The Italian Wine Podcast was an official media partner of wine2wine Business Forum 2024 and, in this capacity, was delighted to present a series of interviews and highlights from the Forum. This conversation took place at wine2wine Business Forum 2024 in Verona. Gill Gordon-Smith DipWSET, IWE and Cristina Mercuri DipWSET held a session discussing aged Italian white wines and their rising importance.
Gill Gordon-Smith DipWSET, IWE, Stevie Kim and Cristina Mercuri DipWSET
Stevie Kim, Founder of the Italian Wine Podcast, introduced the speakers, Cristina Mercuri and Gill Gordon-Smith, describing them as two very talented tasters, educators, and communicators. Gill went on to say that “Cristina is doing great things for Italian wine, and especially for women in Italian wine. As a judge, and a small wine producer, and a woman in the wine industry, this is someone that we should be modeling ourselves on.” The following discussion focused on why some Italian white wines have the potential to age.
Cristina chose the wines for the tasting and she pointed out that, traditionally, the domestic and global view has been that only Italian reds wines can age well. Historically, this view has been connected with the most important and classic regions of Italy, such as Tuscany and Piedmont. However, recent consumer trends show that people are drinking more white wines. When looking at white wine consumption, Cristina focuses on a specific style and quality, as well as commercial appeal and the origin of the grapes and their wine territories.
She directs audience attention to iconic white wines from around the world such as Chablis, Riesling, Burgundy and white Rhone wines. Gill adds that, as she is from McLaren Valley in South Australia, she also has a preference for white wines from Hunter Valley, made with Semillon grapes.
Gill adds that both she and Cristina are WSET Educators, skilled in using the Systematic Approach to Tasting, developed by WSET. However, neither of them normally talk about wines in everyday conversation using WSET technical language. She acknowledges WSET’s system as a valuable tool to help people to understand why white wines age and how they develop structure. Using the technical language, it is possible to measure the concentration, the nature of the fruit, how much density of the fruit is on the palate, as well as how much acidity is in the wine. Acidity is a structural element, and is crucial for creating wines that can age beautifully in the bottle. Alcohol by volume, color, and residual sugar all play a role in white wines meant for aging. Winemaking techniques, such as the use of oak vessels and resting on lees also develop structural elements in white wines that lead to great ageing potential. Location is the final element the women discuss, bringing the focus back to Italy.
Cristina says that Italian whites are perfectly poised to surprise and delight, and she begins with Fiano as an example. She reminds the audience that the reputation of Italian white wines through history and tradition has been one of lesser quality than red wines. She adds that accountants in wineries want to sell the product quickly, without allowing time to discover how they will age. She mentions her recent conversation with an Italian wine salesperson who was shocked to hear that certain Italian white wines age very well, and this made her even more determined to talk about these wines and get them tasted, to demonstrate the aging potential.
The tasting of 4 Italian whites was held in blind conditions, to prevent the participants from forming preconceived ideas. Wine number one shows a little bit of a change in the color, pointing to some development over time Cristina says, “it still has some lovely fruit notes, and it’s got a real salinity, the acidity is still there and it has a really beautiful line in length, and it just goes on and on and on in your mouth. It has a beautiful mouthfeel, it’s slightly rounder and smoother but, for me, the acid is just fantastic.” Cristina is a Master of Wine candidate, currently in Stage 3 of the program. She acknowledges Gill’s tasting skills as a WSET Diploma holder and she comments on the value of holding professional qualifications, which give a certain authority to speakers when in public. Gill concurs, saying the WSET program is important, especially for wine professionals, as it is “something that can give you some structure and a framework to really improve and help your tasting. If you do at least one qualification, then you have something that is international, and a qualification from WSET is recognized around the world. If you want to do judging around the world, they usually ask for something like that. And I think it just can give you some confidence. It’s not the be all and end all, but it is a start.” They agree that professional certifications give people the ability to communicate wine in a proper way, making it easy for a consumer to understand, especially in a restaurant, where there is a concept of proximity to the consumer.
Continuing to assess the wine, Cristina notes a “lack of smokiness in the finish, firm acidity, and density in the mouth. The nature of the fruit is delicate, but it’s very precise. It’s pure. It’s clean. The finish is quite long, but it’s always savory. So if you have to think about the shape of the wine in the mouth, I would say that this wine is very long and linear. It’s like a line in the mouth. Like a highway. It’s very straight. And this is a characteristic of some of the Italian white wines.” She explains the BLIC approach to quality in wine, which analyses balance, length, intensity, and complexity. With this wine, she finds “a beautiful balance, this bright firm acidity and the density of the fruit, keeping the wine very slender, very high. And the finish is beautifully savory. It’s a very terroir driven wine in my opinion. Full of complexity, but still primary focused. And it has this beautiful tension in the wine, and it’s quite a luminous wine. It’s a very gastronomic white.” She moves on to the state of maturity in the wine, pointing out the color, the integration of the acidity into the fruit, the combination of primary flavors and their evolution. She reveals the wine is one to five years old and comments that it definitely has a sense of depth, and it’s very layered. “It is so drinkable. Very clean, very pure, beautiful.”
Wine number two, described by Cristina, has “a little bit of color change here, beautiful lift from the glass, gorgeous aromas on the palette, quite a lot of texture. Again, that savoriness, but with some florals interspersed in it as well. And it has such a chalky, beautiful texture, maybe a little bit of that bready note, slight autolysis, which is what you’d get in champagne. Lees are at work here. This is slightly rounder in the mouth, with beautiful acidity, and pillowy layers in your mouth, and a lot of complexity and this beautiful evolution.” Comparing 1 and 2, she asks the audience to consider whether the second wine is likely from a warmer or cooler climate than the number one, as well as whether 2 has already been aged longer than the first wine.
Wine number three has a color Cristina calls “gold, and this is probably a sign of age because as long as the wine ages in the bottle, the change of the color is evident. The nose is quite subtle with beautiful salinity, a salty character, and then there are a lot of dry flowers, white flowers, some hay also that is very beautiful, some chamomile, and also a lot of white fruit. And a little bit of just slightly roasted nuts.” She notes tertiary elements and a nutty evolution in the nose, as well as being very spicy in the mouth. The acidity has become “a little bit more pungent compared to wine number two, which was really fresh and warm and wide in the mouth. This kind of acidity is more pungent, but you still have a lot of weight, the fruit weight, coating your mouth at the end, with a bready character from lees aging.” She describes it as “a very gastronomic wine, a serious wine with a lot of layers of interest. The alcohol is around 14% and it’s definitely that spicy warmth that you’re getting. You feel the alcohol. You feel the density. You feel the power of this wine. And I think that fuller, rounder mouthfeel is due to the breakdown of the proteins in the lees. It has texture and a beautiful nuttiness to it at the finish as well.” Thinking about cool climate versus warm climate, Cristina asserts it’s warm, likely Mediterranean, probably Sicily. Precisely where in Sicily is important because Etna, where vineyards rise to 900 meters above sea level, has a lot of sunshine, but it’s not really warm. There is also the soil to consider,especially the breakdown of volcanic soils. Cristina asserts the wine “has a smoky ashiness to it. Altitude can actually give this precision, this definition of fruit, and I think that, at least in the second and third wine, you have more of the Mediterranean character.” She closes with the audience voting that this wine probably has already aged 10-15 years in the bottle.
Wine number four has a little bit deeper color here, which Cristina says would be called medium gold in WSET language. What grabs her attention is “the lift from the glass. This is so intense. This nose is really lifted and intense and has such a presence. Probably this one is the one that is slightly different from the rest of the flight because there is this generosity in the nose. There is this creaminess in the nose, there is the combination between peach, white flour, and something that is more on the oak side, the spiciness, toastiness, In the mouth, it’s so round and complex and nutty, and it has those autolytic characters as well. There is this beautiful, expansive mouthfeel. It’s broad. There is a lot of mid pallet weight also, with a lot of evolution. This is probably one of the most iconic wines of Italy.
Talking about quality and comparing and contrasting these four white wines, Cristina says “all these wines have a very high quality, super premium to iconic quality. So they are very precise, very deep. They’re very long in the palette. If I have to describe them more clearly, I would say that number one has a beautiful precision and very long verticality which is very long and savory. Number two has a beautiful balance, beautiful depth of flavors, and beautiful tension also. And so it’s a little bit more expensive in the mouthfeel, but still very compact. And the salinity of that wine is amazing. Number three is a little bit subtle on the nose, but there’s a lot of layers of interest in the mouth. A lot of depth and a lot of mouth filling characters, a lot of glycerin, a lot of volume in the mouth. And then we have number four, that is outstanding, with a lot of complexity, a lot of layers as well. It’s more expansive, more creamy.
The speakers take a vote from the audience, to choose the favorite wine of the tasting. The audience is quite split across the wines, but number four receives a lot of votes. Cristina says the winner is not important, but the tasting overall confirms that different styles of Italian white wines are very particular. There are clearly a plethora of different shades of old white wines of very high quality. Gill suggests that consortiums should have a library to keep some of these wines and age them, keeping them available for vertical tastings, proving their ability to age well.
After polling the audience on their guesses for where each wine could be from, Cristina and Gill revealed the wines. Number one is an Etna wine from 2015, 100% Carricante from the south side of the volcano at 900 meters, using old vine grapes and oak cask fermentation, produced by Tenuta di Fessina and called “A’ Puddara.” Number two is a Campania wine from 2004, 100% Fiano aged 16 years on lees, with some skin contact and no oak, produced by Di Meo and called “Erminia.” Number three is from Gavi in Piedmont, 2010, 100% Cortese grapes with 9 years on lees and 14% abv, produced by Broglia and called “Vecchia Annata.” Number four is Tuscan, a 2006 blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Blanc, with 9 months aging in oak, produced by Querciabella and called “Batàr.”
Cristina and Gill agree that this tasting has proven the existence of amazing Italian whites that can age. Cristina says they are “very special, premium quality, wines that are perfectly pitched. They have perfect tone. They are just amazing white wines. And I want to see more of these.” Gill reiterates her hope to “see more on the way we communicate Italian whites and the quality of our Italian whites. Obviously, they are wines that can be enjoyed young, beautiful, but most of them can age beautifully too. And especially if we’re going to be buying wines to put aside, these are some wines we should really consider.”
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