11 minute read
just williams
Two wine geniuses who made such a difference
Every year for the past 45 years, the Austrian wine magazine Weinschaft, Weinkraft und Weinkunst has handed out two £50,000 prizes to “a notable man and woman who have performed notable services to the broadly defined wine community over a significant period of time”. David Williams profiles the 2022 winners of “Wine’s Nobel Prize”
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Marchese Salvatore della Notte: one grape, one barrel
Thelma Warmhill: deeper truths through the medium of mime
Born into a family of Bolognese industrialists in 1950, Marchese Salvatore della Notte was, he says now, “a classic black sheep – a real little bastard” as a youth. With a seemingly inexhaustible trust fund at his disposal, he devoted his 20s and 30s to the pursuit of ever-more baroque forms of hedonism, culminating in a short jail sentence after hosting the last of his infamous “ciao marinaro” parties on his yacht in the Adriatic on the eve of the Italian elections in 1992.
Lured back into the della Notte fold in 1994 to take up the reins at the family’s wine estate in Emilia-Romagna on the death of his father, Marchese Salvatore della Notte, della Notte was initially dissatisfied with the “extreme mediocrity of Emilia-Romagna Sangiovese – including, perhaps especially, our own”.
After a few years of “futile experimentation” with what he calls “the usual, fashionable idiocies of the time: barrique, barrique and a little more barrique”, della Notte made the discovery which he says “changed my life”. While browsing in the library of one of the family’s properties in central Bologna one night, he came across a battered 40-
page pamphlet by the late 19th century viticulturist and proto-anarchist thinker Giovanni Piccolo: L’armonia dei vitigni: verso una viticoltura equa e giusta (The harmony of the vines: towards a fair and just viticulture).
Piccolo’s radical thesis drew a comparison between “the barbarous tyranny of the state, which saps the strength and strangles the potential of the little man,” and the “ruinous leafy hell of the grapevine canopy; the suffocation of the bunch”.
“Just as we might ask how the voice of the individual working man can ever be heard above the hellish thrashing and screams of the factory,” Piccolo writes, “how can we expect to discern the sweet and glorious tune of a single grape when it is jostled, crushed and lost among thousands – millions! – of grapes on the vine and in the press!”
“My life started there, in those pages, on that day,” says della Notte. He spent the next five years converting the della Notte estate to what has come to be known as Piccolism, with every vine across the 10,000ha of vineyards devoted to the production of a single grape each vintage. The winery was completely overhauled: out went the botti and barriques, in came millions of tiny (1cm x 1cm x2cm) bespoke barrels, vats, and concrete eggs, each one with the capacity of a single grape’s juice.
Della Notte has many admirers and followers. But not even the most committed Piccolistas have come close to the original uncompromising regimen. “Believe me, it has not always been easy,” says della Notte, who has had his share of battles with the local DOC and government, notably the long and ongoing case brought by a group of left-wing labour lawyers over another of his “innovations”: the “voluntary remuneration” of his team of 2,000 largely immigrant vineyard workers. in spring 2016 to start proving that notion emphatically wrong.
Warmhill, it turned out, hadn’t been hiding away. In 2007, she used a portion of the estimated $15m she’d earned from the Wine Prof sale to spend four years of her life at the famously exacting live-in school of the French brutalist mime artist, Jean.
“It was really hard to begin with, Jean’s a tough old bird, and she got very close to quitting, but she stuck with it, she got through,” says Susan, who often acts as a spokeswoman for Warmhill, who has not uttered a word in public for the past 16 years.
Instead, she now communicates entirely in mime, a skill she developed “because she knew deep down, that it was the only way to really really get under the skin of wine, to tell the deeper truths,” says Susan.
After the outright rejection and derision that greeted her debut performance at the UGC Tasting in Bordeaux in 2016, when she was escorted from the premises by a furious Guillaume Prats, Warmhill was “rescued”, says Susan, by the unexpected response of Château Latour’s Fréderic Engerer, who said of her mimed tasting note, in which she walks down an imaginary staircase and then up again while intermittently smiling and crying, “This is the new way! I think from now on it may be the only way!”
Other historic highlights on Warmhill’s Wine as Gesture and Emotion YouTube channel, include her “escaping from a box while avoiding a bee” for the DRC 2017 releases and “cute dog wants to go for a walk” for 2002 Champagne Salon. “It may be sad that we’ll never read another firm but fair and perfectly crafted Warmhill tasting note,” says Susan. “But once you’ve seen Thelma respond to a wine [as she did to 2018 Sassicaia] by sitting stock still on an imaginary chair, mid-air, for 40 minutes without so much as blinking, you soon realise that the value of what we have gained instead is incalculable.”
“Everyone who works with me understands, like I do, that there will always be sacrifices in the pursuit of beauty, many of them unfortunately being financial,” says della Notte. “In our opinion”, he adds, as he uncorks a 2ml bottle of 2014 Il Sangue di Tutti with one of the bespoke miniature corkscrews that comes with every purchase of his most famous wine, “the price of beauty can never be too high.”
Thelma Warmhill
In 2006, Thelma Warmhill had the wine world at her feet. For much of the previous quarter-century, the “mouth of Milwaukee” had vied with Robert Parker for the title of world’s most powerful wine critic, her alphabetical scoring system derided and courted in equal measure, with producers desperate to do whatever they could to earn one of the former high school principal’s coveted Straight A judgements in her bi-annual, self-published Wine Prof magazines.
But Warmhill wasn’t celebrating. Something wasn’t right. “She’d grown tired of being accused of changing wine styles around the world, that idea that her palate and taste was too influential,” says her former colleague on Wine Prof, the Australian blogger-turned-critic Jayne Susan. “The idea that all those pretty, aromatic, early-picked wines had been Warmhilled. It really got to her.”
And so she took a step back, selling Wine Prof to a group of Indian investors, and retreating to her Milwaukee ranch. “To all intents and purposes she disappeared,” says Susan. “We all assumed she was just hanging out listening to her Joni Mitchell LPs and eating vegan tacos. How wrong we were.”
They say there are no second acts in American life. But, with heels kicking and jazz hands waving, Warmhill re-emerged at the 2015 Bordeaux en primeur tastings
Comparing apples with grapes
It’s time to forget all those preconceptions about cider. The genuine article, made from 100% pressed juice, is a complex and versatile drink that can offer indies an interesting revenue opportunity, as our recent online tasting with Cider Is Wine illustrated.
Already, more than half of attendees have become Cider Is Wine customers. Why not join them? Contact founder Alistair Morrell to find out more.
Published in association with Cider Is Wine
Web: cideriswine.co.uk Email: alistair@cideriswine.co.uk or call 01628 628 258
The Wine Merchant held its first ever cider tasting recently, a Zoom event where Alistair Morrell, CEO of Cider Is Wine, explained his mission to raise awareness of cider, perry and fruit wines made from 100% pressed juice, not from concentrate.
The vision, he said, was to overcome the “wild west in production values” in massmade cider to showcase products that, like wine, have provenance and authenticity, while tapping into modern trends for lighter alcohol, gluten-free and vegan drinks.
“It’s a very sizeable opportunity but what we need is education, education, education,” says Morrell. “Very few people really understand that this sector exists or the quality it provides. But when tasted they are products that surprise, delight and intrigue people.”
He adds: “Food matching is a big focus. Every one of these ciders has tannins and, typically, they have double the acidity of a cider made from concentrate and a certain level of fructose left in the juice, a natural sweetness that sits on the palate. This balance opens up lots of opportunities.”
Cider Is Wine distributes over 100 SKUs from four continents and Morrell says accounts can be supported with staff training, tastings, cidermaker dinners and Cider Is Wine’s social media and PR.
Each bottle also has a Cider Is Wine hologram on it as a mark of authenticity for consumers.
Gospel Green Brut (RRP £15.11) Gospel Green Rosé (RRP £16.85)
“These are made on the Sussex/Hampshire border, exactly like Champagne, through the traditional method in the bottle. The history and heritage we have with cider is huge. We invented the traditional method back in the 17th century when Christopher Merret submitted a paper to the Royal Society proposing how to ferment in the bottle, a good 10 years before Dom Pérignon.
“Gospel Green is an absolutely delicious, incisive aperitif and goes very well with food. It’s made with dessert apples from the Blackmoor estate. It’s really clean, fresh, dry and inspirational.”
Riestra Brut (RRP £13.07)
“This is from a family-owned producer in Asturias [in north west Spain]. The word sidra is regulated there, so everything has to be made from 100% pressed apples; there’s no concentrate cheating there.
“Cider making is deep in the culture of the region, where it is often matched with steak. The high acidity, the tannins and the fruit make for a very good match. What I love is the depth of apple flavour; it’s so fresh, crisp and invigorating.”
Berryland Perry Brut (RRP £14.40) Berryland Cabernet Franc (RRP £16.41) now out of stock
“This is a Ukrainian producer that makes really interesting products with fantastic fruit. The perry is produced in a brut style and is utterly delicious. What I love about perry is that it is subtle and assertive at the
© Khun Ta / stockadobe.com
The balance of acidity and fructose sweetness in cider opens up all kinds of food-matching possibilities
Roddy Kane (left) and Alistair Morrell of Cider Is Wine
same time. I describe them as the Pinot Noirs of this industry. They’re a pain in the neck to produce, but they are absolutely sensational.
“The Cabernet Franc is co-fermented 5050 with apple juice. There’s a real sense of umami and a lovely frothing, purple colour. There’s a pleasing Cabernet Franc edge and the apples provide a core firmness in the middle of the palate.
“We are the exclusive UK importer and we’re currently donating 10% of sales to British Ukrainian Aid.” Brännland Claim (RRP £11.58)
“Andreas Sundgren makes his ice wine in Sweden. He presses the apples into juice and freezes it outside. We’ve tasted Brännland’s products many times, with trade and consumers, and have yet to find anyone who doesn’t want to get hold of them. They also make Ember, a mix of barrel-aged cider, an ice cider distillate and spices. It’s mulled wine 2.0, if you like.”
Templar’s Choice Late Harvest (RRP £10.74)
“This is made by Adam and Anne Bland in Normandy and is a keeved cider, a traditional method where the juice of the apples or pears grows a layer of pectin on the surface. That starves the juice of the nutrients it needs to feed the fermentation. As a result you end up with a richer colour and palate and a lot of natural sweetness. Fiona Beckett described it as liquid tarte tatin. I totally get where she’s coming from.”
Blue Aurora Ice Wine (RRP £20.69)
“It takes about 2.5kg of blueberries [from Lutton Farm in Northamptonshire] to make a bottle. They’re pressed frozen and it takes three to four days to complete the cycle to get juice with the necessary sweetness. There’s also a medium dry called Dusk, and Midnight, which is oakaged. This really opens up a different landscape of flavours and experiences.”
Chava Richman of Welsh Mountain Orchard, Britain’s highest orchard
“Give it five years and I can see consumers coming around to understanding that not all ciders are created equally, and be willing to pay for the very best. The highlight was the Gospel Green Rosé. It’s a quality wine, with a soft mousse, an abundance of apple fruit, earthy notes and a long, refreshing citrus finish.”
Iain Boyce Eynsham Cellars, Oxfordshire Feedback from retailers
Jonathan Charles Dorset Wines, Dorchester
“I loved the ciders and found the Zoom super-informative. I really enjoyed the take on it that good fruit, produced well and in keeping with its region, telling the story of its makers, really does make cider wine. What a revelation! I loved the Berryland and also the incredible dry finish on the otherwise off-dry late harvest Templar’s Choice.”
Lucy Chenoweth The Old Garage, Truro
