A Hedonist in the Cellar Read Online Free PDF Page B

tasting to the nearby winery, while making a note to chastise the cleaning staff. In many ways he reminds me of Angelo Gaja, another hypomanic Italian who inherited a wine estate in a backwater appellation and decided to conquer the world.
    Anselmi’s father was a successful negotiant who turned out millions of bottles of undistinguished plonk from purchased grapes. After returning to the family seat with an oenology degree and high moral purpose, Roberto closed down the negotiant business and set about, in concert with his friend and neighbor Leonildo Pieropan, “to make a revolution.”
    The revolution started, as is so often the case, in the hills. Or maybe it was a counterrevolution: the traditional Soave Classico district encompassed only the hillsides, with their poor volcanic and calcareous soils. In 1968, when the official Soave DOC was created by the Italian authorities, pressure from the big growers resulted in a huge expansion of the zone to include vast swatches of fertile, overproductive flatland. (Ignoring the ancient Roman maxim: Bacchus loves the hills.) Anselmi concentrated his efforts on the steep hillsides and adapted new viticultural practices to replace the old super-productive pergola system. Beginning in the late seventies he started producing serious, rich Soaves and lobbied fiercely for stricter regulations.
    Anselmi failed to convince the authorities to hold his neighbors to a higher standard. “After twenty-five years I decided to divorce Soave,” he says. So you will just have to take my word for it that Anselmi’s wines are essentially Soaves—the essence of what garganega (accented with a little aromatic Trebbiano di Soave) from this region can produce—a wine with more body and fruit than the average Italian white and mineral highlights that can make it reminiscent of a good Chablis.
    Anselmi’s friend Leonildo Pieropan remains married to the Soave appellation; he and his forebears are undoubtedly the best thing that ever happened to this slatternly tramp of a wine region. Stylistically and temperamentally he is the opposite of his friend Anselmi: a shy, bespectacled homebody who favors cardigans and lives with his family in a meticulously restored villa just inside the crenelated medieval walls of the town of Soave.
    Despite his reputation as the ultimate traditionalist, Pieropan loves technology, and the medieval outbuildings around the house are crammed with the latest in computer-controlled, stainless-steel fermentation tanks. His vineyards, like Anselmi’s, are located exclusively in the hills of the Classico region, and his wines have long been cherished by connoisseurs around the world for their purity, delicacy, and balance. His single-vineyard La Rocca is one of Italy’s greatest white wines. Unlike most Soaves, Pieropan’s wines have the ability to age for ten years and beyond, becoming increasingly minerally over time. They are the best possible proof that the region is worth saving.

    A few other producers are making noteworthy wines, including brothers Graziano and Sergio Pra, whose single-vineyard Monte Grande Soave, made from grapes with a serious case of vertigo, is consistently one of the best wines of the region. The Gini brothers, Sandro and Claudio, make a rich, plump style of Soave, as does Stefano Inama. Inama’s regular Soave is very good, but he has made a name for himself in a hurry with two supercharged, wood-aged, single-vineyard wines, Foscarino and Vigneto du Lot, which are deemed freakish by some traditionalists, tasting somewhat like superripe New World Chardonnays. Whether you like this style or not, they are an excellent antidote to the notion that Soave is a dilute and boring quaff.
    A few other names to look for: Cantina del Castello, Coffele, and Suavia. There may be a few good makers I’m unaware of, but the six and a half million bottles a year from other sources are probably worth avoiding. Soave’s reputation as a reservoir of cheap mouthwash