Ep. 1890 Bosco and Arneis by Paul Bologna | Italian Grape Geek

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I am Paul Bologna, and I'm a Van Italy Academy wine Ambassador, and I'm going to be talking today a little bit about some grapes, but, I thought I would introduce myself to your listeners as to who I am and my wine career. I started my wine career thirty five years ago, so quite a long time ago after graduating from college, I moved to Napa Valley. I knew I always wanted a job in wine, and I was lucky enough to get hired at the historic Ingle nook winery in Napa Valley. I worked as a Psalm for the JW Marriott Desert Springs, which had just reopened at that time. And I started along career in hospitality at that time, about thirty years. So I worked in the restaurants, and I also did this, very fun job. It was called wine tasting on the boat dock. For a decade, I would do daily wine tastings for a small group and every day I would do a different theme. I eventually moved to the Ritz Carlton brand. This was about eight years ago where I was a wine buyer and foursome in the fine dining restaurant there. For just a few local restaurants in the Palm Springs area, But, over the last thirty years, I've been always studying Italian wine. Overall, I've visited about ten of the twenty regions so far. So my aim at this point is to visit more and study more Italian wine. So that's kind of my story in a nutshell. So let me begin by talking about the grape Bosco today. So Bosco is a native Italian white grape variety. It makes both dry wines and a sweet wine. And these three wines, cinquecire, coline, Delavanto, and Chiquetare, dessert wine are are really not well known outside their area. I mean, people know cinquecire. But when it comes to the great Bosco, I'll tell you what, in my childhood, I knew Bosco as this syrupy chocolate thing that you'd put over ice cream or put in your milk. So today I'm gonna be talking about the adult version of Bosco. But, let me begin by describing the wines made from Bosco. So I'll start with the dry white, and I had mentioned before I did this, wine tasting on the boat dock at the JW Marriott. And there, I would always describe Italian whites as different than new world whites. They're different in that, you know, California, the alcohol level tends to be a little higher. Italian whites are a little bit lower. So when you taste old world wines and new world wines together, old world wines always tend to out muscle sort of the subtleties that are in the old worldwide. So a lot of times, I don't like to pour them side by side, but, that being said, you know, the wines tend to be a little bit more delicate, white flowers, citrus, grape fruit, very common for Bosco as well as for other white wines. From Italy, but in Italy, they rely on skin contact, Lease aging, to add complexity to the wines, not necessarily oak like you find here in the new world. So let me also say that, boss go as a great its home is in LaGuria. I mentioned the Chiquitare, Chiquitare, very famous UNESCO world heritage site that many tourists flock to in the summer, and even now in the shoulder season, hard to get a room in one of those five villages, but you can often, stay in Lespetia nearby. Overall, the big picture of Italy, LaGuri is in Northwest Italy. Genoa is the capital. It has France to the west, Piedmont to the north, to the east is Amelia Romagna. It's right there along the coast and Bosco loves to be grown in a marine environment. So it loves the sea. I will say for most people, if you don't understand what I'm talking about, you've probably seen Chiqua terra on your screensaver with Microsoft. It's gorgeous, ocean, hill top town villages, multi colored homes, really quite beautiful. You know, most tourists, they go to Rome, Florence, Venice, Chiquatara, usually second, third, fourth trip, but something definitely to see. Certainly, it's on the bucket list of so many people. So let me get back to Bosco. It's not a mono varietal wine, although it can be. There's rare examples of it, but it's mostly part of a blend. Usually blended with al Barola and Vermentino. And when it comes to the art of the blend, you know, wherever you are blending wines, whether it's in California with Merlo added to Cabernet or semillon to Sylvia Blanc, the idea with blending, in this case, with alvarrola, and Veramatino, the idea is you wanna create a wine where, you know, the different components by themselves, they need the other grapes for synergy to make a better wine. So juice a blended with juice b to create wine C. Wine C is always gonna be better than the juice from a or b. Otherwise, you just bottle those separately. So there's an art to the blend, and so Bosco is a tannic white variety, and this is what it really adds to the blend. So it behaves like a red wine and a white dress. So it's a tannic wiper. I think gives that little bit more heft to the blend. For the most part, you're gonna find these wines only in ciquetera. So if You are in America. Good luck. You will see them maybe in fine wine shops, but really you're gonna be drinking these wines in that area. The production level is not so high that they're distributed all over the world. They need those wines to serve the tourists that come to Chiquotera. Labels to look for Chillo, very famous for their dessert wine, the Chiquotera Chiquotera Chextra, which is made from air dried grapes. You know, something to mention with Bosco is it requires heroic Viticulture. So heroic Viticulture is a concept where, you know, maybe you have steep cliffs, so tending to these vines, the owners are, quote, unquote, condemned to hard labor because they're taking breaks in a very precarrier situation. I personally have picked grapes before. It's not easy, on a slope even harder. To appreciate Bosco, you really need to appreciate all of the work that goes into making the lines from this grape. So let me talk, about typical ligurian dishes that you're gonna have with the wines, Fokocha. There's a few types that have chickpea, the faranata. The chickpea, faranata is another dish pasta. You're gonna get the Cortetti is like a medallion shaped pasta, the trophy, and of course pesto sauce. So that whole area is known for the herbal infusion into food. So lots of pairings are gonna be matching these wines. With an herbal component. So that is pretty much Bosco. I will say if you are enjoying a wine from the cinque terre. Good for you. You're in a bucket list spot, and if you have never tried the Bosco grape, you will likely have to visit that area. Try it. Enjoy it. Hi. This is Paul Bologna, and I'm here today to talk about our niece. Our niece is a crisp, dry, fresh wine, semi aromatic, with a notable creamy texture, And most Arnais wines are not barrel aged, so enjoying the wine while it is fresh and young allows you to appreciate the delicate fruit and floral notes. It's really a good starter wine. When it comes to Arnais, where is it grown? Well, it's mostly grown in Piamante, which is in Northwest Italy, known for high quality native grapes, Scato Bianco, Timarasso, Ervaluce, Nachetta. Piamante is really an exciting region for native grapes. In these five main areas of Piamante, created by rivers, most of the Arnese grows in the Roero, but it can be found all over the region, including Sardinia, actually, which was a surprise to me. It's used in the blend of fifteen I GT wines. But in Piamante, there are two DOCs and one DOCG wine made from Arnese. The two DOCs are DOC roero, which actually has a red as well, and the DOC Tere de Affierde. The DOC G, which you're gonna probably encounter a lot, is the Roero Arnaise. When it comes to the theories of how Arnaise got its name, there's a few. One of them is that it was the ancient name Ardono. Another is Reneseo de canale, which is a cruiseite in Rowero. In the Piamante dialect, Arnese means little rascal, and it kinda connotes this annoying quality to the grape, which really has to do with its harvesting and its grape characteristics. Also, in the Piamante dialect, our niece means Little rascal, which refers to its irregular productivity in the vineyard, can be a little pesky at at harvest time. We'll talk a little bit about that later. Arnaise was also called Neviolo Bianco at one time. It was planted nearby the Naviolo grape, so the birds would, in fact, the the Arnais before they would eat the more expensive nebbiolo grapes. When it comes to the history of Arnes, it's been planted in Piamonte since the fourteen hundreds, though it nearly went extinct in nineteen sixty. But at that time, it was revived by Alfredo Corado Avieri and Bruno giacosa, And subsequently, there was a big growth in plantings over the next couple of decades. And in the nineteen nineties, it was kind of the it grape. I say that because I was around in the mid nineteen nineties, and I actually did an event with Elfredo Corado, around our Nace, which was I look back on that now. How exciting that was. I was working as a Psalm at a restaurant called Tuscany's at the JW Marriott Resort, and at that time, I opened a lot of Toretto Blanger, that It was a very popular wine, and that event I did with the Coratos was great gifted me a piece of art, which I have to this day. So I look back fondly on that time. So getting back to the big picture with respect to the Arnais grape, I will say there are three key traits to the grape. One, it's early ripening. Two, it drops acidity quickly at harvest time. And three, it has a creamy texture. So it kinda sets it apart from other Italian white wines. And note on that dropping acidity, you know, the wind of when you're gonna pick the grade, really does point to creating the style of the RNace that you're gonna be making. So there's a a trade off between aromatics and acidity. So that little rascal reference I mentioned earlier comes into play here because the timing of picking the grapes really puts pressure on the winery to pick on a certain day, a certain time, or otherwise the wine may not turn out as hoped. As you can see, it probably annoyed the people who were making our nace because they really must work on the timeline of the grape and not on their own timeline. But it's important to know there's not just one Arnaisse. So the geological composition of the soil varies in Roero. So different comones make different wines. What you can typically expect is a a pale lemon color, aromatics of white peach, pear, white flower, sweet almond, citrus. It has low to medium acidity, and that medium creamy texture. That really kind of sets it apart. I will say one, not so consumer friendly fact about making our nace is that the grape tends to oxidize quickly, so reductive techniques are needed when making the wine. And when it comes to oxidation in general, I do have a tip for you listeners to help preserve your wine after you've opened the bottle. I mean, sure you can use a core oven, but that often, doesn't make sense with lower priced wines. So any wine that you feel is going to oxidize overnight in that leftover seven fifty ml bottle. This is a trick I learned about thirty five years ago, and it still works today, and doesn't cost any money. What you need to do is next time you go shopping for wine, you buy half a bottle of wine, any wine. And then after consuming the wine, you save the glass bottle, and then use that bottle to store your leftover wine. So the idea is there's less oxygen touching the wine. So ideally, you may even wanna initially pour half of the seven fifty ml into that half bottle, and then, you know, fill it all the way at the top, seal it up, and then put it in the door of your fridge, and it it kinda should be like a brand new bottle. So that's very helpful. If you don't wanna drink a whole bottle and you're all by yourself and you know you only wanna drink a half, it will really help preserve the wine if it's gonna be another few days before you get to the wine. When it comes to food pairing in our nace, I would certainly classify this as a versatile wine. It's it's a good starter wine, you know, have a glass with your appetizer, maybe some fresh cheeses, but it would also pair well with Piamante's famous export of risotto. So maybe a lobster risotto would be a great match. It's a very easy drinking wine. So at closing, I I hope this brief chat on Ernest has inspired you to buy a bottle the next time you're out shopping for wine or maybe try it by the glass an Italian Fine dining restaurant. I see them all the time being offered by the glass. Chinchin. Listen to the Italian wine podcast wherever you get your pot podcasts. We're on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, EmailIFM, and more. Don't forget to subscribe and rate the show. If you enjoy listening, please consider donating through Italian wine podcast dot com. Any amount helps cover equipment, production, and publication costs. Until next time.