Awakening the sleeping giant of Italian wine

I’m delighted to announce we have a guest post this week from South East London’s resident Italian wine expert, Simon Reilly. And it’s about one of my favourites, Taurasi from Campania.

The year is 2010. The venue, a restaurant called Zucca on Bermondsey Street, South East London. A restaurant so good, it is now fabled by those lucky enough to visit during its tragically short life. The wine, a nebbiolo from the Produttori dei Carema in Alto Piemonte. “Its a baby Barolo”, chimed the sommelier. I was sold. Imitation is said to be the highest form of flattery, but it is also a pretty good way to sell wine.

It is not just Alto Piemonte that has jumped on the coat tails of Barolo. Comparisons to nebbiolo have helped push the wines of Etna into the international limelight. Xinomavro from Naoussa has a place in my cellar thanks to a canny wine merchant, who once extoled the Nebbiolo characteristics in this mysterious wine from Greece. Valtellina offers a lighter version of nebbiolo, quenching the world’s increasing thirst for lower alcohol, lighter bodied wines.

Despite these success stories, another pretender to the crown, aglianico, has not yet had the success it craves. Whether it was an independent commentator or someone with a more vested interest who coined the term ‘Barolo of the South’, the comparison hasn’t yet had an impact on aglianico’s position in the wine world. Aglianico, and its poster boy, the Taurasi DOCG, is a sleeping giant of Italian wine. A bit like Tottenham Hotspur, it has all the attributes one should need to be successful, but the trophy cabinet has so far remained rather bare.

This summer, I visited Taurasi to explore the region and its wines. I wanted to find out for myself if I should add this to the other nebbiolo clones that increasingly fill my cellar. 2023 marks the 30^th anniversary of the granting of Taurasi’s DOCG, a symbol that is still held close to the heart of many of its winemakers. Perhaps this milestone presents an opportunity to awake this sleeping giant and gain traction in the international wine market. Ange Postecoglou appears to be turning round Tottenham’s fortunes this season, can the same be done for Taurasi?

Insert joke about spotlight and undiscovered wine.

Lessons from the Langhe

Taurasi is a small, sleepy town perched on top of one of the many hills in Irpinia, a region in Campania, about an hour’s drive east of Naples. As you drive through the cobbled streets of the old town towards the Castello Marchionale, built on the towns highest point, it feels like very little has changed since the Taurasi DOCG was granted in 1993.

To understand how a wine region like Taurasi can change its fortunes, its worth looking at how other regions have faired in the last 30 years. Not so long ago, not all was rosy in the Langhe. A very traditional wine-making culture had its head turned by international wine trends. Robert Parker’s palate being the main protagonist. Some wine makers pandered to this. More new oak, smaller barriques and shorter maceration led to a modernist style that appealed to Parker but clashed with the traditionalist style of Barolo. This split in winemaking made Barolo a difficult product to sell.

But wine trends are, well… trends. As palates moved from big fruity, alcoholic bombs towards the elegance and deftness of Burgundy, market forces began to change. Burgundy prices went through the roof. Pure economics forced wine lovers to look for a different, but similar, horse to back.

This created an opportunity for Nebbiolo and its spiritual home, the Langhe. By focussing on the similarities to pinot noir, merchants were able to place the Langhe into the big space in the market created by the dearth of affordable burgundy.      

But it can’t be just marketing spin can it? Surely not everyone is as gullible as I to fall for that ‘baby Barolo’ line. I spoke to David Berry Green, long time Langhe resident and distributor of some of its finest addresses, from legends like Bartolo Mascarelllo and Roagna to rising stars such as Trediberri and Lalu, to find out more about what has driven the success of the Langhe. He suggests that the key to success is the new Piedmontese generation of winemakers are simply making better wines than their parents, “more organic, more precision, more traditional/classic wine making styles than the previous international, Parkerised style”.

On my visit to Taurasi, I met with a number of the new generation of winemakers, many of whom are moving the style of wines on in a way that echoes Berry Green’s point about the Langhe. Giovanni Fiorentino, who is based in the commune of Paternopoli (one of the communes within the Taurasi DOCG), makes wines which consistently stood out as being ones I want to drink. Floral cherries, chalky tannins and refreshing acidity characterised Giovanni’s wines. Importantly for me he was able to control alcohol levels, his wines typically falling between 13.5-14.5%.  

Alcohol levels are all relative here in Taurasi. I felt the fruit start to stew in many of the wines that nudged to 15% and above. The aglianico grapes need a long time on the vine to ripen fully, with harvests generally starting from the last week of October and into November. Pick too early and the tannins take over. The key is to balance the grape’s natural power with elegance and finesse. 

Giovanni achieves this balance through a much more technical approach to winemaking than his predecessors; “I analyse plants and berries before picking, I understand pH and acidity levels, I carefully monitor and control cellar temperature during fermentation and maceration. I typically macerate for four weeks, which is relatively short for Taurasi, but this allows the terroir to shine”.

This more technical, informed wine-making approach has to be the way forward for Taurasi. One has to make the wine that nature gives you each year but if that results in big tannic beasts that people don’t really want to drink, then it surely makes sense to seize back some control from mother nature where you can. Giovanni emphasised the need, as a winemaker, to understand the aglianico grape’s potential for finesse and what he can do to bring this out in the wines. He has been focussing heavily on making an aglianico rosato, with no maceration, to demonstrate the finesse that aglianico can produce.

The town of Taurasi in Campania.

The gateway drug

As a keen consumer of the wines of the Langhe, I have found joy in the lighter, often lower alcohol Langhe Nebbiolo offerings. Not only are these delicious wines to drink at a more affordable price than their prized Barolo and Barbaresco but they act as a gateway drug to the more expensive and ultimately rewarding wines. By experimenting with Langhe nebbiolo, I have been able to identify producers who’s styles appeal most to me, before taking the plunge and spending some real money on their prized assets.

After chewing my way through 44 Taurasi DOCG wines in a morning’s tasting at the Castello Marchionale in Taurasi, I visited another upcoming producer for lunch. A short drive down the hill from the Castello, on the fringes of Taurasi lies the cantine of Fratelli Addimanda. Gianluigi Addimanda of Fratelli Addimanda’s wines stood out that morning for their freshness, balance and spicy, floral cherry goodness.

But it wasn’t the flagship Taurasi DOCG that was the highlight of the day, rather a humble, yet life-affirming young Irpinia Aglianico DOC (the generic Langhe Nebbiolo or Bourgogne Rouge equivalent of the region) Gianluigi poured with lunch. Unoaked, served slightly chilled, it had dark cherries and minerals on the nose, backed with deliciously fresh crunchy fruit. I inhaled it. Entry level has never tasted so good. I looked at Gianluigi agog. What came out of my mouth was my gushing review of his delicious wine, but internally I was screaming “if you want to show off the joys of aglianico don’t serve me 44 Taurasi DOCG monsters for breakfast, just serve me this light footed ballerina for lunch!”

When he told me it retailed for about $6-7 compared to $35-40 for his Taurasi, I just about fell off my chair. This is your promotional material! This is what should be flying out to restaurants across the land. This is the wine that will show people the joy of aglianico. Only after they’ve had their fill of this wine will they come back and buy the flagship Taurasi wines.

After this visit I looked on his website and the humble Irpinia Aglianico isn’t even listed as one of their wines. The focus on the Taurasi DOCG wine is so great that these lesser wines are barely talked about. It seems such a wasted opportunity. Some of the most exciting new producers coming out of the Langhe like Lalu and Philine Isabelle haven’t even released a Barolo yet but their Langhe Nebbiolo wines are so good they already have cult followings and their Barolos will no doubt fly off the shelves when released.

I picked up this point with another Taurasi producer who’s wines I enjoyed, Milena Pepe of Tenuta Cavalier Pepe. She had recently been up to the Langhe and visited a number of winemakers, including GD Vajra, who’s Langhe Nebbiolo blew her away “its like they’ve added something to it, its so good! How can it be so light in colour but so full of flavour?”. Milena gets it. The entry level wines are the key to broadening the market for her wines.   

Expand the regional story

As a consumer, I don’t think of Taurasi as a wine category, not even aglianico can make this claim. To me, these are Southern Italian wines. Alongside the great Southern whites of Greco di Tufo, Fiano di Avellino, falanghina and coda di volpe. I regularly drink these wines at home. When I think of Southern Italy I immediately think of sitting in the sun, eating fish and drinking a saline, mineral-laden glass of white wine. My first thought is certainly not aglianico. The two “suitcase wines” I took home from Taurasi were both white wines. A stunning Greco di Tufo from Petrillo I came across which tasted like a high end Santorini assyrtiko but at about a third of the price and a roviello bianco (known locally as grecomusc’) by Fratelli Addimanda which blew me away with its energy and oily Rhone-like texture.

If the aglianicos of the South are to be presented to the market in a successful way they need to be sold as part of a package, highlighting what the South of Italy has to offer. Promoting Taurasi or another individual DOCG will get lost in international markets without the context of the wider, regional story.

I think about a wine sale in the context of a drop down box on a wine merchant’s website. This is the journey a consumer goes on to land on a wine, so the promotion of the wine needs to follow this journey. Even the great Barolo doesn’t have its own drop down box, it will sit under Italy/Piedmont/Barolo. The producers of Taurasi need to think about how this will work for them, for example; Italy/Southern Italy/Campania/Taurasi. Therefore they need to be working with the other DOC/G in Campania and across the South of Italy to promote the wines as a package.

Something closer to home is to make more of the great white wines they make. I sensed when I visited Taurasi that the whites were not much more than an aperitivo, something to sip on before dinner was served and you could get on with eating pasta and drinking proper (i.e. red) wine. This is wrong. These are world class wines that should be promoted as such.

Taken as a package the South of Italy has so much to offer the wine world, it just needs its own Ange Postecoglou to look at what they have and promote it in the right way. In the right hands the sleeping giant may soon be stirred.  

Simon Reilly is a wine writer based in South East London. He was a finalist for the wine reporter award at the 2017 Millésima Blog Awards. He was also shortlisted for the emerging writer category of the 2017 Louis Roederer International Wine Writer’s Awards. He has written for Jancis Robinson, Decanter and Root & Bone. He also publishes a blog called Wineloon.