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Oltrepò Pavese. Where, please?

The Oltrepò Pavese is a hilly area in the south of Lombardy near Pavia. As the name says, "on the other side of the Po". Geographically and culturally wedged between Piedmont, Emilia and Lombardy, an independent wine culture has developed in the Oltrepò, which until now was exclusively at the service of the Milanese and is now seeking contact with foreign countries for the first time. But two obstacles stand in the way of the Oltrepò Pavese winegrowers.

First problem: the wine that is not picked up by the tankers of the northern Italian spumante houses is almost entirely drunk in nearby Milan. As a result, Oltrepò Pavese wines are unknown outside the region and their style is tailored to the preferences of nearby city dwellers.

Second problem: there is not one Oltrepò wine, there are 72 of them! When the DOC arrived here a quarter of a century ago, the politicians of the time, in persistent disregard of all marketing principles, created a confusing jumble of protected wine names. Communication and collective marketing were thus made virtually impossible. Everything would be much easier today if the DOC creators had kept their hands off this area back then.

Is it a lack of critical faculties? Is it a special feeling for things worth discovering? Is it blind love for the Italian wine regions? Perhaps a strange mixture of these? The fact is that I keep getting involved in complicated love affairs. At least as far as wine is concerned. All love affairs, by the way, that last: St. Magdalener, for example, Lambrusco or Valtellina, Bardolino and Northern Piedmont are also among them. And now Oltrepò Pavese.

I can't exactly explain where all the emotional energy comes from that feeds my affection for the land and people of Oltrepò Pavese. When I was in the area for the first time last autumn to learn more about the appellation, the Po River was once again overflowing its banks and the fog in the hills was so thick for a week that you could hardly see the vineyards even when you were standing right in front of them. Tasting the Oltrepò wines is not a reason for unlimited enthusiasm either. What then fuels my interest?

The typical landscape of Oltrepò Pavese

Possibly it is the people who each time draw me under the spell of a wine region and make me redefine again and again the fixed points of my taste in wine. Yes, for sure: it is the people who make me curious about their wines, not the other way round.

If I had drunk my first Bonarda far from Casteggio, and not my first Buttafuoco in Milan, I might have spontaneously rejected these wines. But here, in the hill country south of Pavia, these wines taste just right.

The wines of the Oltrepò are not pronounced aha experiences for palates used to Piedmont and Tuscany. Bonarda & Co. are wines that take some getting used to, expressions of a very specific wine-drinking culture. The Croatina grape, which is more or less dominant in the composition of traditional wine types everywhere, has tannins that could be described in a well-mannered way as "rustic".

The dry to bitter taste characteristics of Bonarda in particular, but also of Oltrepò Pavese Rosso, Buttafuoco and Sangue di Giuda, cannot be glossed over; the widespread residual sweetness only confirms the make of the local tannins.

On the other hand - and this is a point that is crucial for me - the Oltrepò Pavese wines based on Croatina are absolutely independent and unmistakable growths.

Not only because of their exotic tannin quality, but also because of the special fruit of the Croatina grape, which reminds one of prunes and cherries, especially in young Bonarda. However one may respond to them subjectively, the recognition of their originality, the most important prerequisite for the emergence of curiosity in wine lovers, is certain.

The Croatina grape

It is not the so-called "absolute quality" that makes the wines of Oltrepò Pavese interesting, but the originality based on terroir and varieties. If one defines quality in terms of accessibility, of immediate consensus, then there are many wines in Italy that are better than the wines of the Oltrepò.

If one also defines quality a bit in terms of originality, then the Croatina-Barbera-based wines - Bonarda, Buttafuoco, Sangue di Giuda and Oltrepò Pavese Rosso - have real chances of finding friends abroad as well.

Bonarda & Co.

I drank my first sip of Bonarda in a pizzeria in the company of two young people - employees of a nearby Cantina Sociale - whom I had met before by chance in a wine bar in Casteggio. Although not the most original of possible combinations, the slightly residual sweet, sparkling Bonarda with its tart tannins tasted great with the Margherita.

My table companions introduced me to the strange wine - for them an everyday matter of course - without much wine poetry. The way they commented critically on the Bonarda interpretations gave these wines profile and dignity.

At the time, I didn't realise that it would have been much easier if I had spontaneously rejected this sparkling, sweet-tart red. It was only when tasting for the Merum Selezione, talking to the winemakers and studying the production rules that I realised that the Bonarda affair was one of unexpected complexity.

Bonarda is red, residual sweet and sparkling? Yes. Or at least often. But Bonarda can also be a residually sweet still wine. Or dry and sparkling or dry and still. Bonarda is usually a young vintage wine, but sometimes also a wine aged in barriques. Bonarda can actually be anything, provided it is made from the Croatina variety.

I asked the producers over and over again what a real Bonarda was. And each time I received a description from a different perspective. One thing is certain: although the producers themselves like to drink the bubbling, slightly sweet Bonarda and this wine is commercially the most important wine for them, they would much rather make a career with a more respectable growth. They have a veritable love-hate relationship with Bonarda.

Bonarda feeds the Oltrepò winegrowers, but unlike their Lambrusco colleagues in Emilia, they are ashamed of their most important wine and try by all means to escape the image as frizzante producers. They grow Cabernet, produce opulent Pinot Noirs with great élan, invest in the Buttafuoco and the Oltrepò Pavese Rosso Riserva. There are enough opportunities here to sow seeds for laurels. The only problem is that out of ten customers, nine ask for Bonarda.

Oltrepò winemakers at bottling

So, willy-nilly, the Oltrepò winemakers turn their winemaking ambitions to Bonarda and here and there remove the carbonic acid, leave the residual sweetness or do without it. An increasing number of winemakers offer a Bonarda that is dense, concentrated and barrique-laden like the Super Tuscans of the early days. And the clientele is enthusiastic! "Amazing!" is the compliment, but the addition of the words "for a Bonarda" gives it a double-edged character.

It is not within my competence to prescribe to the winegrowers what a Bonarda should be like. If I were authorised to do so, I would try to simplify and limit the Bonarda to the typology of the fruity-fresh, imperceptibly residual sweet, but possibly dry, always sparkling red wine from the Croatina grape.

I would assign noticeably sweet frizzante as well as still versions to other wine categories (of which there is no lack in Oltrepò Pavese, heaven knows). All I can do is draw the winemakers' attention to the difficult position in which the Bonarda-willing customer finds himself in a wine shop or restaurant: Anyone ordering a bottle of Bonarda can never know what they're going to get. Unless he is a habitué from Milan or Pavia who knows all the subtle differences between the individual labels and producers. For the less knowledgeable wine lover, the uncertainty can only lead to ordering Lambrusco, because at least then he is sure to get the kind of wine he feels like.

Bonarda is the ideal wine "per far l'amore in vigna", says Gian-Maria Vercesi del Castellazzo in a cheerful round. "And if you don't make love in the vineyard," says Andrea Picchioni, "you can always drink Bonarda for consolation.

With or without winemaker's eroticism: Bonarda - at least its sparkling variety, called "vivace" or "frizzante" here - is not a serious wine, but an exuberant one. Similar to Lambrusco, it eludes humourless wine criticism. It does not want to compete with other wines, it just wants to be itself and let the drinker feel a bit of Oltrepò Pavese.

Red Frizzante Problem

The "InOltre" winegrowers' group

The comparison with Lambrusco is obvious. Both are red, more or less residually sweet sparkling wines. Curious as to whether the producers merely proclaim the independence of Bonarda or whether they are also able to determine it by the full glass, I organised a small blind tasting with the members of the winegrowers' group "Inoltre" (see photo) on the premises of the Merum editorial office.

By sneaking a few Lambrusco into a Bonarda series, I guilefully set a trap for them. To my shame and the Bonarda's honour, I must confess that the winemakers did not have much trouble recognising the pirates from Emilia. Only with the Grasparossa did they hesitate a little longer. The pronounced tannins and the usual residual sweetness of the Grasparossa reminded them of local growths, but the majority of the round insisted that the fruit was different, that it must not be a Bonarda but a Lambrusco.

Bravi! The intermezzo signifies a small triumph of terroir (fruit) over make (carbonic acid and residual sweetness).

A tasting organised by the consortium last autumn was less clear-cut. Three dozen wine experts were asked to assign the correct designations to a series of Oltrepò Pavese wines in a blind tasting. The result was as clear as it was alarming: only a quarter of the wines were recognised, for all the others the oenologists and sommeliers disagreed on the identity!

But if even the connoisseurs cannot distinguish between Bonarda, Buttafuoco, Oltrepò Pavese Rosso, how is the wine lover supposed to find his way around? How is today's export quota - only three per cent of production - supposed to have any chance of positive change?

DOC mixed wine shop for the Milanese

It sounds quite simple: Oltrepò Pavese is a DOC. If one takes a step into this DOC, things already become more complicated. The DOC Oltrepò Pavese designates fifteen varietal wines and cuvées. You could still live with that, it doesn't sound any more complicated than in Friuli or South Tyrol. However, the situation becomes downright Babylonian when one lists the varieties that may be produced from each of these fifteen varietal wines: a total of over seventy different DOC wine types.

If the Oltrepò winegrowers did not want to open up new markets - and with the exception of Milan, this includes almost all of them - the long wine list would be half as bad. Now, if no one outside Lombardy knows where Oltrepò Pavese is at all, it's because even today most of the area's huge wine production that doesn't go by tanker to northern Italian big bottlers and spumante houses is wasted in the immediate vicinity. Every weekend, the narrow roads between the wine villages of the Oltrepò are busy. Vehicles with the number plate "MI" and empty demijohns in the boot park in front of the wine cellars and stock up on Bonarda. The sweeter the wine, the more of it is packed.

Between seventy and eighty percent of Oltrepò Pavese DOC wine is sold within the region: Milan, Pavia, Lodi and, secondarily, Varese, Como, Bergamo as well as Brescia. The winegrowers do not have any sales difficulties; they just have to be available to private customers at all times of the day in order to keep the cellars empty.

One of the disadvantages of this marketing method is that Milan's restaurants and wine shops give Oltrepò wines the cold shoulder. After all, Milanese customers certainly don't buy their Bonarda, their Sangue di Giuda or their sweetly sparkling Welschriesling from the trade when they can buy them more cheaply and more pleasurably on a Sunday outing.

Riccardo Ottina (Il Montù): "Fortunately or unfortunately, as you like it, the Oltrepò Pavese is close to Milan: an immense wine market. But Milan paralyses the producers. Everyone sells their production without any special effort. All of us were able to send our children to good schools, all of us built our houses, all of us earned well, but we did not build a future for our appellation. Neither did we communicate our production area, nor were the individual wines characterised, nor was the production area given a positive wine image."

The Oltrepò Pavese in figures

Total area
Vineyard area
Wine production
(total)
Wine production Oltrepò Pavese DOC
Share of production Cantine Sociali (five)
Grape producers
Wine producing cellars
Bottlers
Direct sales from the farm

open
in bottles
Sale to the trade
bulk wine
in bottles
Export

900 km2
13500 ha
about 70 million litres
about 55 Mio litres
70%
4500
1000
450
60-70%
70-75%
25-30%
30-40%
50-60%
40-50%
3%

Oltrepò Pavese and its wines are unknown. Unknown and nameless: This is because wine customers pick up wine in demijohns and bottle it at home. Most of it was and still is drunk simply as "red wine" or "white wine"; names and origins are not an issue among the traditional clientele.

Not only the chaos of names and the lack of a hierarchical order of the wines are an obstacle to the success of Oltrepò wines outside the local area, but also the name Oltrepò Pavese itself offers difficulties for non-Italians. No one would ever order an "Oltrepò Pavese Riesling italico Frizzante": You risk dying of thirst before you have finished spelling out the name of the wine to the waiter. It's much easier to order a Prosecco straight away.

The DOCG and the missing top of the appellation

If the Oltrepò had a DOC top category, then at least we would all know where the top is and where the bottom is. Today, as is unfortunately common in the Italian DOC system, the wines are all arranged next to each other, not on top of each other, and each winegrower creates his own classification.

For some, the top wine is the Oltrepò Pavese Rosso Riserva, a barrique Bonarda or the Buttafuoco, for others an IGT fantasy wine, a Metodo Classico or a Pinot nero. Each winery tries to sell itself as well as possible; collective concepts can be discerned neither in marketing nor in communication. Domenico Zonin (Tenuta Il Bosco): "Every winemaker has his own top product, in whose image he invests."

Buttafuoco would have the right name and the appropriate character to be built up to be the top Oltrepò, but may not be produced in the whole area. Bonarda is also unsuitable, since it is also common as a wine and variety name in other wine regions - Piacenza, northern Piedmont - and also has an unsuitable image.

Pinot nero is very common here, but its destination has not been red, but - as the base wine for Piedmontese spumante - white. The widespread Barbera is also unsuitable as a name for a top category, since Barbera is already occupied by Piedmont.

For lack of better ideas and possibilities, the king's choice fell on the Riserva of Oltrepò Pavese Rosso. This type of wine is a cuvée of different varieties: Barbera, Croatina, Uva rara, Pinot nero, Ughetta. On the positive side, the production regulations give the winegrowers a lot of freedom in their choice of varieties and thus do not unnecessarily restrict the expressive possibilities.

On the negative side, the high yield per hectare (11 tonnes/ha) ensures that wines of thin quality can reach the market, undermining the efforts of good producers to improve the appellation's reputation. But even more devastating is the name: Oltrepò Pavese Rosso. You can't make a state with the name "Rosso" even if you put a "Riserva" behind it, and not even if the wine is really good. Nowhere in Italy does Rosso designate the top wine, but always the second wine of an appellation.

The die seems to be cast, however: The Oltrepò Pavese Rosso Riserva, together with the Oltrepò Pavese Spumante Metodo Classico, is to be elevated to the nobility of the DOCG. Together, they are to bring in the future fame and prestige to their growing region.

In Italy, the view that the DOCG is a means for more image and sales success is very widespread. This is a mistake, as the DOCG is merely an elaborate instrument for better control and more credible certification. Of course, there is also a path to a better reputation via the DOCG, but it is certainly not the shortest one.

The DOCG is intended for wine regions whose wines already have a high image - and high prices - and where cheaper wines from outside are to be prevented from flowing into the appellation. (The most recent example of a wine requiring DOCG is Amarone).

A look at the quantities of Oltrepò Pavese Rosso produced shows that this wine has not been taken note of by the market to any significant extent so far. But the producers themselves are also showing scepticism: since 1995, the already small area under cultivation has declined from 700 hectares to 360 in 2001. The "top category Oltrepò Pavese Rosso Riserva" is a pipe dream that not only lacks profile and image, but also a qualitative and quantitative foundation. It is apparently hoped that the DOCG will help the apathetic patient to achieve miraculous vitality.

Against the background of the massive oversupply of Pinot nero base wines, the DOCG also seems rather superfluous for the Metodo Classico. Carlo Boatti (Monsupello): "For two years now, Bonarda grapes have sometimes cost more than Pinot nero grapes."

While it is undisputed that Metodo Classico of remarkable quality can be produced in Oltrepò Pavese, as long as the bottle fermenters here have a decidedly shadowy existence - not much more than one million bottles compared to the ten million bottles of Charmat Spumante and the 70 million litres of wine the area produces - the DOCG cannot be the first priority for Metodo Classico.

The pinot nero here is mostly white

If you order a pinot nero in a restaurant in the Oltrepò, you will usually get a white, slightly residually sweet frizzante. If you want a red wine of this variety, you had better ask for it explicitly.

However, the white vinified Pinot noir is not a fashionable invention here: Oltrepò already made a name for itself in the 19th century for sparkling wine, bottle-fermented though. A label from 1870 with the inscription "Champagne Oltrepò" still bears witness to the glorious spumante past. It was the statesman Agostino De Pretis who had already recognised and promoted the suitability of his home territory for "champagne" production in the 19th century.

With three thousand hectares of Pinot Noir, the Oltrepò is one of the largest production areas in the world for this variety. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Oltrepò Pavese, which had belonged to Piedmont since 1744 and only rejoined Lombardy in 1860, was literally replanted with Burgundy vines by the Piedmontese wineries.

Carlo Boatti (Monsuppello): "Seventy years ago, the Piedmontese spumante producers distributed Pinot seedlings to the farmers, who planted them here and there. Then, in autumn, the Piedmontese would come with the lorries and buy up the grapes."

In the boom times of Piedmontese sparkling wine, the spumante houses were in urgent need of supplies and cultivated the Oltrepò as a production area for Pinot base wines. Thus, the Pinot grapes were vinified exclusively white for sparkling wine production. The first local winery, alongside the Piedmontese Cinzano, Martini Rossi & Co. Metodo Classico was the Cantina Sociale La Versa. Even today, La Versa produces half of the Metodo Classico of Oltrepò Pavese, with half a million bottles.

In the well-known dilemma of avoiding the term "Spumante" for the Metodo Classico, the term "Classese" was invented in the Oltrepò Pavese some time ago.

This was also an unfortunate choice: instead of an area name, as befits a terroir wine, they chose a brand name. As if it were an industrial product. But since hardly anyone except the inventors of the name believes in the success of the artificial designation, the "Classese" is only very small, if at all, on isolated Spumante labels.

But even with a catchier name, it is almost impossible to make Italian Metodo Classico palatable abroad. If Franciacorta DOCG, which has an excellent reputation in Italy, is exported only in insignificant quantities, then the export situation for Oltrepò Pavese Metodo Classico is even more desolate.

For the former La Versa oenologist Riccardo Ottina (now owner of Il Montù), the Metodo Classico is the most excellent wine of the Oltrepò: "I have been preaching this for fifteen years. Our Metodo Classico could be the most prestigious in Italy. Unfortunately, we have been overtaken by Franciacorta and by the Trentino. Franciacorta has always grown corn, not vines. The success of Franciacorta DOCG is thanks to a few thoroughbred entrepreneurs. A great achievement!"

One can only conjecture what would have become of Franciacorta and what would have become of Oltrepò Pavese if the young Maurizio Zanella had not been stranded in Erbusco thirty years ago, but in Rocca de' Giorgi or in Casteggio. Unfortunately for him, Oltrepò Pavese has not been lucky enough to attract foreign entrepreneurs. The only exception so far is wine entrepreneur Gianni Zonin, who bought Tenuta Il Bosco fifteen years ago and built it into a thriving business.

and sometimes red

Although there are thousands of hectares under Pinot vines in the Oltrepò, producers seem to have some trouble producing varietal Pinot noir that could hold their own on the international Burgundy scene. As a rule, the red Pinots are good red wines, but they rarely express the unique magic of this variety.

This is certainly also due to the fact that not all vineyards planted with Pinot are suitable for this purpose and that yields per hectare are often too high (in 2001, the average yield was only 7,700 kg). The main reason for the dark colour and the lack of finesse of the wines, however, is more likely to be found in the unsuitable clones.

Carlo Boatti (Monsupello) sees Pinot nero as a wine with which Oltrepò Pavese could distinguish itself and proposes the DOCG for it.

Francesco Cervetti (La Versa) is already distancing himself from Pinot: "If there are few great Burgundies coming out of Oltrepò Pavese today, there are several reasons: One is that clones suitable for red wine have only been introduced in the course of the last ten years, moreover, not all of Oltrepò Pavese is suitable for the variety, then there is still a lack of experience here for this wine and fourthly, it is a very difficult variety that can produce something admirable one year and disappointing the next."

The fact is that no qualitative continuity has been shown with Pinot nero so far. Cervetti continues: "Everyone talks about Pinot nero, everyone agrees that it is a great wine. The expectations of a Pinot wine are high, the wine customer expects a special experience, but in eight out of ten cases he is disappointed."

Pessimism is not the order of the day, however: one can only really judge the Burgundy suitability of the Oltrepò Pavese in the coming years, when the new vineyards planted with suitable clones - especially in the higher-lying vineyards - will go into production. Some Pinot are already reason to hope that the patience of Pinot lovers will be rewarded.

Eager for input

Looking back, when I try to organise my thoughts and distil the important things from the experience and all the conversations, one impression remains above all: the Oltrepò Pavese is a beautiful region with lovely people. Although it belongs to Lombardy, the character of the people here is much more influenced by Piedmont and Emilia.

My impression is that a new era is beginning in Oltrepò Pavese at this moment. The winegrowers seem eager for input, determined to wake up from the daydream into which an all-too-comfortable market has let them fall. They want to get out of the provinces and face the challenges that such an opening brings. Although they have become wealthy from it, they are tired of a "marketing" that mainly consists of loading up other people's cars with demijohns at the weekend.

The wines of Oltrepò Pavese (I'm willing to take bets!) will not only be better in five or six years, but above all different, more balanced, clearer than today, in other words: more mature for a modern, critical market.

To you, dear readers, I recommend that at the next opportunity you leave the Piacenza-Turin motorway at the Stradella exit or at Casteggio and visit one or two winemakers. Perhaps you will then feel as I do, perhaps this unknown land will suddenly become close to you, and the charm of these unfamiliar wines will open up to you too.

In any case, the Oltrepò offers wine tourists one attraction: while in the Langa you can only buy a few bottles at the winery by appointment and special recommendation, and you have only been allowed to admire Tuscany from the outside for years, the winegrowers of Canneto Pavese, Rovescala or Casteggio are still happy about private customers. Don't be put off if people look puzzled at your number plate, the winegrowers here are just not used to foreign customers.

When I finished reading this article, I noticed with increasing concern how much criticism of the wines and the wine policy of Oltrepò Pavese is contained in these lines. At the same moment, however, a second thing happened: While I was making the final corrections, I was seized by an irresistible desire for a sip of Bonarda "So purpose fulfilled after all?", I asked myself, halfway reconciled with myself, and took a hearty sip of the crimson wine.

>

To Part 2:
Oltrepò Pavese - The producers

The above article was kindly made available to us by the MERUM editorial team. Many thanks for this.

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