Parched, Concours Mondial and More: Being the 134th issue of Cosa Bolle in Pentola

Greetings, from hot and sunny Italy, but more about that later. To begin with, the latest substantial thing on Italian cuisine is a look at bollito misto, or boiled dinner. I know it seems (and is) obvious, but you might be wondering just what to expect when you order a plateful, so I put together an overview. The latest on the Italian Wine Review is a writeup of Dolcetto, the wine many Piemontesi prefer to drink day-to-day. With good reason; when it's good it is extremely refreshing and very food-friendly.

Parched Returning to Cosa Bolle, I've been saying for months that it was unusually dry and I was worried about what the summer might hold: This past week the civil defense people released figures showing just how serious the situation in Italy is. Since September water reserves have fallen between 20 and 50%, and at present the levels of the Great Lakes (Garda, Maggiore and Como) are just inches above the lows they reached during the torrid 2003 summer. Ditto for river levels; television footage of the Po River shows a muddy rivulet, and the Arno, on its way through Florence, is the lowest I've seen it since 1985. Problem is, the Arno's 1985 low stand was in October, after months of drought, and here we are barely into May.

The heat hasn't even arrived yet, though the authorities assure us it will, and when it does saran dolori, as Italians say: It will be painful. We're looking at water rationing for the general public, which is annoying but not a disaster if you have storage tanks and a pump, and many Italians do. What's more serious is the battle that's shaping up between industry and agriculture; on the one hand industry needs water to keep the factories going, and on the other farmers need water not just for the crops they have planted now, but also to keep their livestock and their perennials (e.g. fruit trees or vines) alive.

And in the background are the power stations, many of which rely on river water for cooling. If the water levels drop to the point that the cooling tubes suck up sand, the power plants will have to shut down, and we could face revolving blackouts similar to those we had in 2003, though one would hope that this time they'd come with advance warning -- then people got stranded in elevators, and those on life support at home were also affected.

Things would be better if the infrastructures were in better repair -- close to 50% of the water that enters some Italian aqueducts dribbles away en route -- but even if they were perfect the situation would be difficult. Put simply, there isn't enough water.

It's tempting to attribute the lack of rainfall to global warming, and it probably is at least partly responsible -- while this year has been exceptional, there has been a warming trend over the past decade at least, with the result that Southern Italy's climate is beginning to resemble North Africa's. Nor is the problem limited to Italy; a Belgian journalist I talked with told me that, according to a climatologist friend of his, the climatic zones in France are migrating north at a rate of 10 km a year. If this keeps up, he says, in 30 years Burgundy's climate will resemble what we now find on the French Riviera. How well Pinot Noir will adapt to the change is a good, and worrisome question that Italians will also be asking with respect to Italian varietals, because the same sort of northward shift of climatic zones is occurring in Italy too.

One possible solution will be to plant at higher elevations, where it is cooler. However, doing so entails other risks, because at higher elevations conditions are more difficult -- steep slopes, exposed rock, and so on -- and more extreme, with fierce storms that can do considerable damage. It will be interesting to see what happens, but doing something concrete to limit global warming will likely be good for everyone.

Le Concours Mondal De Bruxelles
I met the Belgian journalist mentioned above at the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles, one of the most important international wine tastings, whose organizers invited me to be one of 220-odd wine tasters assigned to judge more than 5700 wines from all over the world. To speed things along we were divided into panels of 6 tasters, and each panel tasted about 50 wines per day, broken into groups of 6-15 wines that are fairly specific, e.g. French sparkling wines made with the Crémant technique from the Loire Valley, 2005 Chilean Cabernets and Cabernet blends, or Rioja, one of the classic Spanish reds.

Each day began with "palate calibration," in other words a wine we tasted and then quickly discussed; despite considerable variations in our backgrounds our opinions were similar, which indicates that despite the subjectivity that leads one to prefer certain styles over others, there are also absolutes in wine tasting. And what were the criteria we judged on? The forms we filled out have check boxes to assign scores:

• Visual -- limpidity (i.e. clarity, 1-5 points) and aspect (2-10 points) -- If it's cloudy few points, and likewise if the color is odd, for example a young white that's veering into brown.
• Olfactory -- Intensity (2-8 points), genuineness (2-6 points), quality (8-16 points)
• Taste -- Intensity (2-8 points), genuineness (2-6 points), quality (10-20 points), persistence (4-8 points)
• Overall judgment (7-11 points)

Since there's no writing involved the process is straight-forward and quick, though a few people did wonder about genuineness -- since we were tasting blind, knowing only the vintage, it was obviously impossible to tell if a wine was true to type. So I took it to be a measure of the wine's character, balance, and harmony. Quality is instead technical merit, e.g. cleanliness and such, while intensity is just that. Medals, you wonder? A score higher than 96 warrants a great gold medal, gold is 96-88, and silver is 87-82.

For me it was a wonderful opportunity to taste (and discover) wines that simply don't reach the Italian markets, for example the above-mentioned Chilean Cabernets. In an Italian context they would be extremely international, with tremendous concentration, high alcohol, and intense use of new oak that, at least for me, overshadowed everything else. But having tasted them, I better understand some Californian wine lovers I was with a few years ago who became ecstatic over a (for me) overly oaked Tuscan Sangiovese. The Tuscan wine greatly resembled these Chilean wines, and was obviously designed to capture the attention of wine lovers used to that style of wine.

Other series were equally unexpected; one that a fellow taster and I thought might be southern European -- there were warm leathery aromas of a sort that make me think of Cirò, Calabria's best-known wine, while she was wondering about Spain -- turned out to be Austrian and German Pinot Noir. I would never have guessed it, and that's what makes a wine tasting of this sort so interesting and educational.

They'll be posting the results on their site this evening (May 4 2007)

Though the event is entitled the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles, it was held this year in Maastricht, a Dutch city on the banks of the Maas River that was founded by Julius Caesar at a point where the river could be crossed (stricht, we were told, means crossing point). Very pretty, especially the historic heart of town within the first ring of Medieval walls, and should you happen to visit the area, or even be passing through (it's an hour from Brussels, seat of the European Union and a major air hub), it's well worth a visit.

The heart of town, which has a great many pretty row houses, some faced with brick and others with stone (we were told the gray stone framing the windows was more expensive than that used to make the walls), beautiful churches, and nice squares, can be seen in a morning. And when you have finished wandering about there are a tremendous number of pubs and eateries; in addition to attracting a great many visitors Maastricht is a university town, with students making up close to a fifth of the population. So it's quite welcoming. We stayed in a hotel in the outskirts of town next to the convention center, but if you're passing through you'll be quite happy in the heart of town.

Is Rufina out of its mind?
A few issues ago I mentioned that the town of Rufina, in the heart of the Chianti Rufina zone and blessed by some of the most ruggedly beautiful topography near Florence (it's close enough to be a nice day trip) was set to build a new trash incinerator. I thought a steep-sided valley with narrow roads was a horrible location for an incinerator that will generate significant truck traffic and put a lot of stuff into the atmosphere, and so do many others including Carlo Macchi of Winesurf, who asked Stefano Gamberi, Rufina's mayor, a number of questions (link in Italian) regarding the impact the proposed incinerator will have. No reply, says Carlo, who has asked again.

How a public official replies to a question is often telling, and Mr. Gamberi's reticence is worrisome -- it's not what one would expect of someone who has nothing to hide. Rather, I fear the town's administration is preparing to try to run something boneheaded and shortsighted over the residents of the valley, who do not want the thing, and if they succeed the consequences for the region will be severe and long lasting.

If you're interested, or could be in a position to comment and spread the word or bring influence to bear, Federico and Silvia Giuntini of the Fattoria Selvapiana, one of the finest (and oldest) wineries of Chianti Rufina, are leading the Associazione Valdisieve's fight against the proposal. You can contact Federico and Silvia through Selvapiana's site (http://www.selvapiana.it/), or send an email to assovaldisieve@libero.it. I had hoped to be able to point you to further information on the Consorzio Chianti Rufina's site (http://www.chiantirufina.com/Home/Index.htm), but they are oddly silent on the matter.

This time's proverb is Tuscan: Chi fa male odia il lume: He who does evil hates light.

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

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