My Italian adventure started as you may have guessed, with myself having a glass or twelve of wine. A simple wine fair at Macon-Charnay (a small town outside of Macon in the heart of St Veran) was my poison.
Ma wandered around with an empty glass and car keys in her hand whilst Pa and I kept ours full. The grim twinkle in Pa’s eye alerted me to the fact that this was his first wine fair, hundreds upon hundreds of bottles laid out before him, 5 euros entry. I assured him it was quite different to an “all you can eat” buffet and that spitting was more than acceptable. I forgot I was talking to a farmer's lad from Lancashire, “Spitting lad? We’llst have none o' that. We’ve paid our money aven’t we? “ Which of course we had, so who was I to argue?
After and hour of politely discussing the whites with the stoney-faced producers, we were about to move on to the reds when I noticed something very strange. It was a noise at first, then I realised it was actually a lack of noise. Pa and I looked up around the room, it was empty, not quiet, but deserted. 300 people to 10, us included, in 5 minutes. Wondering whether we had been locked in, I saw a small girl furtively burrowing something into her bag at floor level, I leant over and asked her if the wine fair had finished? Her reply was simple, promt and disgusted. “Er…non Monsieur, c’est midi!”. Ah ha, all made sense, I checked the time, 12.01. How silly of me. Infact I have a theory about the French and lunch,it is that if they don’t eat at precicely 12 on the dot, they combust, burn, blow up, like a vampire in sunlight, "Ze wud exzist no more." I once turned up at a restaurant in Annecy at lunch time, perhaps 12.15, and was told promptly that they were closed because the staff were having lunch! Je reste ma valise. Anyhoo, I digress: the about to combust lady in question stood and faced me with a disgruntled smile, hand on hip, and gave me a blasé hand gesture, and left. I took it that we were given free reign to help ourselves. Mad dogs and Englishmen and all that.
Mad we may have been but alone we were not. Tucked in the “foreign” corner was an Italian stand, easily identifiable by the smiles on their two faces and nothing at all to do with 5 Itailain flags flying over their heads. I walked, excuse me, stumbled my way over to introduce myself.
Incredible. Within 5 minutes I had an invite to their town in Northern Italy for The Miss Barbera 2010 competition. I left slightly bemused but happy with my lot.
2 months later……….
I arrived at Macon Charnay Marie at 5am in the morning, Pop had driven me there, not quite with a packed lunch but not far off, a couple of hundred euro’s and instructions to buy some Nebbiolo. Not a bad task. As we pulled up, the five cars that were transporting us had arived. I looked around, I was the youngest by at least 2 decades. A couple in their 70’s looked, well, old actually, a couple certainly larger than nature intended seemed quite fun, some other random French folk and the couple who I was to be sharing a car with. There are times in your life when you look around and think, “what the f**k am I doing? ”. I was having one of those moments. Just because I was slightly gobby at a wine fair a couple of months ago, I was here, 26, stood in a car park, at 5 in the morning with a bunch of middle aged French people. Ho hum, that’s the way it goes.
We were assigned to sell “la vie en France” to the Italians and so it will come to no surprise that 2kg tins of snails in garlic butter and cases and cases of St Veran were jovially being lobbed into the back of our Renault Espace. Brilliant. Every cliché in the book. Bring it on.
Five hours later we arrived. Castillogne del Lanze. Well, funnily enough we had stopped just outside of the town. Believe me, this is true, we stopped so that the Mayor could pull out a French Flag , push it out of the window of his sports car to then race on up to the town, flag a flying, with us in convoy, car horns blaring. I felt like "effing" Napolean, cans of snails rattling behind me, Edith Piaf playing on the CD player and now, "the flag," leading us to the epicentre of Italiandome. Ground swallow me up. I am ENGLISH. My goodness, give me some tea and crumpets for Christ’s sake.
We pulled up and thankfully the Italians did not seem too bothered, the Polish, Spanish and Germans had already done the same earlier in the day so our D Day landing was not so over the top after all. All the foreigners had their own stall in the centre of the hilltop town each selling their local specialities. The Hungarians were busy chopping what seemed like a thousand peppers, the Germans were chilling their beer and getting their sausages out (ahem) The Polish only had Vodka and us, the French, left our tins of snails and wine on the floor and left for a coffee and a smoke. It was like stereotypical avenue.
The town was set up so that each court yard would serve a different Italain delicacy along with a different producer showing their Barbera and Moscato d’Asti. There were 23 courtyards altogether so I grabbed 4 willing Frenchies and we started. It took 2 days to get round altogether with intermissions of Flamenco dancers, Polish Folk singers, Italian Flag throwers and of course, about 20 espressos. I managed to sneak out of my stint on the French stall with a cheeky smile but to be honest an hour of heating up garlicy snails would have sent me over the edge. I missed the Miss Babera 2010 crowning as I have having a "lock-in" at Gianni Doglia's winery where I was being force-fed Moscato straight from tank. A must-try!
Here are the best of the wines that I tried
La Cascina “CARLOT” par Claudio Mo
Barbera D’asti « suri Runc » 2008 (approx 4euros)
A lovely light fresh barbera with plum, redcurrant and very soft spice. Reminded me a Grenache based Cotes-du-Rhone. Not overly exciting and I preferred it slightly chilled. Tried it with a deep fried pigs trotter. Interesting.
La Cascina « CARLOT » par Claudio Mo
Nebbiolo d’Alba 2008 (approx 5 euros)
This was the star of his collection even though it was not too pricey. Young and fresh with no oak. It had licquorice and blackcurrant flavour and was more reminiscent of Pinot Noir than Nebbiolo. There was spice and graphite tannin but overall it was very delicate.
Monferrato Rosso Prime Nebbie Nebbiolo Roberto Giachino Coazzolo 2007 (4 euros)
This was certainly more simple than the “CARLOT” but it had a more generous sweetness to it, again it would be hard to identify it as Nebbiolo other than the colour but the sharp acidity worked really well with the sharp tomato dished and even worked with salty anchovies.
Monferrato Nebbiolo Gianni Doglia 2009 (4 euros)
Soft and sweet but with more spice than the previous two. Still un-oaked but having a more rustic edge, the fruit was more red, raspberry and redcurrant and there was no milky softness. Hard and direct, needs a couple of years I think.
Barbera d’Asti superiore Gianni Doglia 2007 (12 euros)
The price jumped up whenever new oak was added and this had it in bucket loads: very young and needing at least 3 more years to develop. At present there were flavours of coffee, chocolate, plum crumble, star anise and an earthy meaty flavour. Very Italian and soared above every other Barbera at the event. Brilliant but young.
Monteferrato Merlot (!) Gianni Doglia 2006 (15 euros)
Devised originally to blend with Barbera, this pure Merlot was almost like a baby Piedmont/Super-Tuscan. Tons of New Oak and plum compote, spice, hazelnuts and black cherry. Young again so I will be keeping my bottles for a couple of years to see how they progress. Could this be my favourite? We’ll have to wait and see.
I was impressed to a point with the wines but none blew me away. Their prices did, but flavours not so. I believe that they produce wonderful everyday drinking wine and for that they deserve praise and certainly a few were pushing the quality boundaries, but the lack of intruigue and interest was disappointing. I must therefore go back and have another look next year and look further towards ALba itself and certainly go to the heart of Nebbiolo country as this was just on the edge.
Bon aperitif
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