 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Swirl, sniff, then sip
By JOHN HENDERSON VERONA, Italy -- I was drinking my way from Chile to Bordeaux and had made a beeline for Sicily when I got intercepted in Tuscany. A giant gold, makeshift castle, draped with maroon coats of arms, was three deep in flesh and crystal. The Castello di Banfi winery had a couple dozen visitors clinking glass and sniffing bouquets.
It was only Day 2 of VinItaly, the biggest public wine fair in the world, and already the word "Salute!" echoed in my head. The wine at Castello di Banfi, in the Montalcino area about 50 miles north of Rome, was wonderful. No winery puts out a bad glass of wine at VinItaly. Not with 3,859 of them trying to carve out a bigger piece of the international market. VinItaly is special because, unlike larger wine fairs in Bordeaux and Chicago, this one is open to the public. Few wine conventions are open to anyone but wine companies, restaurateurs, bar owners and journalists. But here, for 30 euros (almost $31), anyone can spend from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. drinking the best wine on the planet, eating exotic cheese and chatting with wine representatives from Sonoma to Slovenia. As Paul Mollerman, the European director for the California Wine Institute, puts it: "It's a zoo, but it's a fun zoo." At the visitors' disposal over five days in April are 16 huge warehouses, covering nearly 200,000 square feet, with 4,000 exhibitions. Wines from 24 nations are featured. Italy's Tuscan wine alone has a warehouse the size of an airplane hangar. The Piedmont exhibit, next door, is only slightly smaller. At VinItaly, you can have an ice wine (Eiswein) from Austria, then take two steps and try a Swiss merlot. See how Canada's riesling compares with the shiraz of Australia. In between tasting days are nights in beautiful Verona, a charming city of 250,000 dating to the Roman Empire. A first century Roman arena is still in use as an opera venue. Just off one street is a secluded cobblestone courtyard; this is where the tourism-conscious city fathers have marketed an ancient building's tiny balcony as the one from which Juliet heard Romeo's come-ons. Busy tasting, not 'drinking'
I began my tour in the Lombardy building Thursday, the relatively quiet opening day. Two middle-aged men in the Monterosso di Comaschi booth stood behind a half-dozen bottles of various vintages. "Would you like a glass of wine?" I expected a sip. The man handed me half a glass of Oltrepo Montalto Pavese. It was one of the best medium red wines I have tasted: rich, smooth, not too fruity. As I slowly savored my first glass of the day, he explained that this wine was a mere six months old, outrageously young for a quality wine. When I finished, he stepped me up in class with a '97 Oltrepo Pavese Rosso Riserva. Even better than the first, it went perfect with a few delicious chunks of Grana Padano cheese (picture a soft, edible Parmesan) from a cheese board. I walked next door to Puglia, a relatively small tent that was still the size of a gymnasium, where I had a nice table wine called Salento. Then it was on to Piedmont . . . The booths were as beautiful as the wines. Frattina's booth resembled an elegant house, complete with white gate and balcony. Cantina Tollo consisted of a giant wooden wine barrel enclosing elegant people talking on cell phones, lounging on lush white furniture surrounded by ferns. There was wallpaper consisting of giant maps of Chianti territory, backlit wine racks, elaborate displays of wine bottles in expensive frames. Luna di Luna had brilliant fluorescent bottles of green (pinot blanco), red (merlot-cabernet), purple (sauvignon-merlot) and blue (chardonnay-pinot gris) deck their walls like neon signs. It wasn't just wine and decoration that lured customers: There was also food. Designer chocolates, prosciutto and pistachios in the Sicily tent. Sugar cookies, bread sticks and salami in the Piedmont tent. The Austrian booth sported an entire deli, with a woman dressed like Heidi serving a different cheese and meat every hour or so. Planning the venture
Some have tried. Exhibitors bemoan the VinItaly "customer" who doesn't appreciate wine but engages in an all-you-can-drink competition with colleagues. At this April's fair, more than 160,000 people from 84 nations attended. Thursday, Friday and Monday are reserved for business people. Restaurateurs select new wines. Wine merchants work on the next year's supply. A few journalists collect the mountain of glossy promotional brochures distributed. Bring up Saturday and Sunday, when the public has access, and wine execs' faces wrinkle up. "Most of the people who come here know wine, but also some particular people just come to drink," said Serena Battaglia, staffing the booth of Enrico Serafino in the Piedmont tent. "We ask if they (represent) a restaurant or a hotel. We'll give them a drink, but we pay more attention to those who work in this field." Yet it is Italians, as proud of their wine as they are of their national soccer team, who are the main drinking culprits, Battaglia said. "Tourists not from Italy are more interested than Italian people," she said. "They come from abroad because they really know wine." "Those are the people we're waiting for, to be honest," said Nikolaus Moser of Austria's Sepp Moser winery. "It gets pretty crowded here. Sometimes it gets on my nerves. Particular people come here, hold out their glass and say, 'Eiswein! Eiswein!' " Some exhibitors even acknowledge hiding their premium wines from the public on the weekend. A few years ago, fair organizers eased the problem by doubling the cost of admission. As I entered the huge entrance gate at Veronafiere on Thursday and Friday, scalpers were selling discounted tickets. Is there a proper way to come to this extravaganza to learn about wine? "If you don't know about wine, let the person behind the counter help you," suggested public relations woman Daniela Filippin in the Erik Banti booth. "You have to know how to behave with wine." Here are some basic do's and don'ts in touring wine fairs. First, do not gulp the liquid. When you see people swirl wine around a glass and place their nose over the rim, they are not being pretentious. They are letting the wine breathe and identifying the fruits. Try it; it works. Second, dress up. This is a professional affair. Third, ask specifics. For instance, ask first for the exhibitor's medium range or table wine. If you can, ask for it in Italian, because the majority of Italian wine sellers here don't speak English. "Vorrei il vino di tutti i giorni" is understood to mean "I would like your everyday wine." Paying attention can garner interesting tidbits about the wine profession: The country with the largest area of vineyards in the world outside the big three -- Spain (2.75-million acres), France (2.28-million) and Italy (2-million) -- is Turkey, with 1.5-million acres. The United States has more than 925,000 acres. If you haven't heard of Turkish wine, it's because little of it is exported. But from my experience, you're not missing anything. World wine production is falling. It has dropped from about 87.5-million gallons in the early 1980s to about 70.6-million in 2000. The reason? The major wine nations were overproducing and driving down retail prices, and the European Union was spending up to $2-billion a year to pay vendors not to grow grapes. The California wineries are trying to carve out a niche in the Italian market. Gallo, the largest wine producer in the world, recently established offices in Verona and Rome. Mondavi can be found on shelves around the country. St. Petersburg's Mel Sembler, U.S. ambassador to Italy, even flew up from Rome to promote the American industry. At a wine tasting news conference, during which servers poured me six glasses of wine -- one every 15 minutes -- Sembler said, "The United States buys $25-billion (in goods and services) from Italy, and Italy buys $12-billion from the United States. So there's a major imbalance in trade. . . . We have got to do a better job of marketing our products here." Italian wine officials greeted the idea of competition with amused smirks, although Gallo won a tasting this year at VinItaly. By the time I boarded a train for Rome, I had tried wines from a dozen countries and found a new love in raisin wine from Sicily. Yes, I finally made it to Sicily. Salute a VinItaly! - John Henderson is a freelance writer based in Rome.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
From the Times Travel page
From the AP |
