Wine notes with Clive Hartley

Gambero Rosso

The Gambero Rosso Top Italian Wines Roadshow rolled into Melbourne last month with over 50 producers represented from across Italy. It is a once-a-year opportunity to taste around 200 Italian wines.

The event is open to trade as well as wine lovers and is organised by Gambero Rosso, the organisation that publishes the definitive yearly guidebook on Italian wine. It is an eagerly awaited book to read who has achieved the top rating of ‘tre bicchieri’, the coveted 3-glass rating. It is a hectic few hours of tasting and a day I revisited some old familiar friends and found some new ones, in wine terms of course. Here are a few.

I’ve known Sella & Mosca from Sardinia for a long time. In Melbourne I tasted an aromatic 2022 Vermentino full of tropical fruits and herbs. Also recommended was their 2019 red Mustazzo Cannonau.

It comes from 50 year-old Grenache vines, grown at an altitude of 600 metres. The wine had lovely sweet red fruits with a smooth and velvet palate. Bellavista is a sparkling wine from Franciacorta and the quality has always been high.

Nothing has changed with the current 2019 vintage Brut being elegant and with autolytic driven flavours that rivals a good Champagne. With well over 350 indigenous grapes in Italy there is always something new to discover and at the tasting it was the turn of Cesanese, a red grape from Lazio. The Casale del Giglio Matidia 2021 was a lovely bright red cherry juicy medium-bodied spiced red similar to a Gamay.

You don’t need to go offshore to taste some Italian inspired reds. Try Vinea Marson Sangiovese 2018 from Heathcote. It is a lovely, complexed wine with sweet fruit, herbs and cedar oak flavours. Or their 2017 Nebbiolo which displays classic herbs, flowers and tobacco aromas balanced by cherry and licorice flavours and was rated as ‘Outstanding’ in the Australian Wine Guide

Clive Hartley is an award-winning wine writer, educator and consultant. His Australian Wine Guide (7th ed) is available for purchase from Paradise Books in Daylesford or via his website – www.australianwineguide.com.au

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