The village of Torgiano, located just outside Perugia, is one of the many meticulously preserved medieval towns that dot the landscape in Umbria. It is a quaint cluster of buildings on a gentle slope, looking west to the crater lake of Trasimeno and east to the Apennines that separate Umbria from Le Marche. At times it feels more like a movie set than an actual place where people live and work, but it is in fact the latter. The chief employer seems to be the Lungarotti family, whose winery, hotel, restaurant, wine shop, and assorted museums have turned a town that can be traversed in five minutes (on foot) into the nerve center of winemaking Umbria.
True, the town of Orvieto—with its giant Gothic duomo and historical significance as a summer retreat for the Papacy—is more famous. So is Assisi, home of Umbria’s favorite son, Saint Francis. But Torgiano, thanks to the Lungarottis, has become the repository of Umbrian wine culture. The white wines of Orvieto may have been sipped as far back as the Middle Ages, but it was the red wines of Lungarotti—first produced in the early 1960s—that gave Umbrian wine a real commercial identity. Yet when founder Giorgio Lungarotti died in 1999, he didn’t just leave behind a successful brand name and some casks of wine. He left an entire town devoted to the cult of the vine.
There’s a commercial side, of course: Adjacent to the wine museum that the Lungarottis built in 1974—which contains amphorae and other artifacts dating back to 3000 B.C.—is a luxury hotel–restaurant–conference center called Le Tre Vaselle, where the Lungarotti wines and olive oils are on prominent display. There’s also a Lungarotti-owned enoteca and a Lungarotti-run agriturismo (bed-and-breakfast) just outside of town. In one sense, Torgiano is a vinous answer to Niketown. But the wine museum, which contains one of the best collections of its type in Italy, is another story. And so is a new museum devoted completely to olive oil, which opened in May 2000. Both are the creations of Giorgio Lungarotti’s wife, Maria Grazia, and both have a seriousness of purpose that make them more than just a tourist draw.
The new oil museum’s centerpiece is a huge, nineteenth-century wooden frantoio (olive-oil press) in a building once used for oil production. The exhibits spread across ten rooms, with murals and dioramas detailing the botanical characteristics of olive trees, the most common varieties of olive in Umbria, and the principal methods of olive-oil production. For anyone other than the hard-core foodie, this wouldn’t seem to be a big draw. But the Lungarottis built it anyway—as much for themselves, it would seem, as for anyone else.
Touring the museum with Teresa Severini, the daughter of Maria Grazia and the winemaker at the Lungarotti estate (she was one of Italy’s first well-known female winemakers), the sense is that the Lungarottis are not only out to preserve history but to make a case for their native Umbria. “Many people don’t know it, but Umbria produces the highest percentage of extra-virgin olive oil in Italy,” Teresa says, leading the way into an exhibit entitled “Oil as Light,” a display of olive-oil lamps from the pre-Roman age up through the nineteenth century. A number of the votive-style lamps are lit, giving the room a soft glow. Their wicks are set in disks of cork that float on the gold-green oil, a simple but ingenious design.
“Olives are a larger part of the Umbrian agricultural economy than grapes,” Teresa notes. “But we’re not as well-known for our olive oils as we should be.”
In fact, Umbria has any number of delicacies for which it isn’t well-enough known. The region’s fruity, full-bodied olive oils are eclipsed in the marketplace by those of neighboring Tuscany. Its black truffles, found in abundance in the densely forested hills of Norcia and Spoleto, are overshadowed by those of Alba in Piedmont. And the Umbrian wines, well, they’ve barely managed to register. Other than Lungarotti, the most famous wine name in Umbria is a Tuscan one—Antinori, whose Castello della Sala in Orvieto makes the only Orvieto wines readily recognized by foreign consumers.
Umbria’s dense concentration of medieval villages brings swarms of tourists to places such as Orvieto, Gubbio, and Assisi, and many American expats, priced out of Tuscany, have bought their dream fixer-uppers here instead. The annual arts festival held in Spoleto has also become a major international draw. And yet Umbria still feels like undiscovered, uncharted territory. It’s often said that the people of Umbria identify closely with Saint Francis, the patron saint of ecologists, who preached the importance of communing with nature. In this context, opening an olive oil museum seems like a very Umbrian thing to do.
“We feel an obligation to preserve the history of our craft,” says Teresa. Despite all the very modern conveniences of Torgiano, there’s still an old-world sensibility to the place. The same goes for Umbria as a whole. This may change as more latter-day Lungarottis invest in the burgeoning local wine scene, but for now the region is more museum than mall. If Torgiano is any indication, maybe they can keep it that way.
Despite its proximity to Tuscany, and all the spillover traffic this proximity has generated, Umbria’s commercial wine history is a relatively short one. Twelfth-century popes who summered at Lake Corbara drank what was then a thick, sweet white from Orvieto. But aside from that, Umbrian wine remained a very localized “farmhouse” phenomenon well into the 1970s. Today, Umbria ranks eleventh among Italian regions in the percentage of DOC-classified wine it produces, and yet DOC barely existed here just twenty-five years ago. Of the thirteen DOC zones now in the region, eight were created after 1980. It’s not that Umbria isn’t well-suited to wine. It’s more that Umbrians—pre-Lungarotti, anyway—weren’t inclined toward the wine business.
There’s also the question of size. Umbria is Italy’s fourth-smallest region, and wine has always taken a back seat not only to olive oil but to other agricultural products (particularly grains for pasta and bread). That said, the region has all the tools to make great wine. It is essentially an extension of Tuscany, walled in on three sides by the Apennines but traversed by numerous rivers and streams, including the great Tiber River that bisects the region before heading down to Rome. It’s hard to believe that landlocked Umbria can feel the moderating effects of the sea, but the Tiber is in fact a funnel of sorts that carries warming currents up from the Mediterranean. Offset this with cool breezes from the Apennines and you’ve got that classic push-pull of air so critical to the even ripening of grapes.
Along the western edge of the region in particular, where lakes Corbara and Trasimeno are remnants of ancient volcanoes, the vines are forced to bear down through clay and limestone into a hard, mineral-rich volcanic tufa, another factor that would seemingly enhance the quality of the wines. Yet for all of these favorable natural conditions for growing grapes, there is still a relatively small selection of Umbrian wines from which to choose.
Orvieto remains the anchor of the Umbrian wine scene, producing a good 70 percent of all the region’s DOC-classified wine. And then there’s Lungarotti in Torgiano, which now turns out a staggering two and a half million bottles per year. Their ever-expanding product line runs the gamut from barrique-aged chardonnay to Vin Santo, but their wines essentially stand alone, with nothing to compare them to. There are other much smaller producers in the Torgiano DOC, but not many.
One area of increasing interest is Montefalco, a town not far from Torgiano, where a small community of winemakers makes one of Italy’s cult classics: the rich, spicy, full-bodied Sagrantino di Montefalco. And here there are enough wines—and enough good wines—to constitute a critical mass. The same could be said for a somewhat looser collective of new-wave producers, among them La Fiorita–Lamborghini (yes, that Lamborghini), Palazzone, and Antinori’s Castello della Sala, who are experimenting with slick, modern blends incorporating cabernet sauvignon, merlot, chardonnay, and other international grapes.
There is a winemaking movement afoot in Umbria. It is still coming in somewhere under the radar, but it is happening. A region once thought of as Tuscany’s satellite state has begun to assert itself, something Giorgio Lungarotti might well have responded to thusly: It’s about time.
As with the wines of San Gimignano in Tuscany, the wines of Orvieto tend to incite more commentary about the place they come from than about what’s in the glass. On the one hand, Orvieto is a quintessential Italian white: cool and clean, with hints of green melon and green apple and a crisp, minerally finish. On the other hand, it is a quintessential Italian white: It’s often too light to excite palates tuned to a heavier, oakier, more alcoholic frequency.
The Orvieto zone hugs the western edge of this tiny region, spilling over slightly into Lazio to the south. Most of the vineyards designated as the classico zone huddle around the commune of Orvieto itself, then spread north and east to take in the area around Lake Corbara, a Tiber-fed reservoir. The soils in the Classico—which comprises about 65 percent of the total vineyard area in the zone—are especially chalky, which is often reflected in wines with a tactile, mineral edge and naturally high acidity.
What makes Orvieto style difficult to pinpoint is the highly variable grape mix prescribed by the DOC. The formula calls for 40 to 60 percent trebbiano (the ultra-vigorous trebbiano toscano clone is widely used), 15 to 25 percent verdello (a light local variety), and a mix of grapes including grechetto, canaiolo bianco (here called drupeggio), malvasia toscana, and others. Naturally, this allows for wide variations in the wines’ personalities.
As such, Orvieto wine tends to be divided into two camps: estates whose wines are yet another addition to the sea of neutral Italian trebbiano; and those who take advantage of the liberal DOC blending policy and use as much of the other, more interesting grapes as possible. The two varieties gaining prominence are grechetto, a distinctive local variety, and chardonnay.
The most dramatic example of this is the wine called “Cervaro della Sala,” a blend of 80 percent chardonnay and 20 percent grechetto made by Antinori’s Castello della Sala estate. Introduced with the 1985 vintage, the wine is easily the most recognized label in Orvieto—although it isn’t an Orvieto DOC wine. Originally a vino da tavola and now labeled with an Umbria IGT designation, Castello della Sala is in one sense emblematic of the difficulties that the more traditional Italian whites have had in the market recently. In another sense, “Cervaro della Sala” opened the eyes of producers in Orvieto to what was possible in the zone: In the cool, chalky heights, chardonnay retains the minerally class it exhibits more readily in Burgundy, while the local grechetto adds not only a firmness of structure but an assertively aromatic note reminiscent of rennet apples.
Antinori literature describes grechetto as a “small, dark-yellow, thick-skinned, highly acidic, low-yielding, notably tannic Umbrian grape that produces creamy wines with unique spicy, herbal, freshly mown hay flavors, good structure, good aging potential, and elegance.” That’s a mouthful, to be sure, but there’s no question that grechetto has emerged as the premier native grape in Umbria. Although it is believed to be related in some way to the greco of Campania, there’s really no confusing the two: Where greco is faintly aromatic, grechetto is assertively so; where greco is generally crisp yet creamy, grechetto checks its juiciness with an almost tannic grip.
Increasingly, Orvieto producers are upping the amount of grechetto in their blends to the maximum the DOC law will allow, lending the wines more penetrating aromas than the notoriously faint trebbiano can give them. Chardonnay, meanwhile, is increasingly used to add some fat to the often thin Orvieto frame.
Beyond tinkering with their blending formulas, Orvieto producers are also doing more with what they’ve got in both the vineyards and the cellar. Some are experimenting with barrel-fermented versions of their wines—examples include “Velico” from the Le Velette estate. Others are identifying their top vineyard sites and making cru wines from them, such as La Carraia with its “Poggio Calvelli” bottling and Palazzone with its creamy and substantial “Terre Vineate.” In fact, when compared to some of Italy’s other classic white-wine DOCs, Orvieto may well be the most dynamic. The liberal blending formula gives producers a broader palette to work with, and as evidenced by the Orvieto wines from top producers such as Palazzone, Decugnano Barbi, Barberani, and those mentioned above, each vintage is a slight remodeling of the classic Orvieto structure. In the same way that Gavi or Soave shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand because of what they once were, Orvieto merits another look for what it is—and for what it’s becoming.
Outside of Orvieto, meanwhile, Umbrian white wine is a hodgepodge. Trebbiano and grechetto are the ruling grape varieties, although generally speaking the latter is the one to look for. Not only are many Orvieto producers making “varietal” grechettos (Bigi and Barberani among them), but some excellent grechetto-based whites can be found farther inland, in the Colli Martani DOC zone.
The Colli Martani spreads across a broad swath of central Umbria, taking in the commune of Montefalco, which is more famous for its red, Sagrantino. But many of the producers who are famed for sagrantino-based reds are making grechettos in the Colli Martani DOC, including Arnaldo Caprai, Antonelli, and Rocca di Fabbri; others are making blends or IGT grechettos à la Antinori. Other good places to look for good grechetto are the Colli del Trasimeno zone, surrounding the giant Lake Trasimeno near the border with Tuscany, and the newish Assisi DOC, which includes provisions for a varietal grechetto.
And then there are whites that don’t fit into any category at all, such as the varietal chardonnays made at Lungarotti, among many other estates. Without a doubt, these chardonnays are often excellent wines (also worth checking out are those of Rio Grande and of course Castello della Sala), but as is so often the case in the diversified world of Italian wine, how do you find the time to drink it when there’s so much else out there?
On the red side, there are some interesting parallels to be drawn between Umbria and its sometime overlord, Tuscany. For one, sangiovese remains the most-planted grape variety, used most famously in the Torgiano Rosso DOCG blends of Lungarotti but found throughout the region. For another, the Bordeaux varieties have staged a bona-fide invasion of Umbria, with the result being a new crop of “super-Umbro” reds modeled after their more famous Tuscan neighbors. Right now, Umbria is a clash of the traditional earthy, foresty sangiovese-based blends of Lungarotti (and the bigger, blacker sagrantino reds from Montefalco) versus the modern—a growing population of wines from cabernet, merlot, and other international varieties, made toastier and richer by way of barrique aging.
It all still starts with Lungarotti, whose classic sangiovese-canaiolo blend, “Rubesco,” remains the benchmark Umbrian red. Warm and spicy, the wine is a traditional style in that it is aged not in small barriques but in large casks, or botte, that hold more than a thousand gallons. Whereas a wine aged in barrique retains more color and forward fruitiness (along with a decided toastiness from the wood), a wine aged in a larger cask has more surface area exposed to oxygen, which naturally sneaks through the staves in the barrel. Like any botte-aged wine, Rubesco tends toward a brickish-ruby color and has a more mature aromatic profile, even as a young wine: Layered on top of its core of black-cherry fruitiness are notes of cinnamon, saddle leather, and tar, savory aromas that don’t necessarily jibe with the “fruit bomb” model so popular today.
“The secret to our wines is not a long time spent in wood but a long time spent in bottle,” says Teresa Severini of Lungarotti, noting that most of her top reds—including the Rubesco cru “Vigna Monticchio” and the sangiovese-cabernet blend “San Giorgio”—are held for a minimum of five years in bottle before they are released for sale. “You don’t see many wineries holding wines for that long anymore.”
Indeed, you don’t. And as such the Lungarotti wines continue to stand alone—not because there aren’t any other reds on the market, but because there still really aren’t any reds to compare them to. Whereas the trend in Umbria today is toward blacker, richer, sweeter reds, the Lungarotti wines remain resolutely savory. In a sense, they’ve been pre-aged before they hit the store shelf.
Bridging the gap somewhat between traditional and modern are the wines of the Montefalco DOC zone, which takes in five towns in a broad basin of vineyards southeast of Torgiano. Created only in 1979, the Montefalco DOC is nevertheless a historic one, and its native grape—the mysterious sagrantino—belongs only to the locals.
“Sagrantino doesn’t exist anywhere else,” asserts Marco Caprai, the young owner of the Arnaldo Caprai estate in Montefalco, probably the best-known in the area. The theories on sagrantino’s origins abound—some say it’s of Greek heritage, others say it was brought to the area from France by the Franciscan friars. And while it is not produced in great quantities it has become the red grape most readily identified with Umbria.
Montefalco wine is broken in two. The basic Montefalco DOC rosso is actually comprised primarily of sangiovese (60 to 70 percent), with a minimum of 10 percent sagrantino and the remainder filled with other grapes of the maker’s choosing. The varietal Sagrantino di Montefalco, comprised of 100 percent sagrantino, has always been given its own DOC designation. In 1992, Sagrantino di Montefalco was elevated to DOCG status, a move that made official what most producers already knew: That the dense, dark, sappy reds made from sagrantino are like nothing else in Italy.
The sagrantino vineyards of Montefalco and its surrounding communes sit in a basin enveloped by the Apennines, in fairly rich clay soils interspersed with varying percentages of sand and limestone. Although the heat in the area can get intense during the summertime, the interplay of mountain and Mediterranean currents brought up via the Tiber help moderate the climate somewhat, lengthening the growing season. In this environment, sagrantino grows into a burly, brambly red with aromas ranging from blackberry jam to pine tar, the overall effect being a contrast of savory and sweet flavors, wrapped in a powerful package.
“Sagrantino is exceptionally rich in the polyphenols that give a wine color, and is considerably more tannic than sangiovese,” says Caprai. “This is a wine with incredible aging potential, but the tannins are sweet rather than sharp, which makes it drinkable when it’s young.”
The only thing holding sagrantino back is that there isn’t that much of it. Only about 400 acres of sagrantino vines are in existence, making the wines difficult to locate (Lungarotti alone produces more wine than the entire Sagrantino di Montefalco DOC). But they are out there, and the roster of producers working with the grape continues to grow. Along with Caprai, the noteworthy names include Colpetrone, Milziade Antano, Fratelli Adanti, Rocca di Fabbri, Antonelli, and the great Paolo Bea, whose earthy wines bring to mind some of the inkiest Australian shiraz.
Beyond the Torgiano-Montefalco hills, meanwhile, anything goes when it comes to reds. The two most interesting areas at the moment are the hills of Lake Trasimeno, where producers take advantage of a very liberal blending formula in the Colli del Trasimeno DOC to craft rich, international-style blends; and Orvieto, where a growing number of producers are making eye-opening reds to complement their oft-overlooked whites.
Bordeaux-style blends are the order of the day in these zones, particularly in Orvieto, where the recently created Rosso Orvietano DOC is especially broad-based in its prescriptions for which grapes can be used. (Of course, this tends to be academic since many of the better-known super-Umbro wines are made outside the parameters of DOC, such as the potent cabernet-syrah blend made at Salviano, an up-and-coming estate in Orvieto.) And it merits mentioning that the mastermind behind an alarming number of these wines is a consultant named Riccardo Cotarella. Although Cotarella works with a wide array of wineries all over Italy, his consultancy is based in the southern-Umbrian city of Terni, and as such he has his fingers in the fermenters of an exceptionally high number of Umbrian estates. At this writing, he works with: the Pieve del Vescovo property near Lake Trasimeno, whose “Lucciaio” Rosso is a unique blend of merlot, sangiovese, canaiolo, and gamay; La Carraia in Orvieto, whose well-regarded “Fobiano” is 90 percent merlot and 10 percent cabernet; Palazzone in Orvieto, whose “Armaleo” is a blend of cabernets sauvignon and franc, aged for a year in barriques; and Rio Grande in Penna, which makes a Bordeaux blend called “Casa Pastore.” And those are just the biggest names on his roster.
Cotarella is known for being unabashedly modern in his winemaking approach, creating reds that are as extracted as possible, with a creamy sheen of new oak. His touch is definitely evident in the above-mentioned wines, which have become some of Umbria’s most critically acclaimed: They are reds that are both powerful and immediately accessible, with a luxurious, almost sweet fruitiness. Some purists see these blends as a standardization of Umbrian wine, but then again, Cotarella has seized the moment in a region with little red-wine tradition to speak of. Although a wine such as La Palazzola’s rich and extracted merlot (not made by Cotarella) may not strike the traditionalist as an authentic Umbrian wine, there’s no clear indication—other than sagrantino—of what an authentic Umbrian wine is. In the spirit of Giorgio Lungarotti, the region’s producers are looking forward, not back, and the results are increasingly interesting.
As in other regions of Italy, Umbria has a few DOC zones in which a handful of spumanti are produced—or allowed to be produced, anyway. But they are generally more localized products. On the other hand, Umbria is quietly turning out some of the best sweet wines in Italy. In their late-harvest wines, the producers of Orvieto transform an often ho-hum white into a golden nectar tinged with the smoky complexity of botrytis bunch rot, while in Montefalco the sagrantino grape is made into a sweet passito so powerful it brings to mind a vintage Port.
The sweet wines of Orvieto have been heralded for centuries. In the past, the wines were thick and sweet because that was all the winemaking technology of the day would allow. But the wines—however accidental—became the favored tipple of the popes who summered at Orvieto’s Lake Corbara. These days, vintners allow their grapes to hang on the vine until they are superconcentrated, then allow the cool autumn fog that descends on the vineyards of Orvieto to work its magic and create the “noble rot” (muffa nobile) called botrytis. As discussed elsewhere, the effect of botrytis is to create a glycerine-rich wine with a hint of smokiness, and there are a number of excellent Orvieto sweet wines available in the market: Castello della Sala’s luscious “Muffato della Sala” tops the list, but nearly all of the best Orvieto producers make a late-harvest version, including Barberani (theirs is called “Calcaia”) and Decugnano dei Barbi (“Pourriture Nobile”).
Even more intense are the sweet reds of Montefalco, made by drying the grapes on straw mats to concentrate their sugars, à la Recioto della Valpolicella. The appassimento, or passito, process transforms an already dense red wine into an evocation of liquid milk chocolate and blackberry preserves, so inky and rich it is a dessert in itself. Among the better versions are the knockout passito made by Paolo Bea, as well as the passiti of Antonelli, Caprai, and Adanti. If you do nothing else in your explorations of Umbria, find these wines.
PROVINCES: Perugia (PG), Terni (TR)
CAPITAL: Perugia
KEY WINE TOWNS: Montefalco, Orvieto, Torgiano
TOTAL VINEYARD AREA*: 14,203 hectares, or 35,095 acres. Rank: 14th
TOTAL WINE PRODUCTION*: 966,000 hectoliters, or 25,521,720 gallons (14th); 58% white, 42% red
DOC WINE PRODUCED*: 20.7% (11th)
SPECIALTY FOODS: olive oil; black truffles from Norcia and Spoleto; lentils from Castelluccio; Chiuscolo (a soft, spreadable sausage from Norcia); dried pasta; chocolates (most famously those of Perugina).
*2000 figures. Rankings out of 20 regions total (Trentino–Alto Adige counted as one). Source: Istituto Statistica Mercati Agro–Alimentari (ISMEA), Rome.
GRECHETTO: Thought to be a sub-variety of greco, it has emerged as the best native white vine in the region. Many producers are vinifying it on its own or increasing its role in their Orvieto blends at the expense of blander varieties such as trebbiano.
TREBBIANO: This highly mutable family is widespread in Umbria, the most popular sub-variety being the prolific trebbiano toscano. There’s also a distinct subvariety called trebbiano Spoletino (named for the town of Spoleto).
CHARDONNAY: Made famous in these parts by Castello della Sala’s “Cervaro della Sala,” which combines chardonnay with grechetto to create a rich yet crisp white.
OTHERS: VERDELLO, used in Orvieto, Torgiano, and Colli Trasimeno blends; DRUPEGGIO, the Umbrian name for CANAIOLO BIANCO, a blending variety also found in Tuscany.
SANGIOVESE: Considered a Tuscan import, it is the dominant red variety in the region, and found in the majority of the region’s DOC-classified reds.
SAGRANTINO: Found only in Umbria, it’s origins are unclear, and only about 250 acres of vineyards are planted with the variety. A deep, dark, tannic grape whose wines have an exotic spiciness.
GAMAY: Although more readily associated with Beaujolais, this variety turns up throughout Italy, and plays a significant role in Umbria’s Colli Trasimeno DOC, where it is sometimes vinified as a varietal wine.
OTHERS: CABERNET SAUVIGNON, used increasingly in IGT and VdT blends; MERLOT, also popular in new-generation blends; CANAIOLO, a Tuscan native used in Torgiano and elsewhere.
For most of its modern history, Umbria had but a handful of red wines capable of aging for any significant period—the sangiovese-based reds of Lungarotti in Torgiano and the Montefalco Sagrantino wines made a few communes over. Not much has changed, although the last decade has seen a host of powerful, barrique-aged reds come into the market from a variety of far-flung places, including Orvieto, which was previously known only for whites. Benchmark years for the Lungarotti wines include 1990, 1995, 1997, 2000, and 2001. For Montefalco Sagrantino, the last decade in particular was especially kind: Look for wines from 1995 and 1997, 2000, and 2001. All were exceptional years for this powerhouse red.
There may be no more harmonious melding of wine and history than Orvieto, a striking medieval town in southwestern Umbria, steps from the border with Lazio. Aside from the renowned duomo and other historic attractions, wine lovers can check out the dramatic Castello della Sala, owned by Tuscany’s Antinori family, which can be visited by appointment (076-38-60-51). Those in search of the ultimate mountain food should make an excursion to the upland town of Norcia in Umbria’s Apennine foothills, a town which is famous for a variety of pork products as well as truffles. And those who prefer one-stop shopping might choose to base themselves in Torgiano, at the Lungarotti family’s famed Le Tre Vaselle (Corso Garibaldi 48, 075-988-04-47; www.lungarotti.it), where you can eat well and visit both a wine and olive-oil museum in the course of about two blocks. Torgiano is also a good base from which to visit Assisi, Spoleto, and Montefalco.
Poggio del Lupo Orvieto Classico, $
Castello della Sala Orvieto Classico Superiore, $
Palazzone Orvieto Classico “Terre di Vineate,” $
Cool, clean, dewy, delicately aromatic: These descriptors could be applied to any number of light Italian whites. And so it is with Orvieto, another delicate white based on trebbiano but, in this case, including a wider array of “supporting” varieties. These wines share certain characteristics—aromas of green apple and fresh-cut hay, and crisp acidity—but they differ in weight on the palate. The Poggio del Lupo wine is perhaps the most straightforward and clean of the three. The Castello della Sala wine includes a substantial percentage of chardonnay in its blend, which may account for its rounder, fleshier character. And the Palazzone is probably the most succulent, an example of the peachier, creamier flavors that can be extracted by leaving the grapes on the vine longer and fermenting their juice (or at least a portion of it) in oak barrels. Still, these are lighter-styled whites that offer a crisply acidic contrast to truffle- and butter-drenched pastas.
Lungarotti Torgiano Rosso “Rubesco Riserva Vigna Monticchio,” $
La Fiorita-Lamborghini Rosso dell’Umbria “Campoleone,” $
These two bottles mark a generational shift in Umbrian winemaking: On the one hand is the Lungarotti wine, made from a more traditional mix of sangiovese and canaiolo, aged in mostly large oak barrels and held in bottle for more than five years before release. The wine is spicy and savory, with the black-cherry and forest-floor aromas typical of sangiovese, but its structure is fine, even delicate, with a good dose of acidity. The Lamborghini wine is a little more supercharged, not just with a softening dose of merlot in the blend but with time spent in small oak barriques. It is a more youthful, chunky, deeply colorful wine, with more toasty oak influence layered over the core of fruit; plump and oaky, it is emblematic of the direction many modern Italian wines are going. On the other hand, the Lungarotti wine, aromatic and earthy—if not quite as thick and juicy—is what might be called a traditional style. Is one better than the other? That’s the debate raging in Italy these days.
Fattoria Milziade Antano Sagrantino di Montefalco, $$
Paolo Bea Sagrantino di Montefalco, $$$
Arnaldo Caprai Sagrantino di Montefalco, $$$
Make an effort to locate these three reds, because they are some of the true sleepers in the world of Italian red wine (the first two will be tougher to locate than the third, but all three are available in the States). All are warm, rich, weighty reds, the kinds of wines that bring to mind a hearty, spicy stew. The Antano wine is probably the most restrained of the three, although it is not short on flavor: think of blackberries and wintry spices such as mace and nutmeg. The Bea wine is earthier, funkier, with a personality not unlike that of a burly Aussie shiraz. And the Caprai is black as night and slick as dark chocolate, a melding of the black fruit flavors of the sagrantino grape and the toasty aromas and texture that comes from barrique aging. Try these rich yet spicy reds with birds such as pheasant and squab (both Umbrian favorites) and other game meats.
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