FRUILI, home to Pinot Grigio, the world’s favourite wine …and much more for the foodie traveller!
Diary of a serial wine lover…
Italy now seems to be quite a favoured destination with Indian tourists – wine, food, reasonable prices and most of all, unmatched cinematic scenery. Tuscany with lovely Chianti and Brunello wines, picturesque villages and stunning towns …Piedmont with their big Barolos and famous truffles of Alba…and Venice, for well, a city that lives on its formidable past. Nobody talks much about the food and wine of Venice. Pity because there are some astoundingly good wines in the Veneto (region of Venice)…a big red called Amarone and the famous bubbly, Prosecco to name two…and there is some extraordinary food. Since it is summer which typically can be sultry and hot in Venice with temperatures well into the 30’s and humidity to match Thailand, I head to the hills of Friuli (the region is actually known as Friuli Venezia Giulia) in the extreme north east corner of Italy. It is a lovely 2 hour drive from Venice and the area shares a border with Slovenia to the east, Austria to the north and the Adriatic Sea to the south. All these are important factors in the development of some fantastic white wines and exceedingly good food products. This is the home of air cured smoked hams (to rival anything from Parma), some excellent mountain cheeses and some of the best white wines on the planet.
pighin-azienda-spessa-di-capriva-copia
Day 1
There are 120 wineries in the region of about a million people. Our first stop is the Pighin winery (www.pighin.com). White wines in Friuli are slightly more expensive than elsewhere in Italy because yields are low so the production is smaller and the quality high. Pighin is no exception with a mixed portfolio of wines from the more premium hilly Collio area to the plains of Grave. I am driven around “Collio Goriziano”, to be precise, which is as picture postcard perfect as any wine region in the world and is considered by international experts to be one of the best areas in the world for grapevine cultivation, an expression of an union between vineyards and the land, a soil rich in mineral substances, southern exposure, the proper altitude and a dry windy climate with hot summers and cold winters. This produces wines with heady aromas and still high acidity, essential for dry white wines. These are hills where grapes are still picked by hand (simply because you can’t get machines up hills). The most famous export from this region is Pinot Grigio, a light white wine that has taken the world of wine by storm. Pighin also do a lovely rose sparkling or spumante and have a 17th century country villa for their guests, i.e us… very impressive from the outside but looks like there may be a ghost or two of past owners lurking about! My Italian friends ask me to bring back some Ribolla Gialla a minerally tasting white made from a grape indigenous to this area. I don’t know what all the fuss is about. My first glass doesn’t rock my boat but let’s see.
We dine at Trattoria da Nando in Mortegliano (www.danando.it) looks like an unassuming local restaurant…turns out to be one of the great gastronomic experiences of the trip….course after course of stupendous local products ….thin sliced, raw sea bass marinated in orange oil and thyme followed by simply the biggest lobster I have ever come across from the coast less than an hour away. In its heyday it weighed 5 kg; roasted with butter, what else could you wish for?
Osvaldo ham
Mention prosciutto crudo (air cured ham…my benchmark is the one from Parma) and a plate of freshly cut local Osvaldo prosciutto with a slightly smoky flavour, appears. It is sublime and rivals anything from Parma; several seafood dishes follow, then fresh porcini mushrooms grilled with breadcrumbs….poached turbot and chilli shrimp. All this is interspersed with apple, mandarin and lemon sorbets …and we stagger back to the villa. Da Nando has one of the most impressive wine cellars in the region with a wine list the size of the Bible (both testaments) and a small inn with12 rooms just in case you don’t have a 17th century villa to go back to.
Day 2
Still recovering from the food orgy of last night. The impressive Pighin ‘villa rustica’ was obviously a country house where a noble family would move their summer residence to take care of the harvest, crops and lands and later o their wines. We discover that they are also really terrible places to get a good night’s sleep! Full of creaky floors, hot in summer, freezing in winter and a monster to maintain, according to the charming lady who makes us breakfast (more ham…this time from nearby San Daniele and cooked ham, cheese, plump nectarines bursting with juice, peaches and so on). We set off in our newly acquired Fiat Panda to Sauris in the mountains. It’s the start of a weekend festival in this tiny mountain village and much activity we hear centres around their famous prosciutto, home brewed beer and festivity. It’s about an hour drive (so about 3 hours in all from Venice) through extraordinary beautiful Swiss style scenery which culminates in a calendar perfect turquoise blue lake. We are taken around the Wolf prosciutto (www.wolfsauris.it) factory by Stefano, the owner’s son and the MD. He explains the basic differences between their hams and Parma. Parma is better known because they produce more, he tells us! Sauris hams are seasoned with salt, pepper and garlic. Parma are only salted. These mountain hams also have undergo a ‘massaging’ technique which enables the brining process to be more effective and results in tastier ham. Wolf smokes their hams and specks with birch wood. Parma is not smoked at all. Other German products smoke with liquid smoke or chips. We see the smoking rooms…it’s all real. Hams for prosciutto are made from pigs of Italian origin which weigh about 180 kg. The end result is slightly marbled ham which reminds me of shabu shabu beef. Speck is made from German cows imported from across the border nearby and is much leaner and the bone is removed. We try both in the nearby food tent. I don’t know whether it’s the mountain air, the music or the walking but the freshly cut prosciutto tastes so much better than anything I have ever had in Parma. I later discovered Wolf ham is sold at Venice airport.
Wolf sauris
Sauris prosciutto
Sauris Beer
As if the hams aren’t enough, I try the local favourite, frico for lunch at Morgenleit hotel (www.morgenleit.com). It’s a delicious cheesy potato mess, cooked in small cast iron frying pan till it forms a crisp crust. We drink some local beer which tastes like Belgian beer – blond and brown with subtle flavours of hemp and rose and then set about to explore the stalls with local artisanal products scattered around the village fair; wooden boards, honeys, woven textiles, basket ware, a lovely smoked ricotta cheese…We buy unthinkable quantities of speck and prosciutto which is vacuum sealed so I can take it back to India. We even forget about it in the boot of the car for three days and it still survives the journey back very well, I must say.
Day 3
Cellar Villa Russiz
Castle of Villa Russiz
Back to the plains of Collio and to more wine…Villa Russiz (www.villarussiz.it) which has both a lovely romantic story to tell with a history dating back to the late 19th century and some of the best and most understated wines of the region. I love their fresh, peachy sauvignon blanc which is award winning (de la Tour) and their more aggressive young sauvignon blanc from Isonzo. The story goes that a certain Count de la Tour and his German wife brought the original vines over from France illegally which gave rise to the French varietals in this region. They were both philanthropists and decided to use the premises to look after orphaned and destitute children and women, a tradition that continues today. We are told that this devotion and that of the staff here is reflected in the winemaking. These are some of the most lovely, well made wines we experience in the region. We drive a kilometer or so down the road to the Relais Russiz Superiore (www.marcofelluga.it/relais_russiz.asp) on the Marco Felluga wine estate next door. This is our resting spot for the night and the very comfortable relais or ‘inn’ is open to the public.
Day 4
Marco Felluga
Marco and Roberto Felluga
With Roberto Felluga
The name Marco Felluga (www.marcofelluga.it) is legendary in this region and their wines are also sold in 40 countries around the globe. We run through an informal tasting of the wines with Roberto Felluga, the 5th generation son of the staggeringly charming 83 year old master Marco, at his home overlooking the vineyards. He is a bit distant at first but soon warms up after taking us through a tasting of his Collio Ribolla Gialla, Verduzzo and Horus from the local Picolit grape. The reds, a refosco (another local grape), caranta (a term to mean ‘ponca’, the local soil of Collio) and the riserva degli Orzoni, an elegant Bordeaux style wine, are all extraordinarily good considering this is predominantly a white wine producing area. Lunch with the Felluga family is a simple affair at the local trattoria. I warm up to the ribolla gialla. Maybe I’ll even like it by the end of the trip.
Borgo Conventi
Now the wine flows through my blood like I am born to it and I plough on relentless to the next winery, Borgo Conventi (www.borgoconventi.it). Young Antonio, the winemaker, has done his internship in Malborough New Zealand, home to the highly aromatic sauvignon blanc and he repeats similar styles here with great success. The friulano from Isonzo (another local grape), sauvignon blanc called Colle Blanchis from Collio with hints of mint and sage and the very, very smooth grappa stole my heart. Enough I thought, but no we continued tasting more over dinner at the Osteria Borgo Colmello (www.borgocolmello.it). We talk about what it takes to make great white wines and young Antonio turns out to be a fountain of information.
Day 5
The next morning I ask myself whether I can really “do’ another winery. Friend, fellow traveler and gastronome, Giovanni, tells me I must. Jermann is a big name in Friuli wines and I simply can’t pass it up (www.jermann.it). A quick run through this formidable winery and estate makes me realize he is right. They are not one of the top producers volume wise but they certainly are one of top for quality…with some quite spectacular whites (ribolla gialla again which I am now beginning to really enjoy), riesling, traminer and a barrel fermented oaky chardonnay. Coupled with notable marketing genius, this is a slick operation worth repeating on another trip. Before leaving the region, we stop to meet young Roberto Pricic at his winery Gradis’Ciutta. We hear he makes a champagne method sparkling from the now famous ribolla gialla grape and we are eager to try it. It lives up to expectations but I am most impressed with his sweet late harvest dessert wine, Rebus. More prosciutto and more cheese and for the first time in a week, I actually have a plate of pasta in front of me!