James Bercovici - The Big Red Wine Company

Wednesday evening saw my last full estate visit - the rest of the time in Italy was more or less holiday (although a trip to Acqui Terme necessitated a visit to the Enoteca Regionale to familiarise myself better with the local Barbera di Monferrato wines amongst others). We got a bit lost in Canale - should you ever visit, look for signs to Valle Pozzo and you'll be OK. When you arrive at Filippo Gallino , there is the feeling of the Deep South - a distressed row of houses with balconies overlooking a yard where the children amuse themselves by throwing up bottle tops and seeing where they land. It seems all the money is spent on the cantina  and all the family must live here, several generations together. Laura had driven off to look for us but returned just as we were trying out our Italian on her sister. Little English is spoken here except by Laura's husband Guglielmo who doesn't work for the family (except to help out with hapless English people like us). We went i...

I had been bombarded with emails so eventually investigated and found there is an interesting selection of wines made here. But what about the quality? Having a confused SatNav meant I was late arriving but Katie Pattinson was relaxed as we talked about our attitudes to wine and the wine trade. The wines were al interesting but some stood out more than others for me. Of the whites, I enjoyed the full and fairly complex Gavi  with its minerality and white fruit characters (apples and pears). The simple Barbera 2010 Caj  offers fruity, juicy, easy fruit and good acidity; a decent, straightforward Barbera. The Nebbiolo 2009 Accerto   has good mouthfeel with fairly low acidity and soft tannins - tastes right, feels good. I rather liked the Dame e Fuet 2007 , a blend of 50% Nebbiolo and 50% Pinot Noir which has a great, plush nose which lets some Pinot Noir character through. Good mouthfeel. The final two wines of the tasting were a Barbaresco 2007 Gaia Principe , a sing...

Not a great start, as I subsequently discovered: I had got the wrong day! Mauro was busy for the first half hour but we had a guided tour of the cellars from his sister who has recently joined the Giovanni Manzone family estate. It is a fascinating place with an underground spring keeping the area naturally humid. We went through most of the wines: Dolcetto, Barbera, Nebbiolo and Barolo. Frankly, not a bad wine among them. Some highlights though: the Dolcetto 2010   La  Serra  is more complex and structured than most with good acidity and more tannin so can age well (10 years?). Good "purple" fruit, long and fragrant. The Barbera 2010  offers juicy fruit and a simple structure to back up the slightly sour cherry fruit: a good all-rounder. I still prefer the more complex Barbera Superiore 2009 La Serra  which sees 16 months in tonneaux.  It is a fuller, rounder wine with lovely juiciness and good complexity. The Nebbiolo 2010 Il Crutin   is quite evo...

Alberto Alessandria was in a talkative mood when I arrived just after 9.30 on Wednesday morning (25th July). He showed me round the winery before going into the tasting room which has magnificent views over the valley below La Morra (he is based in the small hamlet of Santa Maria, a couple of miles outside La Morra). We skipped the Dolcetto and went straight onto one of my favourite wines in 2007, the Barbera d'Asti "Ruge" 2006 . Alberto explained that it had been too acidic before so they had held it back until they felt it is ready. It has quite an evolved nose now with a warming palate, rounded and together. The tannins are soft and dancing around the slightly baked fruit. The acidity is balanced and the wine has decent length - can be enjoyed now. The 2008 won't be released until October and is different inasmuch as the oak used to age it gives the wine a different flavour profile to the wine at first. I didn't taste it with Alberto but took a bottle away w...

Over to Roero on Monday evening, the other side of the Tanaro river so no longer in the Langhe. This is a region which has been overlooked by consumers hunting down the more famous wines of Barolo and Barbaresco but here there are Nebbiolo wines not to be ignored. At a lunch in London back in February, I tasted through thirty or so wines from this area and was pleased to note that the one that stood out was one of Fabrizio's which I was due to re-taste - properly - with Fabrizio Battaglino at his family's house. We started off with the white wine, a Roero Arneis 2011 . Fabrizio does not want to have anything to do with non-native grapes which is the right choice for him although it may give him something of an uphill struggle when it comes to marketing such wines. Thirty years or so ago, there were few Arneis wines produced; rather, it was used to soften the Nebbiolo, much in the same way as Viognier is used in Cote Rotie. Now there are a good number of these wines around. T...

My second visit of the trip returns me to Treiso, just a few hundred yards away from Nada Giuseppe in the Val Grande, a beautiful oval-shaped valley carpeted in vines. The estate is that of the bro thers  Luigi and Alfredo  Grasso, Grasso Fratelli . Neither of the brothers speaks any English so, with m y limited Italian I am relieved their niece, Elisa, is on hand to show me round. I have already tasted some of the wines back in England. What is immediately attractive is the fact that they can offer a selection of single-vineyard Barbaresco wines going back to 1999 so there is the possibility of trying something that is at least semi-mature, a rarity in this accountant-driven world. Starting out with the non-Barbaresco wines was interesting although, I confess, non of them wowed me as much as the semi-mature Barbarescos I was treated to. There was a  barrique- fermented Chardonnay and a Spumante Brut which was not too dry. A trio of Dolcetto wines included a very...

With Enrico Nada on holiday in Sardinia, his parents and sister Barbara were perfect hosts during this year's visit to Nada Giuseppe . Whilst I have been trying to learn a little more Italian, I still have to rely on the better language skills of my hosts which is shameful; I must do better next time (although Enrico will probably be there and his English is extremely good so I am fighting a losing battle - but one I will continue to fight!). Still, even without Enrico the conversation flowed as well as the wine. The wines, as expected, were extremely good, perhaps better than last year, especially the top wines. We started with Armonia 2011 , the estate's only white wine. The nose is quite youthful and hints of the blend that it is (I assume it is the same as the 2010 which included Arneis, Favorita and Sauvignon)   and a touch of oak. There is some interesting fruit here which comes through well on the palate which has good definition: rounded but good acidity to back thi...