Avenue Vine

I think about this a lot. It came to mind most recently the other night at Bellavitae, an attractive, low-key Italian restaurant that my colleague Frank Bruni has found perplexing but which we both agree offers a serious and interesting wine list, along with a menu of fairly simple dishes meant to show off the restaurant’s fresh, seasonal ingredients. Among the wines on the table was one I had heard of but had never tried, a 2001 Terre Brune carignano del Sulcis from Cantina Sociale di Santadi in Sardinia.

I somehow expect the red wines of Sardinia to reflect the land, wild and rustic, wind-blown, rock-strewn and primal. But this wine is polished and elegant, very young, concentrated and intense. It’s made primarily of carignano, known also as cariñena in Spain and as carignan in France. When the vines are old and the yields kept low, the grape can produce rich wines deep with fruit and minerals, as in some of the best wines of the Priorat. When yields are high and wines are produced in volume, though, the wines are mundane. In fact, under programs sponsored by the European Union many carignan vines in the south of France have been pulled out and replaced with syrah and mourvèdre As Jancis Robinson in her magisterial “Oxford Companion to Wine’’ puts it, “Let some interesting old carignan vines be treasured but let it not be planted.’’

This wine exuded power and density, yet on first sniff it reminded me of one of those glossy, glassy high-rise buildings that impress and maybe even inspire a little awe, but not affection. You respect the achievement but you don’t necessarily like it.

The wine was decanted and as it interacted with air, it began to open up a little. Aromas of fruit and spice emerged and the oak tannins receded slightly. I was eating an Apulian pasta dish, orecchiette with broccoli rape, garlic, anchovies and almonds, which I felt on paper would be a difficult match with this wine because of the pungency of the anchovies and the bitterness of the rape and the almonds. But the kitchen had transformed these sometimes overpowering flavors into subtle whispers that seemed to enhance and encourage the wine, and I found myself quite enjoying the combination.

Later, I wondered how I would have reacted to the wine in the blind tasting environment. Would it have left me cold? Might I have seen the potential for pleasure? Even after the dinner, I was a little uncertain about how I felt. I thought perhaps the wine had a little too much polish, that a little more earthiness would be nice, and I wondered what the wine would taste like 10 years from now. The wine made me think a little of sagrantino di Montefalco, the big powerful Umbrian wines that can range from the modern, impressive yet somewhat cold Arnaldo Caprai to the stubbornly funky Paolo Bea. I’ve respected the wines of Caprai and loved the wines of Bea, but in the right setting a Caprai sagrantino can be awfully enticing.

Most of all, the Santadi wine reminded me to maintain a point of view but to cherish uncertainty and keep an open mind. A glass of wine is an accumulation of many facts – degree days, acidity, alcohol by volume, pH, and all that – but those facts unite to form an idea that cannot be reduced to facts. To love wine is to embrace surprises.

Thanks Eric for your thoughts and insights!

Source: “Taste Isn’t Always Logical,” Eric Asimov, New York Times, September 8, 2006