Italy Puglia cooking classes and wine tours

After talking to several oenologists and wine makers during the wine tours we organize in Puglia, we have the impression the tendency will be towards wines which have less and less a distinctive wood – oak taste. Instead, we think wines will be appreciated when they reveal the unique flavors of the indigenous grapes (such as Aglianico, Primitivo, Negroamaro in Italy).

Successful wines will be those who have good structure, lots of flavors and “elegance”.

And you? do you agree with this view?

What kind of wine do you personally prefer? Do you like the wood taste?

How do you choose which wine to buy? do you base on ratings, price or what else?

Starting from November 6th, we can buy and drink the Novello wine in Italy.

As usual, lots of people are going to be disappointed and many others will love it! I think it is important to consider that Novello wine is totally different from the …..other wines. When we taste the Novello wine, we should not expect the same body, texture and taste we have when we drink all the other wines.

Many people call it the New Wine, but it is made with a completely different method. The new wine is the result of the latest grape harvest. It is made with the traditional method of separating the raisins from the vines, crushing the raisins and fermenting the must. The new wine still has a little fermentation on going. It is a young wine that still needs to improves due the action of the the yeasts.

Its color and taste depend on: the area where the grapes were produced; the time when the grapes were harvested; the time lag between when the vinification process ended and when the wine is tasted.

The Novello wine is totally different from the new wine. It is made with a completely different method, known as the carbonic maceration: the whole grapes (which have NOT been pressed) are kept in tanks, hermetically sealed, with gas, at about 30 °C for up to 3 weeks. At the end of this process, all the resulting grapes are crushed and let to ferment for about 2 days.

Novello wine is tannin-free and so its life is very short. Its color is usually bright red and its taste is very fruity, tasting strawberry, rasperry, banana, apricot and freshly squeezed grape. It has less alchool and body than wines made with the traditional method.

Novello is in Italy what the Beaujolais is in France. In Italy, Novello wine was traditionally made in Veneto, Trentino and Tuscany. Nowadays, Italy counts 350 Novello producers, in almost all regions, with a production of about 15.000 bottles per year.

Grapes which are usually used to make Novello are: Merlot, Sangiovese, Barbera, Montepulciano D’Abruzzo, Nero d’Avola, Aglianico and in Puglia, Primitivo and Malvasia Nera di Lecce.

Novello is perfect for an aperitif, but also with young cheese, poultry, not too fat salami. and of course all the food which is in the same season, such as chestnuts!

Coldiretti, the Italian farmer association, said that after an incredible summer, they expect Italy to become the world’s biggest wineproducer and the biggest exporter, by volume.

Coldiretti points out that the rise in Italian output will be matched by an incredible increase in quality, not only of the Northern Italian wines (brunello, barolo, chianti, prosecco etc) but also the Souther Italian primitivo wine.

We hope you celebrate tonight New Year’s Eve with an Italian Prosecco!!

Best wishes for a wonderful 2009!

Four of the most important Italian winemakers agree that the 2007 Grape Harvest will result in excellent wines.

From Piedmont Barolo producer, Michele Chiarlo, to Fausto Peratoner, the director of Cantina La Visa in the Trentino; from Marco Caprai, the Umbrian winemaker who put Sagrantino back on the map, to Alessio Planeta in Sicily who, together with Francesca and Santi, run the most successful winery in Sicily – all agree that the uniting factor of the Italian grape harvest, from the north to the south of Italy, is the high quality of this year’s wine.