There’s intrigue in Italy

LET’S face it: It’s hard to get very excited over Italian desserts. Torta della nonna? Zabaglione? Sure they’re good. But exciting they’re not.

When it comes to Italian post-prandial thrills, wine and spirits is where the action is. Grappa rocks, if you’re up to it, and there’s nothing like a cold drop of limoncello on a summer evening. But there’s also a big, sweet, serious, complex world to discover in Italian dessert wines.

Moscato d’Asti, Italy’s best-known example, sweet and lightly fizzy, has never quite done it for me -- it’s pretty, sure, but too light and fluttery to stand in for dessert. For me, the ideal after-dinner wine is sweet but not too, with enough complexity to intrigue. Its aromas must beguile, and its finish should last long enough to keep me thinking about it. Vin Santo, Tuscany’s signature dessert wine made from dried grapes, can be swell, but without biscotti for dipping, it’s often a bit dull.

The best plan, if you want to discover the most compelling after-dinner action Italy has to offer, is to venture all around the country. There are amazing finds from the northernmost reaches of Alto Adige, near the Austrian border, to the southern island of Pantelleria, just about 50 miles from Tunisia. They say that when it comes to cooking, Italy is not one country but a collection of cuisines, and that’s just as true for these wines. They’re intriguing, unusual, attractive -- though not in the conventional sense -- often complex, sometimes challenging, sometimes even funky and always interesting.

Take Moscato Rosa, for instance. This pale red (or even pink), sweet wine, made in Alto Adige and Friuli from grapes that are a red sub-variety of Moscato, has lately become trendy in Friuli, according to Joseph Bastianich, author (with David Lynch) of “Vino Italiano: The Regional Wines of Italy.”

“It’s a northeast phenomenon,” he says. “Pink is in on all fronts.”

They’re worth seeking out, as they can be light and pretty, yet seriously intriguing, with unusual herbal and fruit aromas and unexpected depth. Look for bottles from producers Franz Haas, Zeni and Abbazia di Novacella.

Just to the south, Recioto della Valpolicella, the sweet cousin of dry Amarone, is the Veneto’s answer to Port. Known for their intensity and complexity, these reciotos are made according to an ancient method from grapes that are dried for four months, or even longer, on bamboo canes up in the lofts of wineries.

“These sweet wines are an accidental coincidence,” Bastianich explains. When the farmers went out to pick the white grapes, he says, if the reds were ready too, they’d pick them and put the reds up in the attic while they vinified the whites. “So it was really born out of necessity,” he says.

Piedmont’s sexy stars

MOVING west, to Piedmont, Moscato Passito Loazzolo is like Moscato d’Asti’s sexy big sister. Loazzolo is a denominazione di origine controllata (D.O.C.) for sweet wine made from semi-dried Moscato grapes within the Asti D.O.C.G. (denominazione di origine controllata guarantita) just south of the town of Asti. A 2001 Forteto della Luja is sweet and gorgeous, golden, luscious and honeyed, with a seriously long finish.

One of Italy’s most fabled dessert wines also comes from Piedmont. Well, not exactly -- but it was vinified there.

In 1959, the story goes, Antonio Ferrari, a Piedmontese winemaker with a thing for wines made from Primitivo grapes, went down to Puglia and bought some fruit from one of that region’s best growers. It just so happened that ’59 was the hottest year of the century in that part of the world, and the grapes he bought were super ripe and air-dried.

He made the wine, transported it back to his cellars in Piedmont, in the cool hills of Novara, and though he expected to wind up with a wine with about 21% alcohol, the wine stopped fermenting at 14% alcohol, thanks to the suddenly cooler temperatures. He aged it for 10 years in wood, then left it in cement casks to continue aging for another 35 years.

Three years ago the Ferrari family released it, as Ferrari Solaria Jonica, and the wine is stunningly good -- it has an amazing amount of ripe fruit for a wine of that age, a beautiful, velvety texture, and terrific depth and complexity. It’s very expensive -- $190 for a 500-milliliter bottle -- and there’s not much of it around, but it’s absolutely unforgettable.

Moving south to Umbria, Montefalco Sagrantino is in its infancy as a D.O.C. wine -- the denominazione was created only in 1979; it took a step up to become a D.O.C.G. wine in 1992. But already it’s become a star in the region, and the sweet passito (or dried grape) wines made from the variety can be powerfully interesting.

A 2001 Giuliano Ruggeri was the most challenging of the dessert wines I’ve sampled lately, with serious tannins, curiously dry aromas and a completely dry finish. It’s almost like a big, brawny dry red wine dressed up to go out for dessert -- curious, and compelling in its way.

And then there’s Zibibbo. What’s that? It’s what Moscato is called in Sicily, and the dessert wine that’s made from it in those parts -- Moscato Passito di Pantelleria -- couldn’t be more different than Piedmont’s Moscato Passito Loazzolo.

Moscato Passito di Pantelleria comes from a small, sunny, wind-swept island off Sicily’s southeast coast; the grape is actually Muscat of Alexandria. (Piedmont’s is Moscato Bianco.) According to Nicolas Belfrage, author of “Brunello to Zibibbo: The Wines of Tuscany, Central and Southern Italy,” Pantelleria’s Moscato is grown in black volcanic soil, the vines dug into holes to protect them from the sciroccos that whip over from across the Sahara. Passito di Pantelleria, he writes, “for the intensity and complexity of sheer grape, floral and female-scent aromas that it is capable of releasing, is surely one of the world’s great sweet wines.”

Well, I got prunes, black cherries, burnt caramel and rancio aromas from Salvatore Murana’s 1999 “Martingana.” (Murana is one of Pantelleria’s best-known producers.) Deep flavors of dried apricot and hazelnuts, and a silky, sumptuous texture. It was like nothing I had ever tasted.

You can keep your vintage Port. Meanwhile, don’t bogart that Solaria Jonica.

brenner@latimes.com