Wine Blogging Wednesday: A very Dolcetto evening, with an Arneis guest appearance

Long time, no WBW participation here. In fact, if memory serves I have only done this once. Well, none other than David McDuff hosts this edition of Wine Blogging Wednesday, so I'm in. Thanks to our gracious host for selcting such an endlessly fascinating wine region: the Piedmont. Who knows, maybe I'll get back on the wagon with this fun, educational excuse to crack some new bottles and blog about 'em.

First the Arneis. Accompanied by a delicious pasta dinner I enjoyed with friends a few weeks ago, the 2004 Giovanni Almondo Arneis Vigne Sparse was easily, to my taste, the star of the evening. Though it is already three vintages matured, the wine tastes nearly as young as an '06 Vigne Sparse I enjoyed nine months ago. If anything the '04 has intensified, revealing more yellow fruit flavors, including the tarter fruit skins. It's still mineral, and at this rate of evolution could still be drinking well for another several years. Such a clean, precise, tense, chiseled arneis, easily the best of this style I've yet to try.

Now let's fast forward to last night. I had decided at work to ramp up the geek quotient of this post and compare two Dolcetti, one a 2006 Anna Maria Abbona Dolcetto di Dogliani Sori dij But, the other a 2006 Luigi Baudana Dolcetto d'Alba. If you were to go by the various writings on the region, the Dolcetto di Dogliani DOC is of the best quality and highest aging potential. Not that I was hoping to either confirm or disprove this assertion, but nonetheless I thought it might be interesting to compare Dogliani dolcetto to its Alba counterpart.

Well, Anna Maria Abbona is a stellar producer, one of the true masters of Dolcetto. The vineyards are at some of the highest elevation in the DOC, with ideal exposure, and the winemaking seems to never be at all heavy handed. I really enjoyed their '06Sori dij But (the name of one of their vineyards). On the nose, a satisfying bit of meaty, brett savor combined with full, fleshy darker cherry and berry fruits. Similar palate, with some nice violet floral notes and balanced acidity, especially for this notoriously low acid grape (Dolcetto = 'little sweet one).

As for the Baudana '06 Dolcetto d'Alba...different story. It was blocky, clumsy, grapey, lacking in balanced acidity and just not particularly good. Unfortunately it echoes many other Dolcetti I have tasted.

Photo's of wines and accompanying food to come....

Illadelph Blogger meet-up with the great David McDuff

Wine blogging. It may seem easy. You know, drink, form an impression, get up on your soap box and post something. Repeat. Well, blogging regularly - say 3 times a week as a minimum - actually is a real commitment. I read various wine blogs, but few of them ever keep me coming back as regularly as Mcduff's Food and Wine Trail. The combination of McDuff's crisp, professional writing, his thorough profiles of producers, region's and wines, and display of authority without coming across as arrogant or snobbish makes for what might be my favorite wine blog out there, or at least top 3. As David mentioned in his re-cap of our lunch together last week, we also have a good bit in common: we have spent significant time living in the Washington, DC area, we are both University of Maryland alums, we enjoy listening to an eclectic mix of music, particularly anything in a post-punk vein.

On my way home from New York City last week, I stopped in Philly and was picked up by Mr. McDuff at the train station. We then headed to one of the city's many BYO's for some lunch and wine which David brought with him. As some of you may know, the distribution and sale of wine in Pennsylvania is controlled by the state, which leads to a generally poor selection of wines which often times cost a lot more than they should. So a few upshots are that BYO restaurants are popular, and serious wine drinkers in Pennsylvania shop in New Jersey or Delaware - David, though he lives in the Philly metro area, actually works at a store in Wilmington, Delaware named Moore Brothers.

OK, on to the lunch and wine. We went to a Thai restaurant named Nan, which had a typical menu including pad thai, salmon with red curry (which I had and quite enjoyed), smoked duck (which David ordered, also very tasty) and one seriously out of place lunch entree of spaghetti with ricotta and broccoli. Hmmm...we started with a 2002 Ratzenberger Riesling Steeger St Jost Spatlese Trocken from the Mittelrhein. At first it showed the intense apricot kernel flavor and broad fruit which I generally associate with the Rheingau, but then the smoky blue slate minerality kicked in and grew increasingly present in the wine. Apparently the steeply sloping vineyard has provides some of the fruit for a Grosses Gewaches wine which Ratzinger also makes. It was a bit on the dry and strict side for a great pairing with most Thai dishes (especiall the curries), though it did go really well with some grilled squid salad. The second bottle David opened was a delicious 2004 Aldo Vajra 'Costa e Fossati' Dolcetto d'alba. It showed the cut and fine balance of '04 in Piedmont, with a real traditional structure. Very dry blackberry fruits, with some earthiness, cut white flowers and a real elegant, lighter weight (for Dolcetto) palate. The finishing tannins were really fine, like a cat's tongue - that sort of sensation on the palate. None of those coarse, puckery, wood tannins which marr many other Piedmontese wines these days - no surprise as this is a traditional winery (longer fermentation in large slavonian oak) and I do tend to prefer traditional wines. It was the best Dolcetto I have ever tasted, and just out of curiosity a few days later I saw an '05 Giuseppe Mascarello Dolcetto d'Alba in a new Baltimore shop named Swirl, cracked it open, and found that it was not nearly as refined and elegant. Granted, it's not as good a vintage and the Vajra has a year of bottle age on it, but I still don't think the Giuseppe Mascarello Dolcetto will be as good.

Sorry for the dolcetto tangent there. Anyway, back to the story at hand. McDuff knows his stuff, is a terrific guy, and it was a pleasure to finally meet him in person. Thanks for lunch, David, next time is on me.