Worldbeat

Wines & Vines, June, 2003 by Larry Walker

Had a chance to meet recently with Sergio Zingarelli and Vito Candela of Rocca Delle Macie, the highly rated Chianti producers. They were in San Francisco, showing their latest vintages to the trade and WorldBeat was lucky enough to join them at Rose Pistola restaurant in North Beach. One of the first things I learned was that the name means stones in a pile" which is a refreshing change from the usual romantic winery name. Then again, what is a chateau but stones in a pile?

Rocca Delle Macie was founded in 1973 by Sergio Zingarelli's father, Italo, a former boxer and film producer. According to Sergio, his father bought the estate with the profits from a popular series of "spaghetti westerns" that he produced.

The estate was originally established in the 14th century, but the farmstead, near the village of Castellina in Chianti, was tumbling down and the vines were badly neglected. The vineyards were all replanted and the nearby Sant' Alfonso estate was also purchased, where a new winery was built.

The family has continued to buy property in the Chianti Classico zone and now owns 1,320 acres and is regarded as one of the more prestigious Chianti producers. That's a giant leap from spaghetti westerns to classic Chianti.

"The wine was a passion for my father," Sergio Zingarelli said, "not just a hobby."

The wines were highly regarded from the first, but in the early 1990s, a conscious effort was made to raise the quality bar higher. The family started farming the vines organically and an aging program using small oak barriques was put in place for aging. The vines are all harvested by hand.

Some 40% of the wines are sold in Italy, where the market is only in leading wine shops and restaurants, with no sales in supermarkets. Rocca Delle Macie is exported to about 50 countries, with the United States, Canada and Germany the top three markets.

In a wine market that is often caught up in chasing the latest hot trend, it was good to taste Rocca Delle Macie's range of well-made Chianti Classicos. (Why, I wondered, don't I drink more Chianti?) The Rocca Delle Macie range extends from the Rubizzo, an excellent Monday-through-Thursday kind of wine selling at under $10 a bottle in the U.S., to the very impressive special occasion Ser Gioveto, which sells for about $40.

The family has also restored a medieval village which they call Riserva di Fizzano, which has a restaurant and guest apartments.

Rocca Delle Macie is imported by Palm Bay Imports of Boca Raton, Fla. For more information about Rocca Delle Macie and other Palm Bay wines, visit the Web site palmbayimports.com.

Austria Tries To Make It Simple

Austrian wine laws have always been among the most difficult in the world to understand. In a wine-producing country no larger than Rioja or the Loire with less than 1% of world production, Austria has 24,000 producers in 16 wine regions. There are 21 officially recognized white and 13 red varieties, divided into 10 bewildering quality designations and made in very different styles.

As producer Lenz Moser recently noted in a newsletter, this means that a single grape variety such as Gruner Veltliner, which is planted in all the wine growing areas, could be sold under 160 different quality designations.

In an effort to sort out this Byzantine maze, Austria is introducing the DAC (Controlled District of Austria) system, based on the appellation system followed in Spain, France and other parts of Europe, as well as California. For more information on the new wine regulations, visit the Web site lenzmoser.at.

New DO In Spain

A new appellation in Spain, the Ribera del Jucar has been created as a sub-appellation for La Mancha. Ribera del Jucar includes more than 20,000 acres of land south of Madrid. It is named after the Jucar River that forms its eastern boundary.

At the present there are six cooperatives and two private wineries in the DO. The permitted grape varieties will be Bobal, Cencibel (the local name for Tempranillo) Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah.

One of the leading producers in the new DO is Cooperativa Nuestra Senora de la Cabeza, which owns 10% of the DO's vineyards. Their brand, Casa Gualda has been very successful in the U.S.

Until recently, La Mancha, which is Europe's largest single wine appellation with some 420,000 acres of vines, was better known as the homeland of Don Quixote, and an enological wasteland. However, in the past decade, the introduction of modern winemaking equipment and upgrading of the vineyards has led to a huge increase in quality in the area. In Spain, La Mancha is widely regarded as the region most likely to be able to compete with inexpensive New World wines from Australia and Chile.