BERGER: Understanding Italian red wines
BERGER: Understanding Italian red wines
Feb 14, 2012 6
(Pressdemocrat) - As much as I love Italian red wines, and I really do, the entire subject is hard to write about, and not least because writers get little help from the producers.
Let’s start with the greatest red in Italy, and certainly the longest-lived, Barolo. It is a product of Nebbiolo, a late-ripening grape that is grown in a region that typically is covered with a blanket of fog late in the growing season. (In Italian, nebbia means fog.)
Fog at that time of year diminishes sunlight, retarding sugar development, and leaving the acid rather high in an already tart grape.
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