On Sunday 22 June, I was a guest of the Scaglione family in the province of Asti on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Loazzolo DOC, and took part in a wonderful dialogue on wine together with other important personalities such as Antonello Maietta, President of the Italian Sommelier Association, Luca Gardini, world champion sommelier in 2010... various journalists from the sector and beyond... and of course ME!
Find more information on the event HERE. For those who missed the details I republish the poster:
I want to make a small premise: can someone explain to me why every time I have to go somewhere for work systematically the navigator cannot find the address? In this case, both the TOM TOM and the iPhone refused to even find the coordinates! Is it possible that my life is an eternal wandering in the most remote streets of the Belpaese? 😀
Come on now, I'm getting serious!
But did you know Loazzolo DOC? Andrea and I admit our ignorance on the subject... until we arrived we had never heard of it... and that gives us much to think about! I remind everyone that 'Poor Andrea' is a brilliant engineer and AIS sommelier-taster! Could it be that he and I knew nothing about it? Yet we drink a lot of wine!
But is it ever possible that Andrea always has... his nose 'in the dough'? 😀
Well... let's go deeper!
Loazzolo DOC is a white wine made from pure Muscat grapes from the village of the same name in the province of Asti. Consider that of the 150 hectares of Moscato vineyards in the area, only 3 are chosen to give this wine its exceptional qualities! This is because here the vines have low yields and this allows the concentration of sugars, which makes it perfect for late harvesting. The grapes are selected manually bunch by bunch and then laid out on racks where they wither, dehydrating and concentrating aromas and perfumes. The grapes are pressed using traditional and delicate systems to prevent damage to the wine's taste-olfactory harmony. Loazzolo DOC is an extraordinary meditation wine on its own, but perfect when paired with a mature spicy cheese such as goat's milk robiola.
Oenologist Giancarlo Scaglione, son of Loazzolo winegrowers and great lover of women, as a great man of pleasure and passion, is the first producer of Loazzolo DOC.
In the old days, it was common to lay down some of the products of the countryside to preserve them and enjoy them even out of season. Dried figs, tomatoes dried in the sun and then placed in glass jars with a fabulous bagnet, tume dried on straw and then placed in oil and milk or among the green leaves of cabbage, muscat grapes, harvested when they were ripe and dried on reed racks that would keep them until Easter, were delicious delicacies for the peasant world until a few decades ago. Giancarlo's grandfather, Masein, used to press these dried grapes to make a few bottles of truly exceptional wine. And so it was that, after specific research and prompted by some friends who had tasted the old wine, in 1985 Scaglione produced the first bottles of Moscato Vendemmia Tardiva. It was an immediate success, Forteto della Luja was born and national recognition began.
Wikipedia
Also presented during the day was the book 'Luigi Veronelli. Life is too short to drink bad wines.' signed by Gian Arturo Rota, who spent almost 20 years side by side with Veronelli (whose immense archive he 'guards') and for 11 years directed Veronelli Editore, and Nichi Stefi, who with the 'poet' of Italian wine has had a fruitful and continuous collaboration in the field of oenology and gastronomy collaborating on many sector magazines, published by Giunti and Slow Food Editore. Too bad the original sentence is not by Luigi Veronelli but by Goethe, and dates back to the early 1800s:
[Tweet ""Life is too short to drink mediocre wines." Goethe"].
Who knows if Rota has slightly changed Goethe's phrase to attribute it to Veronelli... I have even heard a version that reads 'Luigi Veronelli. Life is too short to drink bad wines'. Forgive the punctiliousness, but it may be that I also write, I care a lot about copyright... in any case, I can't wait to read the book! 🙂
Giovanni Scaglione presents the famous souvenir painting.
The real pity is that Loazzolo DOC is small and little known outside its land. With my speech I wanted to emphasise the importance of the brand in the consumer's final choice. My words are intended as a small warning to all those producers who think that it is enough to produce a good wine to sell it without caring about having an effective website, brilliant labels and attractive packaging.
I'll tell you once and for all: no more throwing money away on printing catalogues and brochures that will probably end up in the fireplace or under a table! The cost of designing, printing and distributing a catalogue and its potential audience that is limited to the economic capacity to bear the printing and distribution is far greater than the cost of designing an effective website! And shall we talk about the potential audience that exceeds one billion users? How much do you think 1 billion prints of your precious catalogue can cost you? A well-structured web presence costs infinitely less and generates exponentially greater results!
If you would like to listen to it... here you will find the comparison between Luca Gardini and myself (who every day looks more and more like his father, Roberto Gardini, a sommelier who knows how to talk about wine in an extraordinary way... certainly one of my masters... although I will never have his voice changes!)
Don't hold it against dear Luca Gardini if I don't agree with his vision of 'people drink according to their palate' and 'we must stop looking at our own backyard... and look abroad'. But what foreign countries do you want me to look at if two sommeliers who drink from north to south all the time don't even know that Loazzolo DOC exists? It will be better if we first look in our own backyard at the products it offers, and then after having understood its limits and potential, we study, cellar by cellar, an effective strategy to propose them abroad... perhaps starting with a successful company blog written within a large container that could be a multilingual magazine that also finds space abroad. In short... it could be Perlage Suite within a couple of years... you have discovered me 😀
And then I agree with Luca that the problems of consideration abroad exist and must be solved... but I also believe that you cannot think of building a house without foundations! (And the engineering side of me inevitably advances...) Seriously! How can we look abroad if the deficit is within Italy itself? When they made Europe without making Italy it was a total disaster! Let this serve as a lesson to us: every Italian must take a small step towards the culture and awareness of drinking in a way that really addresses his palate, every winery must take a big step towards giving him the chance to understand who he has in front of him, his history, his wines.
No magazine and no journalist will ever be truly authoritative abroad if he or she is a complete stranger in Italy due to the fact that there is still no world in which to be known.
Now I would like to take a delicious break: for lunch we went to La Casa nel bosco.
'It is not a farmhouse, it is not a restaurant,
is simply the home of Gianni and Mina Filipetti
nestled in a forest in the Alta Langa
with the taste of simplicity and things done right."
Paolo Massobrio, Critical and Gourmet Guide - 2006
Mina's Hazelnut Pannacotta from La Casa nel Bosco
I swear to you on Paco: this pannacotta alone is worth the trip! I have never eaten something so delicious in all my life... simple and tasty, personally the best dessert ever! What a pity about the unhappy combination with the Brachetto passito, which was a bit oxidised and not very appropriate... I would have preferred a slightly fortified wine but more delicate from a taste-olfactory point of view.
Apart from that... we had a marinated carpaccio with courgettes and Parmesan cheese which was discreet, a delicious tomato flan with rocket pesto... and tajarin with meat sauce which were especially tasty in the encore! I say in the encore because the first round was slightly undercooked... but when you work on the quantity and serve in the dish the waiter is normal that it is not the TOP. In the second round we were the first to be served and they were perfect! I would have eaten a quintal to the face of my diet!
About the wines we drank I won't tell you anything yet... but only because by popular demand I'm implementing a new section here on Perlage Suite... I received so many twitter messages and emails asking me about it that I couldn't resist and started another big project... that wants to be emblematic of both my desire to help others and my immense love for wine. But for now it's a secret! 😀
La casa nel bosco' restaurant
- Valle Galvagno Region 23, 14050 Cassinasco (AT)
- Telephone: 0141 851305
- E-mail: lacasanelbosco2002@libero.it
A nice souvenir photo of the day: Antonello Maietta, Chiara Bassi, Andrea Montanari, Silvia Scaglione
Well, I was very pleased to know that our president Antonello Maietta was on the same wavelength as me! Talking to him and his wife was a real pleasure, Ilaria is not only beautiful and of rare refinement, but also very pleasant company. (Smart our president... 😀 )! While writing this article, she really came to mind while taking the photo, the posing of her gestures really won me over! I have the power to be totally fascinated by extraordinary women... but here's a service announcement: my prince charming is lost in the Langhe, or in Salento... or in Papua New Guinea! There's no way he's going to find me... after all, if he's in a white brocco instead of a Maserati, I've got a long time to wait... Phew!
Or maybe there is one. Or is not there. Or exists in my head. After all, who said...
[Tweet ""The expectation of pleasure is itself a pleasure." Lessing"].
he said a colossal shit. Frenchisms included.
My thinking is more...
[Tweet "Behind the wait, there is everything: free permission to conjure up a beautiful face or converse with a shadow."]
Hey Chiara... you're not on Meetic! Here nobody asks you to place an ad for lonely hearts! Let's talk about wine, that's better!
To become Loazzolo Doc Late Harvest 'Piasa Rischei'Â the white muscat grapes are cultivated at an altitude of 450 metres, harvested by hand and with great care progressively from the end of September until late November, with the last bunches and berries infected with Botrytis nobile, while the first part of the harvest is dried on mats in a fruit loft.
As I said, I will talk about the individual labels separately. However, I want to make a personal note about the vertical! Or rather, tell you about what for me were the three memorable vintages.
- Loazzolo DOC 2002 - vintage with very insistent musty notes... and you know: to me the Botrytis cinerea really like it! In this case, the effect that jumps out from the combination of Loazzolo DOC and noble rot, which is more noticeable in this vintage than in all the others, is very particular. To my nose it was like smelling a sweet/not sweet made from spices (vanilla, clove and turmeric), dried apricots and figs, hazelnuts, dried acacia flowers and roses, and a candied orange peel. Much correspondence between nose and mouth, I really liked it.
- Loazzolo DOC 1998 - vintage that I would describe as truly unique, perhaps by far the best. The change of scents between the 2000 and the 1990s vintages perhaps denotes the family's desire to 'Frenchify' this wine a little over time... perhaps to make it more 'accessible' to certain markets. Or perhaps it is just an unintended result! The fact is that going down into the 90s, Loazzolo is a more difficult wine, where the dried flowers and the brine base take centre stage. I perhaps like it even more. If the 1985 Loazzolo is extraordinary, it is with the 1998 vintage that you have the most interesting drinking.
- Loazzolo DOC 1985 - and this is where I was born... this wine and I share 30 years of age worn well 😀 I would not have predicted such an evolution: little oxidation and lots of brine! Really, both in the nose and in the mouth the smell and taste of pickled olives is overpowering. And such a strong scent only leads you to recognise... you know that hazelnut honey you get from some beekeepers? And then the dried rose and broom... when it enters the mouth it has a very long persistence... it practically accompanied me for a while on my return journey... a truly magical wine.
A little tip from my world for this fine wine, I ask you the courtesy of unlocking the content by sharing it on your favourite social network to find out!
[sociallocker id=510]Loazzolo DOC Forteto della Luja is a truly unique wine, as unique is its label that one can certainly easily remember. However, it is very difficult to read the above, so it is only recognisable if one already knows it. As a professional wine marketing specialist, I cannot help but invite the Scaglione family to reflect on the label and the bottle used to contain this delicious nectar. Personally, I would make a choice that enhances its importance, but above all that makes it easier for the consumer and potential consumer to read the label. So yes to particular choices, no to those that hinder the accessibility of bottles. Making this delicious wine known in every corner of Italy also depends on your willingness to adapt the packaging and label to the final product. Because even before you drink, you look. And you buy. Often with the eyes.
Loazzolo DOC Forteto della Luja 1985 label... I didn't even understand where the year was written... the idea of the spiral is nice, but black on black, with that golden font that grainy and gives little emphasis is really penalising.
[/sociallocker].
Hugs and thanks again to the Scaglione family and all their guests.
Chiara
[Tweet ""Wine feels the farmer's love and rewards it by making itself better" Veronelli].
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