Italy has been seething since last New Year's Eve. The trade press and discussion forums on the subject of food and drink are overflowing, and the otherwise so indecisive country is unanimous: there has been an attack on Italian identity. And all because of a bottle of champagne. However, at midnight on 31 December 2008, this was opened by the director himself on the festive stage of the state-run first television channel RAI1, with the unmistakable label well seen in the camera. Under massive pressure, especially from producers and journalists, Italian cuisine was now unceremoniously elevated to the status of cultural asset by the Ministry of Culture and a council was quickly convened to deal with the identity of Italian cuisine and restoration.
Metodo Classico per excellence
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| At Pisoni in Pergolese di Lasino, the classic bottle fermentation% is still processed manually, as is the case with many small producers%. |
Yet Italy itself really does have many very good sparkling wines to offer, even if it is difficult to keep track. If one wants to uphold Italian culture and not put anyone at a disadvantage, one would have to drink a different bottle of sparkling wine practically every day, because in 98 Italian DOC or DOCG regulations, sparkling wine production is permitted in 207 variants and can be sweet, medium sweet and dry, white, rosé or red and pressed from many different grape varieties, as Metodo Charmat (or Metodo Martinotti as the patriots prefer to say) or Metodo Classico (classic bottle fermentation). If one wanted to know exactly, one would have to go into each of the 98 sets of rules. But that is beyond even the patience of a true wine lover. And that is probably why Italian sparkling wine is so difficult to communicate, especially abroad.
Because of the abundance of highly diverse products, the most important sparkling wine producers avoid speaking of "spumante" and prefer to use their name to establish a clear link to the origin and the production method in order to stand out from the clutter. In exactly four precise sets of rules, only bottle fermentation is permitted for sparkling wine production. They are thus a real guarantee of origin and method: Trento DOC Metodo Classico (white, rosé), Franciacorta DOCG (white, Satén®, rosé), Alta Langa DOC (white, rosé, red) and now also Oltrepò Pavese Metodo Classico DOCG (white, rosé, the latter with the protected designation Cruasé®).
In the range of 20 to 50 euros, i.e. in the area of rather simple champagnes, you can already find top class in Italy and get top products for the same money, real bubbles (Bollicine, as they are casually called in Italy) as a result of a long ageing on the yeasts.
Sparkling Lombardy
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| The sparkling wine cellar of Travaglino in Calvignano |
The youngest child of the Italian "perlage" family is also the first DOCG wine in Oltrepò Pavese (Wein-Plus reported) and the second for Metodo Classico. (the first being Franciacorta since 1995). Lombardy now has 4 DOCG and 15 DOC areas.
Brand new, the first representatives of this DOCG sparkling wine from Oltrepò Pavese will come onto the market in 2009, authorised from the 2007 harvest. As the ageing on the yeasts has to be at least 15 months (24 months for vintage sparkling wines) from the 1st of January of the following year after the harvest, disgorgement could take place from the 1st of April 2009. We took this as an opportunity and met for a short interview with Carlo Alberto Panont, the director of the Oltrepò Pavese consortium.