Preserving a sense of place

Virtually every wine lover I know laments, loudly and often, the globalization -- the homogenization -- of the world’s wines. No matter where wines are made -- France, Italy, California, Chile -- they taste increasingly similar these days. We’re rapidly losing the sense of place, of individuality, that should make -- that once made -- every country’s wine, every region’s wine, unique.

One big reason for that is the worldwide planting of Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay grapes (and, to a lesser extent, of Merlot and Pinot Noir) and the international marketability of wines made from those grapes. But I don’t want a Cabernet from, say, Italy. If I want a Cabernet-based wine, I’ll buy a Bordeaux or (maybe) a California Cabernet. When I buy an Italian wine, I want a wine made with grapes indigenous to Italy, wines that carry the character and culture and history of Italy.

That’s why I love Barolo and Barbera from Piemonte and the Sangiovese-based wines of Tuscany. It’s also why I love the wines of Marco Caprai. His winery -- Arnaldo Caprai, named for his father, who founded it in 1971 -- is in the village of Montefalco (pop. 5,000) in Umbria. His grape, native to Umbria and little known outside that region before he came along, is Sagrantino. His wine -- his best wine -- is Sagrantino di Montefalco.

“The beauty of Italy, the essence of Italy, is that you can go anywhere in the country and find good local foods and good local wines native to that particular area,” Caprai told me when we had lunch in Los Angeles recently. “We have 2,000 different grapes in Italy. They have 50 in France, and most of their wines are made with 10 of them.”

Caprai exaggerates. But Italy does have far more different wine grapes in production than France does, and his basic point is valid. It derives largely from Italy’s long history as a constellation of individual city states and principalities, an institutionalized decentralization that led to the development of indigenous products and practices in almost every arena.

Caprai feels so strongly about the importance of indigenous wines that when winemakers in neighboring Tuscany, whose borders are a mere 25 miles from Montefalco, announced plans in October to begin planting Sagrantino, he organized an official protest movement. He’s attracted considerable support among fellow Umbrians, among them Maurizio Ronconi, agriculture commissioner of the Italian Senate, who calls the planting of Sagrantino in Tuscany “a grave act of piracy.”

But people knowledgeable about such matters say the Italian government is unlikely to stop anyone in Tuscany from planting Sagrantino there.

Caprai says he hopes to meet with government officials soon to try to persuade them to do just that, though.

“The richness of Italian wine lies in its native vines,” he says. “A Sagrantino made in Tuscany, in a different climate, with different soil, lacking in the polyphenols that are unique to Montefalco and that give our wine its color and its tannins, would be a very different wine.”

Not only would that confuse the public, Caprai argues, but it would compromise and undermine Montefalco’s long-standing rightful position of “cultural patrimony” in the production of Sagrantino.

“You can find references to Sagrantino as ‘a very good wine’ in Umbrian archives dating back to 1570,” Caprai says. “But it was just a local wine for a long time, and since it was always relatively expensive, it was mostly a special-occasion wine, used for weddings and other celebrations.”

When his winery opened, Sagrantino production was limited to four or five small wineries with a total of about 25 acres in production. As recently as 10 years ago, only seven or eight wineries, spread over about 250 acres, made it.

Today, thanks largely to Caprai’s success, more than 50 wineries have a combined 1,500 acres in Sagrantino production, and it’s that success -- what Caprai calls that “now-in-vogue quality” -- that has prompted winemakers in Tuscany to want a piece of the action.

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A milestone Sagrantino

If one wine could be said to have triggered the rapid growth in popularity of Sagrantino, it would be Caprai’s Sagrantino di Montefalco “25 Anni,” created in 1993 and released in 1996 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of the winery.

Gambero Rosso, Italy’s premier food and wine magazine, gave the first vintage of the “25 Anni” its top “tre bicchieri” (three glasses) award, and that recognition -- combined with the relative unfamiliarity of the name of the wine itself -- persuaded Caprai that he should keep the “25 Anni” designation on his top wine every year thereafter.

The wine has continued to win critical accolades. Daniel Thomases, one of the world’s leading authorities on Italian wines, called the 1999 “25 Anni” Italy’s “best single red wine of the 1990s.”

The “25 Anni” is a big, rich wine that reminds me -- odd as it sounds -- of a piece of toast with blackberry jam, accompanied by a cup of espresso. Joseph Bastianich and David Lynch describe Sagrantino as an “exotic, sooty” grape in their new book “Vino Italiano,” and I’ve enjoyed the wine most when I’ve drunk it alongside a big steak. I can still remember the first time I drank it, at a restaurant in Umbria, with a traditional Umbrian dish -- a local pigeon roasted with olive oil, garlic and rosemary.

The two complemented each other so completely that they almost blended into a single flavor. I sometimes wasn’t sure if I was tasting the juice of the pigeon or the juice of the grape. It was a superb example of wine-and-food matching -- and a classic example of why one should drink local wines with local foods.

Since 1976, Caprai has also been making an excellent white wine, Grecante, with Grechetto, another grape native to Umbria. It usually retails for $14 to $16, and with more body and structure than Pinot Grigios at higher prices, it’s one of the best Italian whites I’ve tasted in the under-$20 range. When I last drank it, it was especially good with grilled octopus and with a bowl of mussels and clams.

Caprai makes five red wines, including a Poggio Belvedere, which sells for about the same price as the Grecante. It’s 80% Sangiovese and 20% Ciliegiolo, another grape indigenous to Umbria. But his best wines are his two Sagrantino di Montefalco bottlings -- a regular cuvee of 7,000 cases that sells for about $47 a bottle and the “25 Anni,” which is marketed in six-packs (5,000 of them) at about $100 a bottle.

That’s a lot of money to spend for a bottle of wine. But many cult Cabernets, among other wines, sell for even more and don’t taste nearly as good, especially with food.

Caprai’s commitment to indigenous grapes is as admirable as the wines he makes from those grapes.

I always try to order local wines wherever I travel, even if I know they may not be as good as some of the big-name wines from other regions and other countries. In Tuscany, we drink the wines of Tuscany, my love of Barolo notwithstanding. In Provence last summer, we drank the wines of Provence, not those of Burgundy or Bordeaux.

I follow a similar policy in French or Italian or Spanish restaurants in this country. Call me silly, but I wince when I eat in such a restaurant here and I hear someone order a California Cabernet or Chardonnay.

A good Italian (or French or Spanish or ... ) restaurant is a slice of that country, an opportunity to experience that country. I want to drink its wine while I eat its food. They are meant to go together.

I would no more order a California Chardonnay with a bowl of linguine alle vongole than I would order it with a New York steak.

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David Shaw can be reached at david.shaw@latimes.com. To read previous “Matters of Taste” columns, please go to latimes.com/shaw-taste.