Wine Ink: Three dreamers, three grapes | TahoeDailyTribune.com
Kelly J. HayesWine Ink	Back to: Food & Drink
Wine Ink: Three dreamers, three grapes
Kelly J. HayesWine Ink	June 17, 2017
Photo by Kelly J. Hayes |Winemaker Elisa Dilavanzo shows off her vineyards in northern Italyâs Euganean Hills just west of Venice.Photo by Mattia Mionetto |Gianluca Bisol on the Venissa Estate on the island of Mazzorbo.Photo by Kelly Hayes |The signpost of the Maeli Winery.Photo by Kelly J. Hayes |A half case of the golden Venissa wines at the Venissa Estate in Venice.Photo by Kelly J. Hayes |Winemaker Sally Ottoson under a Pacific Star.Special to the Daily Kelly J. Hayes.Kelly J. HayesPrev of imagesNextMaeli Winery: MaeliWine.com” target=”_blank”>Text”>MaeliWine.com Via Dietro Cero (no number) 35031 Baone (PD) +39 348 339 1074 Venissa venissa.it/en” target=”_blank”>Text”>venissa.it/en/ info@venissa.it”>Text”>info@venissa.it F.ta” target=”_blank”>Text”>F.ta S. Caterina, 3 – Mazzorbo 30142 Venezia – Italy VAT 038 280 90278 Pacific Star pacificstarwinery.com” target=”_blank”>Text”>pacificstarwinery.com 33000 North Highway 1 Fort Bragg, CA 95437 707.964.1155 12 miles north of Fort Bragg at the 73.58 mile marker Some winemakers focus on making the best cabernet sauvignon or the best pinot noir. Then there are others who think differently, who go further afield, and who indulge in flights of fantasy with obscure grape varieties that seemingly speak directly to them. Sometimes, only to them.
"I don't know," said Elisa Dilavanzo, gesturing with her hands. "It's just that I love yellow muscat, you understand?" It was not just the make-you-melt Italian accent, or the intensity in her eyes as she said it, there was something about her entire being that conveyed her passion for moscato giallo, as the grape is identified in Italy.
Sally Ottoson knows the feeling. "There are a number of longtime families in Mendocino and Ukiah, many from Piemonte in Italy, who had these amazing vineyards of old vines with grapes like charbono," Ottoson, a Mendocino Coast winemaker, said about discovering a fruit for her dreams. "I just fell in love with them. It was new to me and just so exciting."
And in Venice, Italy, Gianluca Bisol has created a hotel, a Michelin-starred restaurant, and a destination for wine lovers, all around a grape called dorona, which, without his intervention may well have disappeared. A visit to Venissa, on the tiny island of Mazzorbo, is a matchless culinary, wine and historical experience.
Dilavanzo came to wine relatively recently. An exuberant, emotional, and welcoming soul with boundless beauty (she reluctantly admits to being a former beauty queen), she was hired in 2010 to restore a hilltop vineyard in the volcanic soils of the Euganean Hills just west of Venice. There she fostered a fondness for a number of obscure varieties, but especially the moscato giallo. "It is so fragrant and there were so many ways that it can express itself. I just love it," she effuses.
Today, one tale of the grape is told in her Maeli Moscato Fior d'Arancio Colli Euganei DOCG 2015, a stunning sweet sparkler that is as beguiling a wine as one can find today. With just 6 percent alcohol and 110 grams of residual sugar by the liter, this wine marries sweetness with orange/tangerine floral notes and a creamy, balanced texture on the tongue.
Ottoson and her husband Mark (they blended in marriage this past spring) are the stewards of one of California's winery gems. The tiny Pacific Star Winery sits perched upon an impossibly green slope that juts into the Pacific on the coast just north of Fort Bragg. It is here that she crafts one of the few 100 percent charbono wines made in California today.
A little-known grape, with origins in either the Savoie in the foothills of the French Alps or Piemonte in Italy, depending on whom you wish to believe, charbono is gaining acclaim in Argentina under the moniker — bonarda. It is dark, tannic and worthy of intense examination.
"Inglenook and Parducci used to make charbono, but it had dwindled to just about 47 acres of plantings," Sally explained to me last year on a winery visit. A few acres of charbono remained under the care of a Ukiah grower. "I asked him to plant a couple of acres and people started to take notice," she said. Today there are close to 90 acres of charbono, producing wines that many consider to be cult classics. The 2012 Pacific Star Charbono is surely one of those.
Bisol and his family have a storied history in the Valdobbiadene region of Italy making some of Italy's finest Prosecco. But it was on a trip in 2002 to Torcello, Italy, that Gianluca found his muse.
"I noticed an old grapevine in a private garden beside the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta. I managed to persuade the owner to send me some of the grapes when they had matured," he recalls. "The crates arrived full of lovely, thick-skinned grapes with a brilliant golden color. It was the famous dorona, also known as the golden grape, well-loved by the Venetians and served during the banquets of the Doges, and then lost to history."