L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2016 www.italoamericano.org 18 L'Italo-Americano I n Kai Yuan Road, nearby to where the old ferry leaves from Xiamen to Gulangyu Island, You Sheng, a man per- petually dressed head to toe in white, serves me a bowl of spicy sha cha noodle soup with fish balls and tofu as he has made it in this very spot for the last thir- ty years. The night air is tight with the smell of street vendors' local food specialties and grill smoke, compressed even further by humidity, pedestrians and traffic. It's hot. Chopsticks in hand and seated in a near squat position, few things come into focus m or e clear ly than the lights of Gulangyu Island and how insanely good would be a well-made Pinot Grigio with these noodles. Pinot Grigio. We've loved it. We've maligned it. But, like a lover in some for- eign port of call to whom you've long ago s aid goodbye, you never really get over it. Pinot Grigio can be simple, a pleasantly fresh communicator of authentic Italian style. At its best, it can deliver deliciously good white wines of personality and complexity, along w ith some very refined drinking. It's true that Pinot Grigio was – and is still – one of the most popular white wines sold in the U.S. market. I recently took JOEL MACK visual stock of the shelf space allotted to Pinot Grigio at one of the east coast's premier wine stores – it was more like a wall for Pinot Grigio than it was a section, testimony to the catego- ry's still massive appeal. But, it is popularity and demand for product that has caused what is seen by observers as a wide qual- ity gap in the category. That s ome grow ers , in order to accommodate demand, have sought to cultivate the variety on sites ill-suited for the production of top notch wines, and because unreasonably high crop yields have resulted in thin, personali- ty-deprived examples, has not endeared the variety to many who know better. And guess w hat? That 'w all of P inot Grigio' is home to all of them, the good, the bad, and the ugly of the Pinot Grigio category, and at a variety of bewilderingly dif- ferent price points. But, the good news is that, next to what one might consider to be the more unremarkable ten- ants of your local Pinot Grigio section - or wall, as the case may be – there do reside some very, very good bottlings of Pinot Grigio to be had and enjoyed by consumers in-the-know. A first step to keeping it all sorted is to clarify the Pinot Grigio vs. Pinot Gris thing: they are indeed the same grape. 'Gris' is the French reference to the grayish-purple-pink grape that originated in France's Alsace, 'Grigio' being the Italian transla- tion. I mention this because the different geographies do produce quite different wines, because Pinot Gris is still sometimes used, in Valle d'Aosta, for exam- ple, and because the inclination of some wine shop clerk to trans- form an inquiry of Pinot Grigio into a Pinot Gris buying (perhaps I should say selling) opportunity for reasons only retail people can understand has not been entirely unknown. What we are interested in, then, is Pinot Grigio – a color mutation of Pinot Noir, by the way – grown in the cool area of northeastern Italy. Introduced into Italy around the beginning of the nineteenth century, Pinot G rigio w as formerly called Ruländer and I can think of at least one producer whose bottle label still bears that moniker. Bottlings to look for – noted on the label – include those from denominations such as Friuli's Collio, Colli Orientali, Grave and Venezia Giulia, and from Alto Adige, specifically Alto Adige and Dolomiti. You will likely find wines from those pro- duction areas to be complex, aro- matic and mineral driven, show- ing good depth, often viscous and of good weight on palate, with notes of tree and stone fruit. Pinot Grigio from northeast- ern Italy tends to be more miner- al and dry than the variety's fruiter New World counterparts or the fruiter and s w eeter Alsatian examples. This, togeth- er with the fact that Pinot Grigio is, in Italy's northeast, often har- vested earlier to preserve acidity, makes comparatively super food- friendly wines that pair effort- lessly with fresh vegetables, w hite meats , and s emi-s oft cheeses. To be clear, I am not dismiss- ing Pinot Grigio wines produced in their varying denominations elsewhere on the peninsula (or beyond, for that matter). They have their respective merits and can be pleasantly fresh and capa- ble of communicating their respective areas. Our lens here, however, is focused on the cate- gory's more serious wine style(s) found in northeastern Italy. Recommended producers include: Attems, Castelfeder, G radis 'ciutta, K upelw ies er, Lageder, H . Lun, P ighin, Scarbolo. Tasting Note Attems Pinot Grigio Ripe yellow s tone fruit, vibrant floral-citrus overtones, crisp and viscous on the palate. Pinot Grigio – a color mutation of Pinot Noir, by the way – grown in the cool area of northeastern Italy — Photo by luckybusiness Pinot Grigio Attems WINE NEWS TRENDS PROFILES Pinot Grigio: You Never Really Get Over It

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