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I Love Italian Wine and Food - Tasting A Noble Sicilian Wine

Once again, we are breaking into the series tasting wines from each of Italy?s twenty wine regions. This article examines a noble red wine from the island of Sicily in southern Italy. It is very far from a bargain wine. We were about a dozen to taste it. I?ll be presenting my opinions and those of others.

So far, the wines that I purchased for this series have cost a maximum of about $20. I thought that I should try one at about double the price. I felt that by going to a relatively unknown region such as Sicily I might get a bargain. A lot of wines from the Tuscany or Piedmont regions of Italy cost $40 or much, much more. Such is not the case for Sicily.

Italy?s top of the line wine designation is DOCG, which stands for Denominazione di Origine Controllata Garantita (Denomination of Controlled, Guaranteed Origin.) There are no DOCG wines in Sicily. But the formal designation is not very important, many Super Tuscans costing at least twice my budget carry ?inferior? designations. The wine I chose carries the Contea di Sclafania DOC designation, having been promoted from the Sicilia IGT designation. The wine reviewed here is produced by the same company as the white Sicilian wine reviewed in my article I Love Italian Wine and Food ? The Sicily Region. This was no accident. First I bought the relatively expensive red. Then I bought the white wine for about one third the price. This white wine carries the Sicilia IGT designation, but I found it to be pretty good. Let?s take a look at its much more expensive red cousin.

Wine Reviewed
Tasca d?Almerita Regaleali ?Rosso del Conte? Contea di Sclafania DOC 2002 15% alcohol about $38

About 35 years ago, Count Tasca d?Almerita decided to make a flagship Sicilian red wine from two local grapes, Nero d?avola and Perricone. Nero d?avola is a thin-skinned grape that ripens extremely late, perhaps three weeks after Cabernet Sauvignon. Consequently this variety is virtually limited to Sicily. Some think that it is a relative of Syrah. Nero d?avola wines are usually dark and tarry, with lots of black fruit aroma and taste. They are rich and well structured, with firm and silky tannins. Many of the grapes in this bottle came from vines over forty years old. The plants are grown as shrubs, a somewhat unusual practice. This wine was aged for twelve months in French oak barrels, about 60% of which are new. It can be cellared for years. I only wish that I could taste a ten or twenty year old Rosso del Conte.

I?ll spare you the marketing materials and reviews that tend to be very laudatory. Here are the comments from my tasting group.

A bit of black fruit. Highly oaked. Toasted grains, toast, grilled barley. Nervous and wild. Garriga (a mixture of spices found in areas near the Mediterranean Sea). Leather, dried meat, musk, and underbrush. A strong presence. Acidic and tannic, but not very long. Moderately long, fairly tannic. Round. More fruit than oak.

When asked to guess the price, the general consensus was considerably lower than what I actually paid. It?s fair to assume that most of these people would not purchase this wine, even if they do buy wines in this price range. On the other hand, it?s not hard to find reviews on the Internet that draw the opposite conclusion. In fact, every review that I read was more laudatory than my tasting group was. And my thoughts?

Personally, I would rather drink wine with food than without food. There were only a few sips left in the bottle but I was able to squeeze out two pairings. First I tried slow-cooked beef ribs with potatoes and a side of green beans in tomato sauce. This wine was the essence of mouth-filling, a tiny sip enveloped my mouth with pleasure. The wine?s acidity and tannins handled the meat?s fat. If only I had more.

Isola is a Sicilian fresh cheese made from sheep?s milk. The Isola cheese was powerful, strong smelling and strong tasting, especially when you crunched into a peppercorn. The Rosso del Conte?s richness and complexity was quite noticeable in the presence of this cheese. I am glad that I didn?t waste the last precious sips of this wine on a weak cheese.

Final verdict. It?ll probably be quite some time before I buy another bottle of Rosso del Conte. I do think that it?s worth the price, but I can?t say that I got a $100 wine for less than $40. Have you ever done so?

Levi Reiss has authored or co-authored ten books on computers and the Internet, but to be honest, he would rather just drink fine Italian or other wine, accompanied by the right foods. He teaches classes in computers at an Ontario French-language community college. His wine website is http://www.theworldwidewine.com

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Birthdays (others). Try to buy something in the vintage of their birth year. I suggest you seek some expert input on this, as years can vary drastically, and the older the wine, the more likely there could be, by chance, something wrong with it. Don�t forget fortified wines like Madeira or Port, to broaden your options. For example, a friend turned 40 this year, so I gave him a 40-year tawny port.
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How many times have you overheard someone in a restaurant or shop saying they want a wine that "isn't too sweet"? Maybe you've said this yourself; most people think they want a dry wine. Dry seems sophisticated. In fact, this is an easy demand to meet, since most table wines today (with the exception of White Zinfandel) are entirely dry--in the technical sense that they contain virtually no residual sugar. All of the natural sugar in the grapes has been converted into alcohol through fermentation. What most people taste as sweetness is really fruitiness. Ripe wine grapes, when fermented, yield a wine that tastes of fruit (but curiously, not usually of grapes), and fruitiness powerfully suggests sweetness. But this isn't a bad thing! On the contrary, winemakers around the world go to great lengths to extract as much ripeness, and resulting fruitiness, from their grapes as possible. Speaking very broadly, most wines (especially reds) that taste dry simply lack fruit and flavor, and aren't very good. Such wines, if they are clean and have refreshing acidity, can be ok to wash down a meal, but they won't enhance it much. Many white wines are designed to be balanced on the acidic and refreshing side, but even then the better examples will display intensity of fruit. In complex wines, ripe fruitiness is balanced by tannins, acidity, and alcohol, and often complemented by flavors from oak barrels, or intriguing mineral or earthy elements, but the essence is always the fruit. So next time, ask your waiter or wine merchant for a wine with "good fruit."
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Many new wine drinkers have a decidedly sweet tooth, having been raised on coke, candy and chocolate as their 'normal sweetness level'. On the other hand, red wines are known for their health benefits - and also for their tannic, non-sweet flavors. Many new wine drinkers therefore seek a red wine that is as sweet as possible.
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Dry Alsatian wines are treasured around the world - Staten Island Advance - SILive.com

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 10:32:18 GMT

Dry Alsatian wines are treasured around the world Staten Island Advance - SILive.com, NY - Apr 16, 2008 Unlike German wines, which are predominantly low in alcohol and sweet, most Alsatian wines are dry. Alsace has a very dry climate with summers that are ...

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