The Italian Style: New Versus Old

Italy is one country whose winemaking techniques may be changing even faster than California’s, and one reason is an apparent shift in consumer demands.

Many producers have come to believe that today’s consumers want a wine of fruit and aren’t as interested in earthy flavors as they once were.

In many regions, wines are now made in two contrasting styles. One is made by those who still hew to old-fashioned methods, making wines characterized by the scents of earth and truffle. Another breed of winemaker offers wine with more of the character we associate with contemporary winemaking: fruit and spice, and, for better or worse, oak flavoring.

In general, Italy’s two best-known red wines still offer the elements we like. Chianti, from Tuscany, is made largely of Sangiovese and is a lighter-weight wine of high acidity and lean, tart flavors. Nebbiolo-driven Barolo and Barbaresco, from the Piedmont, have weight and power--and tannin.

Where the new and old differ most is in texture. Old-style Chianti is soft but lacks fruit. Newer styles are more tannic but are appreciated by people who want to taste the grape. The Barolos and Barbarescos made as in the past are harsher and more tannic than those made by more modern techniques.

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There are several reasons Chianti used to be made the way it was. By law it had to be blended with white wine grapes; it was fermented in open-top tubs and then aged in old wooden vats for two years before bottling. All this gave Chianti a mature, slightly oxidized taste, a character that was more developed bouquet than fresh fruit aroma.

“In the past, most of the red wine we made was consumed locally, and Italian wine drinkers liked young red wine,” says Ambrogio Folonari, winemaker and owner of Chianti Ruffino. “The wines were lighter, less alcoholic.”

Thirty years ago, Italy was still largely agricultural, with most of the population living in the countryside, he said. As more people moved to the city in the 1970s, per-capita consumption of wine dropped, Folonari says, and Italian winemakers decided to seek a more “international” style so the wines could be exported.

In the last two decades, producers have beefed up Chianti by using cooler fermentation (preserving fruit), blending in smaller amounts of white grapes (the law is less stringent than it was), aging the wine less in vats (and aging some in small oak barrels for additional nuances of flavor) and using better clones of the Sangiovese grape.

Folonari admits he has made changes at Ruffino to make the wines more modern in style. “We are giving up what was bad of the old style and keeping what was good,” he says. But he declines to age the wines in new oak barrels, arguing that that would change Chianti too much.

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Traditional Chianti is exemplified by the attractive 1991 Brolio Sangiovese, technically not a Chianti but a simple vino da tavola. At its price of $9 or less, it’s an excellent buy. The wine shows true Chianti character, with hints of violets, raisin and sandalwood and a tart, lean finish.

A bit heavier but still with an old-style aroma is 1989 Banfi Chianti Classico “Riserva” ($12), which has hearty, ripe flavors and a high dose of astringency.

A Chianti-type wine in a more modern style is typified by the 1992 Santa Cristina from Antinori ($7), which has hints of smoke and earth and a very tart finish--another wine built for food. (As reported recently, this is the only red wine Antinori will release from 1992 because of the poor crop, caused by horrible weather conditions.)

Barolo and its sister wine, Barbaresco, have likewise been improved from the old model and now don’t need decades of aging before being ready for drinking. In the past, Barolo was fermented without temperature controls, making for a massive, inky wine with enough tannin to strip enamel from teeth.

Sheldon Wasserman, in his book “Italy’s Noble Red Wines,” credits the late Renato Ratti with pioneering newer, gentler methods of production that meant less massive wines. Still, some producers have not changed, and those wines demand time to smooth out. Some never will.

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A great example of a superb, age-worthy Barolo made in the new style is the Ratti winery’s magnificent 1989 Barolo from the Marcenasco dell’Annunziata vineyard. This wine, my favorite in a recent tasting of Barolos, shows floral and spice characteristics of rose petals and anise and has a California-like intensity. It improved for two days in the bottle (!), indicating it will live as long as any of Ratti’s past wines. And since 1989 was a great vintage in Barolo, this wine is actually fairly priced at $35 a bottle.

More gripping and gritty in texture was 1988 G. Borgogno Barolo ($25), from an old-style producer. The wine has intriguing notes of white pepper and a load of flavor, but the tannins are so brutish at this point that you should wait several years to consume it.

As for Chianti’s lack of aging ability, you can disprove that simply by tasting any older Chianti from a producer with a track record for making well-aged wine. Among them are Fossi, Badia a Coltibuono, Antinori and Ruffino (especially Ruffino wines designated “Gold Label Riserva Ducale”).

Recently I tasted the 1988 Ruffino Chianti Classico “Gold Label Riserva Ducale” ($22) side by side with the same wine from the 1957 vintage. The older wine was fascinating for its fruit and concentration (a faint hint of Port in the aroma).

Although the older wine was well preserved and entirely enjoyable, it was clear from the still-gritty tannins that this was a wine made by techniques of the past. The 1988 was deeper in fruit and showed better tannin structure but retained a trace of that familiar earthy aroma and taste of the past.

To appreciate older Chianti, we have to remember that these wines are quite different from those of the 1990s. These older wines were not deep, dark and raspberry-fruity when young, as are so many Chiantis today. Instead they were relatively rough and tannic wines, still with intense flavors, but so “dry” that they demanded long bottle-aging to cut down the astringency. And because of the production process, these wines often had a pronounced oxidized smell.

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Barolo, too, has come a long way since its hit-and-miss days, when tasting good vintages was like sipping sandpaper with fruit, and with the bad vintages you thought you were at an alum tasting. The better ones did age, but even after 20 years in bottle, many were still so tannic that only the hardiest of collectors loved them.

Today’s Barolos, especially those from producers making them in the more modern style, are more delicate and approachable than ever.

Will they age as well as those of the past? That’s difficult to say, of course, but my guess is that they will. From what I’ve tasted of the last decade, Chianti made in the modern manner is aging better than the former wines. And certainly there will be more good examples of Barolo to experiment with, which is always more fun than banking on one or two bottles that may fail the test of time.

I definitely prefer the Barolo made in the modern style. Try the stunning 1988 Michele Chiarlo Barolo ($26), a wine of dramatic fruit (violets, blackberry and spice) and a lighter weight in the mouth.

I asked Folonari how many vintages in a decade produced great wines 30 years ago.

“Two, maybe three,” he replied.

“And how many today?” I asked.

His eyes twinkled as he replied: “We used to count the vintages we made; now we count the vintages we miss.”

Wine of the Week

1989 Villa Pattono, Renato Ratti ($12)-- When I first tasted this wine, I thought it was a Rhone. The aroma is big and leathery and loaded with very ripe fruit, with hints of blackberry and raisin. There is obvious aging in oak, and the dark, brooding, powerful aftertaste is a sure sign the wine will age nicely. Plenty of complexity here and an excellent value. The wine is the Ratti winery’s unique blend of about 75% Barbera with almost equal parts of the light red grape Freisa and an ancient local grape, Uvalino. This is only the eighth vintage of Villa Pattono.

Splurge of the Week

1988 Brunello di Montalcino, Tenute Il Greppone Mazzi ($38)-- There may be no better example of the new style of Italian wine than this deeply complex, voluptuous example of Brunello, which is made entirely from the Sangiovese Grosso grape. The wine has an astounding toast and violet aroma, hints of roses and jam, and a supple, racy taste that seems to go on and on. Brunello, which gained fame over the last two decades because of the powerful wines of the house of Biondi-Santi, has a reputation for being a fairly astringent wine. This one is graceful; astringency is muted. A masterpiece, showing off the grape and still offering depth.