around the neck of the bottle.
FOR MORE, listen to me on iwineradio.com

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Listening to people making plans for Vinitaly – the frighteningly large, annual Italian wine fair in Verona — reminds me that I met the organizers, CEO Giovanni Mantovani and Stevie Kim in New York this winter.
Along with Cristina Mariani-May of Banfi and Marilisa Allegrini of Allegrini Wines, they co-hosted fundraising events that culminated in a donation of $40,000 to the American Cancer Society. To mark the occasion, we all got to go to NASDAQ to ring the closing bell that day. I was thrilled!
Here I am, the 4th head from the right (blonde, with purple scarf)

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What’s going on in Burgundy right now? Here’s a photo Alex Gambal sent of the first day’s work in one of his newly-acquired vineyards – in the areas of Batard-Montrachet, Puligny-Montrachet and Chassagne-Montrachet.
He also bought a house “on the square in Santenay that will be turned into a guest and rental residence.” Hoping it’s ready next time I get to Burgundy…

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More about Nuovo Realta, the new winery group in Piedmont, mainly family-owned small wineries, but with ambitious plans for expansion. You’ll be hearing more about these wineries, so here are their names: Brjnda, F.lli Manzone, La Fusina, La Bruciata, Voghera, and Caldera.

Recently, I traveled to Piedmont and met the producers, and learned about the history of wine in Piedmont, as well. To differentiate their wines, Nuove Realtà has chosen to emphasize the variety of soils where they grow the grapes. From a presentation by Professor Boero of the University of Torino, I learned how grapevines take certain molecules from the soil and rock. Using the plants’ own organic acids, they dissolve elements with ions, convey them through the root hairs and then into the plant. Scientists are now exploring the exact relationship between minerals and taste (I can’t wait!).

Professors at Torino are also studying microclimates and wine history. In the Langhe region, for example, Professor Fratianni is working on documenting a warming trend of 0.7 degrees C (1.3 degrees F), which would change the traditional limits of vine cultivation in Piedmont.

Grapevines have been grown here since the Etruscans, according to Professor Bovio. On the flatter areas, Etruscans trained their wines on live trees flatter areas so they could grow wheat and vegetables in the fields, too; their objective was quantity. On the hillsides, the Romans learned (from quality-motivated Greek winemakers) to grow their grapevines as low bushes or on vertical trellises.

Winemaking has been a documented industry in Piedmont since 1,000 AD. In the 1950s this region supplied 10% of Italian production; now it’s down to 5%, according to the professor.

For more about these and other current Piedmont wines, see my article on PalatePress.com

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Many women I know suffer from what I have finally diagnosed as Fear of Wine. It’s mostly caused by a lack of confidence, despite their decades of buying wine for dinners and parties – and even ordering themselves a glass at a restaurant.
This is OK with me, because it means I have a purpose in my group of friends — more than simply choosing the wine when we go out to dinner. I spend a certain amount of time gently trying to empower my friends.
I don’t expect people to remember everything I tell them about a particular wine or even a wine region I have visited. Instead, I want them to learn what they like, and what they don’t, and feel a little more comfortable in their own skins, in the world of wine.
My group is not unusual among women of our age – say, over 40 – in their wine concerns. And I think most wine writers play on this anxiety by talking about “de-mystifying” wine. If wine is that complex, can a non-professional really hope to learn enough that in an article or a book? If a writer thinks wine is “mystifying” I believe they secretly want it to stay that way. No non-professionals allowed behind the magic curtain!
But that’s not me.
I like to give people a few tools. I have even taught my very young nieces and nephews to look at wine in a glass, to swirl and sniff, to slurp and spit wine. And most importantly, to tell me what they think. What is this color – red, orange or purple? What does this smell or taste like – any fruit they can think of? Do they want to spit it out or swallow it?
Yeah, pretty much it’s that simple.
First Step: Do you like the wine that’s in your mouth?
Next step: When you find a wine you like, take a picture of the label with your phone. Next time you’re ordering wine, ask a waiter or wine clerk for another glass or bottle from that region. How do you like it?
If yes, keep trying others from that region.
If no, try another region.
Wine is about enjoyment, after all.
Step by step, we’re banishing that Fear of Wine.

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A vertical vineyard, that’s intriguing. 55 degree slopes, it says on the label. The wines were velvety, rich and smooth. I was reminded of the day some years ago when I wound my way up to Pride Winery on the cusp of a mountain — and discovered boutique-quality wines at far less than Screaming Eagle prices. Turns out, Hidden Ridge is very near Pride Mountain, explained co-owner Casidy Ward. She and her husband bought some land for a second home, then started selling grapes…then succumbed to the lure of having their own winery.
When they released their first wines a few years ago, it was at the Napa Cab standard $75. Now the wines are $40. I’m thinking: snap them up! But why reduce pricing? Is it because Napa Cabernet Sauvignons carry an inflated price to put them in the range of people who buy by price? That’s often true. And it could be true here. It could also be that the winery has gone from producing 1,000 to 3,800 cases. And it could be the economy, too.
The wines have also evolved over time. They’ve added more clones as the years progressed. I sampled the wines at Post 390 in Boston. The 2004 was creamy as well as jammy with a touch of eucalyptus, great with sous-vide filet mignon drizzled with a port sauce, and enhanced with Tuscan kale to bring out the eucalyptus. The 2005 was a rich mixture of strawberry and raspberry juice, slightly thinner, slightly more tannic, matched to a grilled lamb chop.
The 2006 (decanted) carried cocoa, minerality, depth of fruit and mild tannins, tasted with everything but not a clear winner with either. Perhaps we need to wait a year; Hidden Ridge takes the luxury of time with their wines; 2006 is their current vintage

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