The Century’s Last ‘Vintage of the Century’?

The news from Italy seems almost too good to be true. After two very good vintages comes another that’s thrilling even winemakers who have been around long enough to remember the great vintages of the first half of the century.

“From the north of Italy to central Italy to south Italy, everybody is very happy about the harvest,” says Piedmont’s Angelo Gaja, probably the country’s best-known winemaker. “The quality is outstanding.”

In central Italy, Attilio Pagli, a consulting enologist for more than a dozen of the top Brunello di Montalcino and Chianti properties, is similarly enthusiastic.

“This year is the first that I know of where generally the quality is very high in almost all the wine areas,” says Pagli, whose clients include Pieve Santa Restituta in Brunello di Montalcino and Castello della Panaretta and Il Poggiolino in Chianti Classico.

“Yesterday I was in the Marche, where I found extraordinary grapes. In the Abruzzo, they’re making incredible Montepulciani. And all over Tuscany, whether you’re talking about Chianti Classico, Brunello di Montalcino or Morellino di Scansano, the quality is extremely high. The Cabernet grown in Bolgheri [the area near the Tuscan coast famous for the Sassacaia and Ornellaia] is extraordinary, very rich, very perfumed, beautiful.

“This year the task of enology is to try not to ruin the grapes we have been given, because you can only do something worse than nature has done.”

Normally in the Piedmont at this time of year, there is palpable tension as harvest approaches. Nebbiolo, the grape that produces two of Italy’s most celebrated wines, Barbaresco and Barolo, is a late-ripening variety, usually harvested on the fog-shrouded slopes of early to mid-October. If it rains at the wrong time, or if there isn’t enough sun, the entire crop is at stake. And in years when they have not been so lucky, the work at harvest time can be grim.

This harvest, the news couldn’t have been better in the Piedmont.

“This year, we had weather conditions that are very, very rare,” Gaja says. “In ‘61, ‘47, ’31 and ‘22--all great vintages--we had very similar conditions. The first four months of the year, which are normally very wet, were very dry and mild, so that vegetation started early; flowering was 15 days earlier than normal. During May and June, we had some rain, and in September, more sunshine and hot temperatures than I ever remember. With conditions like that, it’s possible to produce outstanding grapes of all varieties everywhere in Italy.”

For the first time in memory, vineyards were entirely dry during the harvest. Instead of slogging through the mud, workers emerged covered with dust. Not one drop of rain fell after June, which afforded everyone the luxury of choosing when to pick, waiting until grapes were at their optimum level of ripeness.

Aldo Vacca of the Produttori del Barbaresco, a cooperative made up of 61 families, reported last week as they were finishing picking that it still felt like summer. Everyone was harvesting in T-shirts and shorts.

“For the first time ever, I had to buy some mineral water for the farmers coming over here, because they were thirsty,” Vacca says. “Normally, they drink grappa in the early morning.

“This year could really be the best of the last 30 years, even better than ’90. Remember we had ‘88, ’89 and ‘90? It’s the same with ‘95, ’96 and ‘97, each year progressively bigger and more intense. It will be interesting to compare these vintages,” Vacca says.

Gaja is optimistic that 1997 will be the vintage of the century. “I would like to wait until ’98 and ’99 before claiming that, but I believe it will be for sure a vintage that people will talk a lot about. That’s because we not only have the quality of grapes of a great vintage, but wineries now have the technology to make better wines than 30, 40 or 100 years ago, so it’s possible to recover from the grapes a quality that in the past was probably lost by the way.”

Not everyone is ready to join the bandwagon, at least not this early on. Barolo producer Aldo Conterno considers 1997 as “a very good vintage. It’s not the century vintage as people say, but it’s a very good vintage. Like 1990.” For Conterno, the greatest vintage was, as his father told him, the year he was born, 1931. And after that, 1947. But he’s very impressed with the quality of this year’s grapes. “They are beautiful and very healthy. You can’t find one grape that is rotten.”

Piedmont had the happy coincidence of good quality and a relatively big crop. In most other wine regions, despite excellent growing conditions, yields are lower than normal. “People are not so happy about the quantity, but it’s not normally possible to have both,” says Gaja. “This, in fact, is the lowest crop in the last 50 years in Italy.”

A low yield is one of the factors in producing wines with character and distinction. This year was also an early vintage, which is good, not only because vintners had a better chance to beat the bad weather but because it meant the grapes were fully ripe.

In Tuscany, Italy’s other important region for fine red wines, the harvest was even smaller, down about 10% from average and in some areas down by 30% or more because of a harsh spring frost. Vineyards on the lower slopes and valley floors and those in Montalcino and Montepulciano were the most affected.

On a single night, April 14, the temperature dropped to 25 degrees at the critical moment of bud break, when the green shoots emerge from the vine’s winter dormancy, a moment when the young growth is particularly sensitive to frost.

Aside from the very reduced quantities, Marchese Piero Antinori, whose family has been in the wine trade for more than 600 years, insists, “I’ve been in this business more than 30 years, and I think that I’ve never seen a vintage as promising as this one.

“I must say that, especially in Chianti Classico, things look really exceptionally good. I think it’s the first time in my whole career that it happens to have a harvest with no rain from the beginning to the end. And the grapes are absolutely sound, 100%, not one single berry rotted or spoiled.

“The wines seem to be exceptionally rich in everything--in color, in tannins, in polyphenols, also in the structure of the wine, and of course the sugar content is very exceptionally high. The wines are soft, but very firm at the same time. I taste the wines every day and every day I am more and more amazed at the quality.”

Paradoxically, in this small harvest, Antinori says that he expects to increase production of his top-level wines, including his influential and much sought-after Sangiovese-Cabernet blend, Tignanello.

“Because of the quality of the grapes, I think we’re going to make more reserve wines, certainly more Tignanello,” he says. “In a vintage like this one, we’ll be able to use all the production of the vineyard of Tignanello, instead of having to select, like we do normally.”

The same will probably go for Chianti Classico riservas, which are normally limited in quantity because they too are made from selected grapes. Paola Gloder of the Brunello estate Poggio Antico says she’s convinced that most producers will reserve more of their Sangiovese for Brunello di Montalcino than the younger, easier-drinking Rosso di Montalcino. “It’s really a vintage which is worth aging the wines for Brunello and Brunello riservas.” Brunellos from the 1997 vintage will be on the market in 2001, the riservas a year later.

Lorenza Sebasti at Castello di Ama, in the Chianti Classico area, is reserving judgment. “For sure, the grapes are very ripe and, as the quantity is small, we have a great concentration in the wines. But if hot temperatures were enough, all you would have to do to make great wines is move to the south of Europe.”

She’s going to be looking at the wines very carefully. “What’s important is the balance in growing throughout the year. If the vine is pushed very strongly, and grows in one month, it’s very different than if it takes five months. We must respect the entire year of growing. It’s the quality of rain, the quality of growing that occurs throughout the year that’s really important.”

“We can follow with the computer how much rain, how much sun, how much sugar, but in the end, the taste of the wine is what’s important.”