Italian Wine, Chocolate, Guitar Playing and Thou

My wine tasting club, the Washington Wineiacs, met last Friday evening to taste and enjoy Italian wines. We tasted wines from the Piedmont region in the northwest, the Veneto region in the northeast, from the Islands of Sardegna and Sicily, and the Umbria region in central Italy.

As usual, we started out the evening with a bottle of bubbles called Desiderio Jeio Prosecco, a wonderful dry white wine made from the appropriately named Prosecco grape. It was delicious and tasted like citrus, and at $14.99 is an inexpensive alternative to Champagne during our current economic crisis. Our group was smaller than usual as several members had other commitments but somehow we managed to make it through the task of tasting all of the wines while noshing on cheeses, crackers, shrimp, and dark chocolate.

My personal favorites of the evening were the Vietti Roero Arneis (of course, I bought it! See the second white below for details) and the Prunotto Barbaresco that Kathleen brought (see the last red wine below for details). And my favorite food of the evening was a decadent bar of dark chocolate that Natalie brought and which we inhaled pretty quickly. The bar was an organic dark chocolate bar (72% cocoa) called Blanxart from Spain, purchased from a local market called the Greenwood Market.

We welcomed two new wine club members, Erin and Natalie. A few of us were lucky enough, at the very end of the evening after most everyone had left, to enjoy some live Spanish-style music played by Erin on my father’s very old, beat up acoustic guitar. I didn’t think that guitar had any beautiful notes left in it but I was so wrong. Thank you so much for the private concert, Erin!

Here are the stats on the wines that we tasted.

Whites:

1) Prosecco Brut – Desiderio Jeio / dry sparkling white / made from Prosecco grapes.
Region: Veneto (NE Italy)
Vintage: unknown
Alcohol: 11.5%
Price: $14.99

2) Vietti winery – Roero Arneis / dry white / made from Arneis grapes.
Region: Piedmont (in Italian it’s spelled Piemonte and located in NW Italy)
Vintage: 2007
Alcohol: 13%
Price: $27 (if you’re wondering why this white wine is priced higher than most whites, it’s because Vietti winery is a winery in Piedmont that has been owned by the same family for five generations, the vineyards are small, are low-yielding to retain high quality, the grapes are handpicked, again, to retain high quality, and there are only a limited number of cases that are imported into this country.)

Reds:

1) Cannonau di Sardegna Reserva / Dry red / 100% Cannonau grapes (according to “The Oxford Companion to Wine,” Cannonau grapes are thought to be a clone of Grenache grapes from Spain. I wrote a post about this same wine back in January. You can read it here: http://thewinemuseinseattle.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html)
Region: Island of Sardinia (spelled Sardegna in Italian and located in the Mediterranean sea west of mainland Italy.)
Vintage: 2005
Alcohol: 13.5%
Price: $12.99
2) La Carraia / Dry red / 100% Sangiovese grapes (this is the grape in Chianti)
Region: Umbria (Central Italy)
Vintage: 2007
Alcohol: 13%
Price: $11.99
3) Rosso Colosi / Dry red / 100% Nero d’Avola grape (this grape is also known as Calabrese and is Sicily’s most widely planted grape.)
Region: Island of Sicily (in Italian it’s spelled Sicilia and it’s located off the toe of the “boot.”)
Vintage: 2006
Alcohol: 12.5%
Price: $12.00
4) Prunotto Bric Turot - Barberesco / Dry red / 100% Nebbiolo grapes (considered Piedmont’s noblest grape)
Region: Piedmont (in Italian it’s spelled Piemonte and is located in NW Italy.)
Vintage: 2001
Alcohol: 14%
Price $80.00

The evening was another wine tasting success and we all learned a lot about Italian wines. Next month’s WA Wineiacs wine tasting club meeting will be very special. I’ve asked everyone to bring their favorite wine so it should be really fun and exciting to see what wines show up! Stay tuned, wine friends!