Natural Wine - Alberto Tedeschi
6/17/10 -
It was great to read Eric Asimov’s article on natural wines in yesteday's Times. We are long-time supporters of natural wine; we don’t want our passionate attachment and proselytizing on the subject to come across as “finger-wagging sanctimony”, but we’ll take our chances; we’re convinced that good – emphasize good – natural wines are some of the best wines we’ve ever tasted and drunk: “When successful, natural wines can be superb, seeming bold, vibrant and fresh, graceful and unforced”, and “among the most beautiful, intriguing wines that I have ever tasted” pretty much sums it up (with thanks to Mr. Asimov, and the New York Times).
As wine merchants in New York we operate in incredibly privileged conditions; huge quantities of wines are offered on the market here, and we can and do taste a tremendous number of wines; almost anything we request will be at our door in 24 hours, and every week brings a new series of trade tastings, dinners, tasting groups, etc etc. We hardly ever encounter wine that’s faulty or defective from a technical point of view – essentially everything is at least potable. The great majority of what’s offered is perfectly good but pretty much perfectly dull, lacking character, focus, or expression of place of origin. While there are plenty of excellent conventionally-made wines for sale (including some at Chambers Street Wines), again and again we find that natural wines offer the potential to deliver the purity of expression and sense of place that we crave, that fires our imagination, that brings us back to the table invigorated.
I had the good luck to attend two fairs of natural wines in Italy in April – more than 200 producers were showing their wines. It was a fantastic experience. By the start of the third day (that is, the first day of the second fair) I was effectively high from the sheer joy of tasting so many good wines (tasting, not drinking!) and from the pleasure of meeting so many smart, thoughtful, conscientious and independently-minded winemakers. Alberto Tedeschi was our fourth stop that morning, and his wine was so good that it remains one of the highlights of the trip. Nonetheless I’ve been anxious to taste the wine again, and to have my colleagues try it so that they could hopefully confirm that my impression wasn’t just irrational exuberance in action. Now the wine’s arrived, and it seems they agree.
Tedeschi has a very small property inside a regional park. It’s a little less than 5 acres, which is miniscule by most winery standards; from 25-35 year old vines of the local grape called Pignoletto he makes about 4500 bottles of wine annually. This is a natural wine: organic (certified) farming; hand-harvested (machine harvesting 5 acres might be a little like that funny, old John Deere ad of the guy using a harvester to mow his back yard, but people do it). The grapes are pressed in whole-clusters, and the must is fermented with indigenous yeasts in the open-top wood fermentation tanks called ‘tini’; once fermentation is complete the wine is moved to large wooden barrels for about 15 months aging on the lees, and is then bottled without fining, filtration, or “any other corrective procedure in the winery”. Only a tiny bit of sulphur is used.
