Monday, February 05, 2007

Adulthood, Chips, and More: Being the 127th issue of Cosa Bolle in Pentola, your things Italian newsletter

Greetings, and a very belated happiest of holiday seasons! To begin with the sites, the latest on Italian Cuisine is an illustrated recipe, Michela's Gnocchetti Cimbri with a leek-and-cauliflower sauce; unlike the more common gnocchi di patata (potato gnocchi), gnocchetti cimbri are made from a flour-based batter that's dribbled into boiling water. They're easy to make and quite satisfying; see . The latest on the Italian Wine Review is a broad overview of Francacorta, to which I'm still adding. Next week I'll also taste through a couple of wineries.

Adulthood in Italy?
Turning to Cosa Bolle, if you look at demographics, Italy is one of the oldest countries in the world -- life expectancy is 83 years for women and 77 for men, while the average woman can expect to have 1.3 children. In other words, the population is aging (and would age even faster without immigration); at present 14% of Italians are under 14, 66% are in the 15-65 year bracket, and 19% are over 65, while by 2050 the relative percentages will be 12, 53 and 34. As you might expect, if you ask an aging population where the cutoff is for old, you'll be given a high age -- people don't like to consider themselves elderly.

What's interesting is the age at which people think adulthood begins; La Repubblica recently published a study according to which the average Italian considers adulthood to begin at 35 (!). Teens, predictably, think that adulthood starts sooner, at 26. However, those in their twenties tend to define themselves as post-adolescent -- giovane, or young, in Italian, while close to 40% of those in the 35-44 age bracket also define themselves as giovane (60% instead see themselves as adult), and close to 13% of those in the 45-54 age bracket define themselves as giovane (78% adult). At the other end of the scale, 40% of those 65 and over still consider themselves to be adult, while only 53% see themselves as elderly.

A country in denial, one might say, and to a degree it is, though the criteria for entering adulthood also speak volumes about contemporary Italian society. 11% of those polled say you are adult when you have finished your studies, 25% when you have found a steady job, 12% when you are living on your own, 20% when you are cohabiting or married, and 31% when you have children. All milestones that get steadily pushed back in a country where studies drag out and good, well-paying first jobs are scarce, and, given the employment and housing situations, people continue to live with their parents (especially the men) and marry later -- in 2006 the average age for grooms in was 33.7, and for brides 30.6 -- and have children later.

I find it sad that a significant fraction of the Italian population my age still considers itself less than adult, and am also saddened by the words those participating in the study used to describe these post-adolescent giovani: 30% said spensierati, or "without a care," while another 14% describe them as without responsibilities. In other words, perched on the bank, watching the river of life, with its challenges, responsibilities, and rewards flow by. What a terrible position to be in, when you're pushing 40!

Be Careful about what you drink...
People do more than think about aging, however: the other day the papers were full of a story about a woman, who, feeling ignored by her husband, followed her best friend's advice and crumbled a tablet of Viagra into his wine. A big mistake: the terrible pains he developed in his left arm and chest turned out to be a heart attack, induced by the little blue pill.
She was (understandably) in tears, but he forgave her, announcing from his hospital bed that he had been ignoring her because of job-related stress, not family problems, and had seen the error of his ways: Less overtime, and more family time -- without Viagra, which he said he doesn't need -- in the future. Quiet family time, alas, because the doctors told him to take it easy until this summer.

Chips in your wine?
Moving to wine, it's difficult to underestimate the importance of wood in winemaking. Wood use seems to have begun with the Celts, who are known to have used barrels to transport the wine they bought from the Romans and Greeks overland -- someone must have soon realized that, in addition to being less likely to break, wood offers another advantage over terracotta: Wines put in barrels or casks mature with time, gaining elegance and depth.

And because of this, if you visit just about any winery in the world today you'll find wood barrels: Generally oak, and though the most common size is 225 liters (about 50 gallons), what the French call a barrique, you can find everything from tiny casks to huge vats containing thousands of gallons. The larger casks are essentially containers, which allow micro oxygenation of the wine by oxygen that slowly filters through the pores in the staves, but don't have much direct impact upon the wines they contain. Smaller barrels, in particular barriques, have a much more pronounced impact because the ratio between the internal surface area of the barrel and the volume of the wine is greater -- there's more wood to interact with the wine.

A wine that spends several months in small wood emerges transformed, with the aromas enriched, tannins softened, acidity tamed, and more, and since a great many people like the transformations, well-oaked wines are in considerable demand. Problem is, whereas a large oak cask that acts as a container will work well for years, or even decades if properly maintained, a barrique has a working life of 3, or at the most 4 years, after which the staves are spent and it can no longer contribute to the wine. So the winemaker who has a hundred barriques in his cellar knows he will have to purchase 34 new ones every year.

This is, first of all, expensive -- a new barrique costs close to a thousand Euros -- and also embodies an element of risk, because even if a winemaker has established a good working relationship with the coopers he buys from, the possibility of getting a bad barrel is quite real. So real that some large wineries purchase wood directly, age it, and then send it to the cooper. And this brings up another point: The supply of oak for making barrels is finite. It's almost all from several forests in the French highlands, and though Italians do use Slavonioan wood to make larger casks, winemakers I have talked with have expressed dissatisfaction with wood from forests in other parts of Eastern Europe and North America: Either the flavors are off, or they're too charged.

Given the situation, devising a way to oak a wine without using a barrel would seem quite obvious, and indeed New World winemakers have, putting the wine in steel tanks and adding oak chips, whose vastly increased surface area (with respect to that of a stave) means much more intense wood-wine interaction, and using a micro-oxygenator to compensate for the lack of oxygen filtering through the staves. The result, if done properly, is a well-made wine that closely resembles what comes from a barrique at a fraction of the cost.

Americans North and South have adopted the technology, as have Australians and South Africans, and last summer European Union accepted the situation, decreeing that European winemakers could do likewise. Are the Italians happy? Not hardly. The ministry of Agriculture has been deluged with requests that Italy prohibit the use of chips in DOC and DOCG wines, saying that to admit them would be the ruination of Italian enology. Politicians made speeches, and a number of mayors have gone as far as to say the use of chips is a menace to the health of their constituents and therefore banned within the town limits.

In towns where wine is the major industry this is a serious thing, and fellow journalist Gerardo Antelio wrote a note to Franco Ziliani, telling him that the Mayor of Torrecuso, in Campania, had come out against "Vini Pinocchio," and that because of his edicts the sales of the local wineries, none of which use wood chips -- they're banned -- had increased substantially. Populism, Gerardo says, designed to convince local consumers to support local industry, and I'm certain he's right.

Journalists have also come out against wood chips for a different reason: Using them offers yet another opportunity for winemakers who want to take shortcuts to do so, and many feel that there are quite enough shortcuts already. In other words, they see chips as a gimmic, or a cellar technique on a par with must concentrators and other geegaws that allow winemakers, who should be doing their best to improve their grapes in their vineyards, to take other, easier paths.

And what do the winemakers say? Some have boarded the populist bandwagon, but many, including Angelo Gaja and Andrea Sartori, president of the Unione Italiana Vini, have pointed out that putting chips into wine rather than wine into barrels is a technique. Nothing more, nothing less, and they think that winemakers should be free to use it or not as they see fit. I agree with them; the blanket prohibition some are demanding will be observed by the honest winemakers, but won't do much to hinder those who prefer to bend the rules. My only caveat would be that I would hope the winemaker who does use chips will be honest enough to not put "barrel aged" on the label of the wine. After all, a small oak barrel costs considerably more than a handful of wood chips, and I like to think that the added cost of a wine whose label says "elevato in barrique" (barrel-aged) is justified.

A last thing: What does a wine made with chips taste like? To be honest, I don't know, because nobody in Italy is admitting to using them. However, I expect it would differ some with respect to a wine aged in barrel, simply because the rate of substance transfer, and the degree to which the wood gives up its essences, will be greater. So I would expect it to be quite fresh, and perhaps in some ways oakier. I'll know when the winemaker tells me what's in my glass was made with chips.

Want to know more? Franco Ziliani's article (in Italian, alas)

Auguri per San Valentino!
I had planned to discuss olive oil next, but one esoteric discussion per newsletter is enough. We're rapidly nearing San Valentino, and the magazines are all printing recipes, many with a note saying "Facilissima!" (Really Easy), which goes on to say "even he can cook this." Yes, for some reason Italian men tend to take to the stove on Valentine's Day, and many do need help.
One could make, for example:

Pasta Al Forno con Pere e Speck, Baked Pasta with Pears and Speck
The pears will add a pleasant sweetness and texture that will contrast nicely with the saltiness of the speck, and the creaminess of the cheese. To serve 2:
  • 1/2 pound (200 g) sheets fresh store-bought lasagna
  • 6 ounces (150 g) robiola, which is a fresh, creamy cheese. I might substitute a mixture of ricotta and cream cheese for it
  • Half a pear -- Williams will be fine -- peeled, cored and diced
  • 2 fresh sage leaves
  • 1/34 ounces (50 g) speck (in its absence use lean prosciutto), cut into thin strips
  • 2 tablespoons white wine
  • 4 tablespoons milk
  • 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmigiano
  • 2/3 tablespoon unsalted butter
  • Salt and pepper (white if possible) to taste
  • If you have one, a heart-shaped glass pasta/pie dish about 7 inches (17 cm) across.
Sauté the pear in the butter, with the speck and sage; when the speck has colored add the wine and cook a couple of minutes more, until it has evaporated. Turn off the heat.

Cut the sheets of lasagna to the shape of your pan -- a heart will be nice, but small round or square will also do. Boil the sheets briefly -- at the most a minute -- in lightly salted water, remove them with a strainer, and let them cool on a clean cloth.

In the meantime, combine the robiola cheese with the milk and the grated Parmigiano, and season the mix to taste with salt and pepper; remember that the speck is salty.

Preheat your oven to 400 F (200 C).

Lightly butter the pan, and put down a first layer of pasta. Cover it with some of the cheese mixture, some of the pear mixture, and repeat the sequence until all is used up. Bake the lasagna for 15 minutes and serve at once, with a crisp white wine. A Franciacorta Brut would be nice, and in keeping with the holiday.

This time's proverb is Sicilian:
L'acqua si ni va 'nta la pinnenza, l'amuri si ni va unni c'è spranza: Water flows downhill, and love to where there is hope.

A presto, and Tanti Auguri!

Kyle Phillips
Editor, The Italian Wine Review
http://www.italianwinereview.com
Want to comment? Drop me a line at Kyle (at) cosabolle (dot) com

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