Some people delight in the unfamiliar and are immune to the comfort of the common. When that set of people intersects with an interest in wine, there can be problems. Because, to be honest, most restaurant wine lists just aren’t that interesting. The same names, the same grapes, the same prices...yawn. It’s all just too tedious.
There are the exceptions: a well-aged bottle at a good price, wedged into a lineup of the tried-and-true, or the sudden appearance of a memory-laden bottle, tasted years ago in an Italian seaside town, now pouring in a North End trattoria. But for the truly adventurous, it’s the walk on the winy wild side: discovering an obscurity that has, for some reason, become a passion — or is it a fetish? — for whoever’s written the wine list.
At Erbaluce (69 Church Street, Boston), Charles Draghi’s Italianate haven of eccentric traditionalism in Bay Village, that passion — given the neighborhood, we probably shouldn’t call it a fetish — expresses itself via Valtellina, an eccentrically traditionalist wine from Lombardy that you’ll almost never see on a restaurant’s list. At Erbaluce, there are eight of ’em. That’s right, eight. Want to drink on the edge? Here’s your chance.
Valtellina is made from nebbiolo, a grape much better known in northwestern Italy’s Piedmont region, where it’s responsible for Barolo, Barbaresco, and other wines of a decidedly elevated reputation. Just to the east of the Piedmont is Lombardy, whose presence on the international wine stage is…well, mention the region to the average wine drinker and they’re just as likely to assume you’re talking about the trophy that goes to the winner of the Super Bowl.
To be sure, Valtellina’s not the easiest wine to love. It’s blessed with nebbiolo’s signature floral aromatics — most people say roses, though it’s a little more complicated than that — and a healthy dollop of tannin, which can be a little shocking in this modern era of smoothed-out wine. To this is also added an often sharp acidity, another quality that’s been leeched from many New World–style wines and which engenders reactions ranging from surprise to shock in some. As a result, Valtellina is a wine that not only rewards aging, but needs it. Unfortunately, the economics of restaurant wine programs means that aged Valtellina is usually out of the question. Erbaluce confounds this trend with a 1996 from Nino Negri and a 2000 from Nera, but the other six bottles are on the younger side, and thus benefit from a little culinary assistance to wrestle them into form. Acidic ingredients, animal flesh, certain hard cheeses, and mushrooms can do the trick.
Word salad time: there’s Valtellina, and then there’s Valtellina Superiore. Despite the suggestive grandiosity of the latter name, all it really means is that the wine’s been held longer in the cellar, in oak (not usually new), with a theoretical extension of the wine’s potential longevity. There are also some regional subdivisions, each with their own site-derived qualities. Two names you’ll see are Sassella and Grumello; there’s also one with the wonderful name Inferno. Seriously.
And then there’s sforzato. In addition to being an enjoyably silly word to say out loud (especially coupled with Inferno), its presence on a label indicates a sort of Barry Bonds–ification of the wine. Not, it must be noted, through the euphemistic wonders of creams and clears, but by allowing some of the nebbiolo grapes to dry on the vine. This concentrates flavors and lowers the juice-to-other-stuff ratio, which makes an already aggressive wine even more powerful. If Valtellina divides opinions, sforzato can engender open hostilities. Some love the bite and chew it brings, others find the results a difficult slog, but few shrug with indifference. (Just to complicate matters, some producers spell the word “sfursat,” which I assume is local dialect, but is much less fun to say.)
Does what appears above seem like an oddly ambivalent sort of enthusiasm for a wine I’m encouraging people to try? Sure, I suppose. As I wrote before, Valtellina’s not for everyone. And even for its fans (I count myself among that number), the wine’s no pushover, and can be a difficult companion under the best of circumstances. But that very refusal to conform is an essential part of its appeal.
Furthermore, it takes a restaurant like Erbaluce, with a decided point of view in its cuisine, to bring out the best in a similarly opinionated wine. For while Valtellina needs and rewards aging, it’s almost completely at sea without food, no matter its vintage. In other words, this is no easy cocktail sipper. And while it’s a wine of its place and its traditions, it’s no staid dining companion either. It will challenge every sip, daring you to follow where it chooses to lead.
Hmm. That sounds sort of dominatrix-y. Maybe it is a fetish.
