an author's wine: April 2020 Book + Bottle Pairing
“Late one winter night, when the town was asleep, a painter friend was walking home gazing at the moon. Inside the walls of the vasca, at the level of the water, are the slabs of travertine as benches. She took off her shoes and sat, her feet dangling in the water. No one in sight, she slopped off her clothes and lowered herself into the stream. She swam and felt deliriously happy. When she got back to the bench she found a glass filled with champagne. There was no one around; she toasted the moon. At the far end of the vasca she heard the water move ––– she turned. A figure slipped in and swam slowly toward her, holding a glass of champagne above the rising stream. She had never seen him before but, face to face, she felt she somehow knew him. They toasted to the stars. And fell in love.”
Imagine yourself walking through the rolling hills of Tuscany and stopping for a nice picnic with friends on a terrace with an incredible view of acres of vineyards. You’re all sitting close together on a picnic blanket. Everyone is smiling. It’s sunny and there’s a pleasant breeze. Someone unfolds a cloth around fragrant salami, another places cheese and fruits on a wooden board. Fresh bread is torn, handed amongst the revelers, and dipped in spicy olive oil. A delicious wine is poured into real wine glasses (this is Italy, after all, and we would never drink from plastic!). You look at the bottle - it has a painting on the label and you ponder the meaning as you take your first sip. Your mouth fills with the luscious fruit and complex texture of the wine. Blueberry pie, sun-ripened blackberries, fresh plums. A hint of nuts - walnuts or hazelnuts maybe. Dark chocolate, fresh cedar, cherries. You notice the earthiness of the wine that pairs so well with your enjoyment of the outdoors: herbs - oregano, dark dirt, and a bit of leather. Your tastebuds tingle with acidity as you enjoy the sensation of drying tannins and mouth-filling body. Rich, complex, indulgent, you feel like this is the best moment to be alive.
Don’t you wish you were there? With your friends, with the closeness, with nature, and with that wine? We’re all stuck inside, and alone, and frightened of what the economy will do to our pocketbooks or what the virus will do to our loved ones. We’re bombarded with bad news, conflicting politics, and ever changing uncertainties. In this time of negativities, I’m focusing on how I can help you escape, and I’m so pleased to be able to share this month’s book and bottle pairing to help transport you to a better place and time.
A couple months ago, a friend in my wine tasting group brought the group a bottle of wine, a Rosso di Montalcino, and a copies of a book about Tuscany. “This is one of my favorite books that happens to be about wine,” she said, “and I felt like we could all use a mental break.” We were all burnt out from 10 months of hard core wine studying and yes, we could all use something fun to lighten the study session. The idea was we’d all read the book and then we’d drink the wine together. Naturally, if I liked the book as much as she said I would, I’d steal this pairing for my monthly blog, and lo and behold, here it is.
What was so cool about this pairing is that the author of the book is also the winemaker of the wine. The book is A Vineyard in Tuscany and is about a family that moves to Tuscany, decides to grow a few vines for fun, realizes their property is expertly situated on some of the best wine growing land in the world, and proceeds to build a full fledged winery in Tuscany. Hilarity ensues as the couple navigates the world of the Italian construction industry, the preservation of ancient Etruscan ruins, and learning how to operate tractors. Ferenc Mate, the author, is charming, light hearted, and just plain funny. His anecdotes will make you laugh out loud, and his descriptions of his property and the vineyards are enough to make you buy a ticket to Italy (if international travel were a better idea right now). He’s self-deprecating and self-aware enough to call attention to his foibles in a way that makes him seem so approachable. Yet, he’s an international best-selling author and the maker of consistently 90+ point wines.
The book winds and jumps around time and place with the unifying theme of building the main house on the property and the surrounding vineyards. Throughout the construction we laugh at the folly of the author trying to “help” with construction, we’re in awe of the ancient history of the land and the treasures found inside the house, and we’re curious of the lifestyle of sharing neighborhood dinners with the likes of the Gaja family. The shortness of each mini story within a story allows the book to feel easy to read amongst the chaos of our current lives. The descriptions of the land, and the wine, and the food are lifelike. I can almost guarantee that reading this book you’ll suddenly start craving a big bowl of pasta complete with garlic and tomatoes and a giant glass of red wine.
The author talks a lot about the planning of the vineyards and how they decided to grow certain grapes. The type of soil and the aspect of a hill to the sun are two important considerations when planting a vineyard, and one that Máté considers throughout his book. He was so fortunate that his property consisted of multiple soil types that allowed him to grow multiple types of grapes on their preferred soils. The Máté Vineyards grow Brunello clones of sangiovese, merlot, syrah, cabernet, and more. I loved learning more about how vine growing and wine making from reading this book.
Which makes the wine pairing part of this month’s blog post even more fun! The wine this month, as I mentioned, is one made by the author of the book, but it’s a merlot, not the Rosso Di Montalcino my friend brought me. There’s several reasons for this. The first is that the Rosso isn’t currently available. The Tuscany region has very strict rules about labelling wine which helps consumers understand the quality level of the wine they’re purchasing. You may have heard of a wine called Brunello Di Montalcino - it’s a clone of the Sangiovese grape that has extremely high quality designations making the wines highly desirable, sought after, and expensive. To be a Brunello, a wine has to be aged for at least four years before it can be released for sale, allowing it to soften and develop more of the complexities expected in the wine. Only the very best grapes will be used to make Brunellos. But not all the grapes will be this extremely high quality so where do the rest go? Rosso Di Montalcino (means red wine from Montalcino) is grown from the same type of grapes in basically the same vineyards/locations but the vines aren’t as old and established (old vines are said to make better/more complex wine because they don’t produce as many grapes and so more of the delicious ends up in each of the fewer berries). Rosso Di Montalcino then isn’t aged as long, is released sooner, and is more approachable in price and in flavor. It’s a great option for getting extremely high quality wine at a fraction of the price as you’d pay for a Brunello.
The Máté winery had been making a well-priced Rosso, which is what my friend brought to our study group. But, as of the last vintage, the vines have finally become old enough and are making complex enough wines that they can now be used to make Brunello. So, these vines are now dedicated to making Brunello and the winery has planted new vines which in a few years will be ready to make Rosso Di Montalcino again. In the interim, no more Rosso Di Montalcino.
Alas, I couldn’t get the Rosso for this pairing. So I looked at what other options I had. Their Brunello is fantastic, but at $56 a bottle, that’s a luxury that just isn’t affordable for most people, especially in this climate. They had a merlot with really good ratings and a really good price point, so I tried that one, and I’m so glad I did.
Merlot is one of those wines that has had a history of not being so great. There’s this supply and demand effect that happens in wine where a wine will become popular or trendy and everyone starts producing (read: mass producing it) and the quality levels start to drop. Then people don’t like the quality and the demand falls, which allows the quality to become paramount once again. With merlot, in the 80s, an article came out touting the health benefits of the antioxidants in merlot and attributing merlot to being why French people could drink wine and still be so thin. Sales of merlot sky rocketed and quality began to decrease. Then, in 2004, the move “Sideways” came out and the main character played by Paul Giamatti had a monologue of vitriol against low-quality merlot which in turn literally had a devastating effect on the remaining sales of the wine. Wineries, reacting to this decline, pulled out their merlot vines and began re-planting with Pinot Noir and the cycle begins again…This also means that the merlot that stuck around was usually the really good stuff.
I watch customers and friends all too often wrinkle their nose when I suggest a merlot, but perhaps it’s time to give it another try, as the stuff that’s out there now is usually quite good. Every hand I’ve put this bottle of Máté merlot into has come away pleased and several people are already on their second or third bottles of it. Merlot also makes up a very large part of California red blends, California Cabernets (in Cali, you can call it a Cab even if there’s 25% merlot or other grapes in it!), and many delicious Bordeaux wines are partially or primarily merlot. So chances are you’re already drinking more merlot than you may realize. Doing this pairing gives us a chance to give merlot another chance, and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. Listen - it’s okay to like merlot. In fact, I think it’s cool to like merlot.
If you’d like to give merlot another shot, Book + Bottle is doing curbside pickups or local St. Pete deliveries of all of our books and wine including A Vineyard in Tuscany and Máté’s merlot. Starting today and running until our next monthly Book + Bottle pairing, this combo will be offered for 15% off using code MATEPAIRING.
I hope you enjoy being transported to Tuscany for this book + bottle adventure!
Cheers!
A view of vineyards from my 2019 trip to Tuscany.