2004 La Stoppa “Ageno” White Blend, Emilia-Romagna, Italy
Tuesday, November 4th, 2008
Most people faced a with the choice of merely a specific color of wine to drink will consider their stated preference between the options of red, white, or pink. My choice is none of the above. If I had to swear my allegiance to one color of wine, it would be orange.
I have a friend who has seriously suggested that the world ought to acknowledge orange as a legitimate fourth color when it comes to wine. I don’t know that I’d go that far, but I would seriously suggest that everyone drink as much of it as they can get their hands on.
Orange wines aren’t easy to come by, but to my mind they represent some of the most exciting wines being made on the planet. And this wine is a perfect example.
La Stoppa winery began in 1973 with the vision of Rafael Pantaleoni, who purchased the estate with the hopes of making a small amount of wine and an honest living for his family. The land, which occupies a nook in the Piacenza province of Italy′s Emilia-Romagna region, has been planted with vines for well over 100 years. The estate’s original owners left Pantaleoni and his daughter, who now runs the winery, a gift of some extremely old vines growing both Italian and French varieties.
With a lot of work, the Pantaleoni family have retained and nurtured some of the oldest vines of the estate, as well as carefully replanting and restructuring the vineyards to include more of the local varieties. The roughly 70 acres of vineyards in the shade of the estate′s medieval tower are rather sparsely planted as well as nutrient poor from a soil standpoint. Consequently, those 70 acres don’t produce much fruit, but Elena Pantaleoni and her winemaker Giulio Armani make good use of what they get.
And by good use, I mean making wines that speak of a startling vision, of which this wine named Ageno is perhaps the best example.
This wine is made from a combination of three white grape varieties: Malvasia, Trebbiano, and the extremely local variety known as Ortrugo, with the majority of the wine being Malvasia grown on 36-year-old vines. As a blend this is already somewhat unusual, but things get truly wacky as soon as the grapes are picked and destemmed, for instead of being vinified like a white wine, this one is treated like a red, which means chiefly that it is fermented with native yeasts in contact with its skins for more than 30 days. After this it is pressed off into a combination of steel tanks and neutral oak barrels where it ages on its lees (the sediment that settles to the bottom of the barrel) for 12 months before bottling without filtration of any kind.
This is the third vintage of Ageno of which only about 160 cases are made. This small quantity means that it may be difficult to find, but if you can, it is worth all the effort and whatever price you might have to pay, as it represents both a great achievement of artisan winemaking as well as a perfect example of why orange wines kick ass.
Tasting Notes:
A gorgeous medium amber-orange color in the glass, with a distinct haze of cloudiness, this wine has a phenomenal, almost otherworldly nose of exotic flowers, saffron, and orange creamsicle. On the palate it is weighty, with a texture that is almost tannic in quality, gripping the tongue with like a velvet glove. From a flavor standpoint it is nearly indescribable — brown sugar, honeysuckle, saffron, cream soda, and unbelievably, the distinct flavor of coffee and cream on a finish that can be measured in minutes. Evolves gorgeously in the glass, and I highly recommend decanting for 1-2 hours prior to serving, especially if you can keep it cool while decanting.
Food Pairing:
While the amazing individuality of this wine begs for careful consideration on its own, I enjoyed it with hard Italian cheeses and Jamon Iberico.
Overall Score: between 9.5 and 10
How Much?: $30
This wine is available for purchase on the Internet.
Original post by Alfonso Cevola
I drink wine from as many different countries as I can, as often as I can. I firmly believe that the only way I keep learning anything as a wine lover will be through continued exploration.
Like Jazz standards interpreted endlessly by masters and amateurs alike, grapes find infinite expression in the hands of winemakers around the world. These interpretations, filtered through the lens of a regions climate and geology, are often wildly different from place to place. Syrah from Paso Robles in California, the Barossa Valley in Australia, Cornas in France’s Northern Rhone Valley, and Washington State’s Colombia Gorge are so wildly different you might even question that they were the same grape in a blind tasting.
I try to avoid getting into discussions about terroir for the same reasons I avoid arguing about religion: no one has any proof, but everyone seems to have strong opinions. I tend to share my own opinions only amongst those whom I have pre-screened as like-minded when it comes to issues of how and whether wines can actually taste of the place from which they come.
In the far Northeastern corner of Italy there lies a countryside that is better defined by wine than by any geopolitical affiliation. The far eastern edge of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia winegrowing region has been a member of many countries and many empires, and by now its people are used to living in different countries every three or four decades, it seems. The one constant in this area of small picturesque valleys and numerous natural limestone caves (good for hiding from whoever your present occupiers are), has always been wine, and in particular, white wines, some of which I will unabashedly say, rank among the worlds greatest.
California’s Carneros AVA (American Viticultural Area) is unusual in many respects. It’s most well known eccentricity is that it exists divided between two other AVAs — Sonoma County and Napa Valley. One of its other oddities, at least for me, is the fact that the best wines from this region are invariably made by producers who do not actually have wineries there. Many have argued with me on this point, but I maintain that, overwhelmingly, this is true.