Taleggio and Smear-Ripening Cheese

Taleggio is a semi-soft Italian cheese from the Val Taleggio region of Lombardy in the foothills of the northern Italian Alps.  We feel we can take at least some credit for its popularity around here since we introduced it to Gainesville some time ago and have kept it as a staple here ever since.  Being complementary with good European red wines is probably a factor also.  

While red wine affinity is what we look for in cheese, Taleggio also pairs well with white wines, fruit, nuts, honey, crusty bread, risotto, polenta, fondue and cured meats.  At this point you might ask, is this the only cheese I will ever need?  Since it even works on pizza AND as a dessert cheese, well, yeah, it very well may be all you need!  Are we salivating yet?

Taleggio cheese dates to the ninth century making it one of the oldest soft cheeses.  It has its Italian legal protection (PDO) as the only cheese allowed to be made in the Val Taleggio.  However, because cheese is a commercial product, it may now be made elsewhere.  It is a cow's milk cheese that is fruity and buttery when young but develops a spicy complexity with age and that's where the smear-ripening comes into play.

Smear-ripening is the same process as hand-washing the rind of a hard cheese.  Just different terminology.  The young cheese in this case is in a square mold and gradually forms a pinkish-brown rind around its pale yellow interior.  To prevent mold they brush a brine mix on the cheese weekly, lifting and turning the cheese to cover all sides as its firmness allows.  This gives Taleggio its unique nutty, savory, tangy and bitter flavors overlaying the intrinsic simplicity of the cheese.  The depth of flavors created by smear-ripening is matched by its pungent aromas, all of which makes this cheese a centerpiece worthy of being paired with an equally special red wine. 

Vinho Verde

(Not a new subject here at the ol' blogspot, but still worth a look-see considering its popularity.)  

Vinho Verde used to be a niche item reserved for a cult following; that is, until more recent times when our vacationers to Portugal came home with a taste for the stuff.  Even some of our most inveterate Napa Cab lovers now seem to have taken to Vinho Verde, especially now that it's toasty outside.  

If anything Vinho Verde is the anti-cab white wine of the world with mouth-zappingly fresh fruit flavors of lemon, lime, melon, gooseberry and grapefruit.  This straw-yellow tonic is subtly carbonated, low in alcohol and marries well with seafood, sushi, salads and picnics.  It is the quintessential white wine of summer.  

Vinho Verde comes from the Minho Province in the northwestern corner of Portugal right on the Atlantic coast.  It's a huge chunk of property with 21,000 hectares in vines; that's 9% of Portugal's total vineyards with 86% of those being planted in white grapes.  

There are six indigenous white varieties earmarked for Vinho Verde production with another twelve obscure varieties legally allowed in the blend.  The red varieties are similarly obscured by their nativity but that shouldn't concern us since the red wines generally don't leave the country.  Roses, though, are imported here and they are quite good.

Winemaking in this region goes back to the time of Christ but wine regulations and laws are a twentieth century creation.  First demarcated in 1908, then legislated in 1926, Vinho Verde received its DOC in 1984.

Minho Province has nine subregions and the best of these for wine production is Moncao in the northeastern corner facing Spain where the granite soils and cool (continental climate) weather produce a fresher and somewhat richer wine.  At the opposite (southern) extreme lies the Douro River and Port country and if that doesn't constitute an extremity in wine styles I don't know what does.

Elouan and the Oregon Wine Appellations

We recently got a case of Elouan Pinot Noir, which comes packaged in a good looking box that says, "Grown in Oregon, Made in California."  The obvious question here is, Can you do that?  Can you take grapes from one state and turn them into wine in another?

The American Viticultural Area wine appellation system is the ultimate legal arbiter in situations like this and in 2018, under pressure from Oregon wineries, they found Joe Wagner of Caymus fame did not have the right to name specific wine appellations on his wine labels or boxes.  So, no Willamette Valley may appear on Wagner's Oregon wines made in California.  Apparently, the Oregon place name is okay though.

Furthermore, Wagner was listing Rogue and Umpqua Valleys along with Willamette on his labels which sort of defeats the purpose of the appellation system.  If someone is purchasing a premium wine, they have the right to know where the grapes for that wine are sourced and you can bet if all three appellations are listed, most of the grapes will be from the lesser regions.  Willamette becomes just window dressing.

Why would vintners in Oregon care about the issue?  Oregon's wine laws are stricter than California's, so to take Oregon grapes to a California winery compromises the integrity of the Oregon product.  In Oregon (and much of the rest of the world) Pinot Noir is a single varietal wine.  In California they allow blending up to twenty-five percent.

So lets unpack this a little bit at this point.  Pinot Noir is the finest red wine grape in the world if you consider fineness to mean finesse and longer, finer and more nuanced complementary flavors.  When it's right, it's practically transcendent.  Unfortunately, that rarely happens.  Moreover, the American palate wants mouth-filling rich forward-fruit red wine, so that is what California gives them.  Hence you have blended reds masquerading as Pinot Noir.

Want to know if your pinot has been blended?  One way is to see if it's a cherry red color in the glass.  Another is to taste red fruit flavors in the wine as opposed to black fruit.  Want to know if other additives have been worked into it?  Can't help you there.  As long as California won't list ingredients on the back label of suspect wines, we'll never know.

2021 Brancatelli Valle Delle Stelle Cabernet Sauvignon

We've been selling this one for a few years now so it's about time we learned something about it.  Like...why is it so good?

Brancatelli features intense dark fruit flavors, black cherry in particular, with a distinct black pepper, savory herb and spiciness; all of which is embedded in the wine's definitive soft tannic structure.  Definitely a dinner wine, enjoy with any lighter red meat or hearty poultry dish.  

Giuseppe Brancatelli and Graziana Grassini are co-winemakers here but Brancatelli comes from a food background while Grassini has winemaking at Sassicaia (!) on her resume.  So it's safe to assume she is making the decisions there.

The vineyards for Brancatelli were planted in the clay and calcareous soils of Val de Cornia in southwestern Tuscany in the late 1990's.  The eighteen hectares of certified organic grapes in cultivation are located a mile from the Mediterranean Sea, lending a vibrancy to the wine.

The Cornia Valley site had never been cultivated before Brancatelli.  Historically, it had been densely populated beginning with the indigenous Etruscans in the Iron Age (900bc).  Their rule was ended by the Romans (circa 265bc) as winners of the Etruscan-Roman wars.