Got my fill of Barbera d'Asti and some other little treats!

Got my fill of Barbera d’Asti and some other nice treats, thank you Castagnole delle Lanze for such an wonderful wine and food festival. One thing that I love about living in Italy are the festivals. Every town has their specialty, weather it be foods, wine, or even antiques. Every weekend there is something to do here and people travel from all over to partake in the freshest ingredients.

Last weekend was the Castagnole delle Lanze Barbera d’Asti festival and there were about 23 different producers strategically placed around the historic part of the town. With every producer was live music and a different type of food to pair with your wine. Which means I got to taste a lot of wine, and here are the greatest ones that I have tasted.

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Barroero Barbera d’Asti 2013 Azzurra; Marco is the winemaker and makes about 600 bottles a year. Super small high quality production. This wine was wonderful showing fruits of blackberries, plum, iron kind of like raw meat (something very typical of Barbera) had a great acidity and a long finish.

Four friends who had a love for sparking wine during an ongoing dream in enology school had decided to try making a sparking from this area’s most prized grape Nebbiolo. They call them selves Erpacrife for (Eric, Paolo, Cristian, and Federico), and they make a wonderfully dry sparking wine. I have always said if you have fish and chips this would be the perfect wine. What they have been able to show here is the power of the Nebbiolo’s acidity. The 2011 Erpacrife Nebbiolo was wonderful, pink grapefruit, peaches, white flowers. The color they have been able to maintain from the Nebbiolo is the color of an onionskin pink. The vineyard where they collect the grapes is in the area of Alba Madonna di Como and here their vineyards are located in this amphitheater where the climate is a bit cooler, helping to mature the Nebbiolo slower and also maintaining sugar levels lower and acidity levels higher.

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Gianni Doglia had a few things to try at his stand, and so I did! First I tasted the Grignolino 2015 strawberry, floral, a bit of tannins showing very rich in the mouth. Everyone in this area seems to be very happy with the 2015 vintage, making bigger, fruit driven wine. The Barbera s’Asti 2015 was the bomb. Black fruits, plum, pleasant acidity (lot less meaty quality than the 2013’s).

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Dogliotti 1870 as you can imagine there are many generations of winemaking going on in this house. It all started in Castiglione Tinella and not to long after had decided to move their production area to Castagnole delle Lanze where the winery and family are currently today. Barbera d’Asti 2014, elegant, linear, red fruit, and floral respect some other vintages, has a nice clean acidity.

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This festival is always a good time, and I will plan to go again next year. I just hope it does not rain.

Cascina Castlèt - History Tradition Innovation

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In the small town of Costignole Asti in the Asti Monfferato hills following along a winding street surrounded by vineyards you will find the farmhouse of Cascina Castlèt.   A family that holds records dating back to the XII century. What once was the house that the family Borio called home they have now transformed it into a fully operating cellar.  Cascina Castlèt has managed to balance very nicely tradition with modern, both in the style of the cellar and expressions of their wines.

Mariuccia was and still is ahead of her time, when the winery was handed down to her by her farther in 1970 she was young and determined. Working with Giacomo Bersanetti she recreated her first modern label for the wine Passum in 1983, a Barbera that is treated kind of like an Amarone. Once the grapes are harvested they are placed into small shallow baskets and left to dry. The first part of this drying process takes place in a room with dehumidifiers and after a few weeks the wine is then moved to the attic where the heat from the sun and the dryness of the air will complete this process.

With other innovations and a will to keep tradition alive at Cascina Castlèt has something very special and very rare amongst them. A grape varietal that was commonly found in the Asti and Canelli areas, today Cascina Castlèt is the only remaining producer of this varietal. How they make this wine is also quite interesting because this varietal is very close to Nebbiolo it is the last varietal to come in the cellar and usually they have to harvest it before it is ready. They had mentioned that if they waited for full ripeness it could be as late as end of November/December. So what they do is the same process of the Passum wine they dry the grapes so that way it gives the skins and stems time to mature. This wine is not sweet and also it is not high in alcohol. When I tasted this wine vintage 2011 I got on the nose strawberry fruit, pink peppercorns, and some tobacco leaves. In the pallet this wine is assertive, a bit dusty feeling, the tannins are pretty rustic, I did have the same flavors in the pallet as the nose and the finish was long. This wine for me would be great on a cold day with a nice stew or braised meat.

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Now for my little guilty pleasure, I love sparkling Barbera! If I had a t-shirt that said it I would wear it. It is our wine that reminds me a bit of Lambrusco. Goj is the name of the wine and it is coming from the Piemonteìs dialect meaning a joyful moment, and this is exactly what it does for me. Light, fresh, and refreshing, this wine is better off with a few hours in the fridge before serving and goes excellent with BBQ, or even pizza. If you can get your hands on a bottle I recommend giving it a try.