All in the Family

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

The new vintage comes each autumn, putting its own imprint on wines of character. Only rarely, however, does a new generation of a winemaking family have the chance to put its own imprint on the new vintage of a domaine guarding a great tradition. The 2001 vintage marks just such a change at the Piedmontese winery Ceretto, maker of barolo and barbaresco. Twenty-eight-year-old Federico Ceretto, along with his sister, Roberta, and cousins Alessandro and Lisa, has “been handed the keys to the winery” by his father, Bruno Ceretto, and uncle Marcello, now in their 60s. Alessandro, the second youngest of the four at 29, is the winemaker. His sister Lisa handles the business side of the winery, while Roberta attends to public relations and cultural events. Both women are in their early 30s.

Federico Ceretto introduced four barolos from the cousins’ debut 2001 vintage during lunch at Fiamma Osteria on Spring Street last Friday. For Federico, constantly traveling as Ceretto ambassador, this was a chance to show what his cousin Alessandro can do. For me, it was a chance to get back in touch, after a long hot summer, with just how singular real barolo, the ultimate autumnal wine, can be.

By now, almost every other great wine of the world has been successfully rerooted from its home vineyard to distant climes. “Bordeaux blends” grown in Australia or the Napa Valley can be ringers for the originals. The same goes for “Rhone Rangers,” now made in such unlikely locales as Washington state and South Africa. Chardonnay and pinot noir both find Burgundian expression in Central Otago, at the southern tip of New Zealand. But nebbliolo, the sole grape of both barolo and barbaresco, has resisted replication. It makes great wine only in a small area, isolated on three sides by mountains, whose center is southwest of the medium-sized city of Alba in Piedmont. Ceretto, a firm that started out three generations back as negociants, has slowly assembled parcels throughout the Barolo region and built a winery around its best vineyard on Bricco Rocche (“Rocky Hill”) in Castiglione Falletto, just southwest of Alba.

A pleasant reminder that Alba isn’t only about red wine was Ceretto’s Arneis Blange 2004 ($19.95), served with a first course of 24-month-aged prosciutto and mozzarella so fresh it tasted like the buffalo must have been milked in Fiamma’s back-yard. “The two characteristics of Arneis,” Mr. Ceretto said, “are that it has low acidity and a bitter finish.” Yet the wine in our glass was neither low in acidity nor bitter, thanks to cutting-edge technology. “It’s the only one of our wines,” Mr. Ceretto said, “where we put more technique than vineyard into the bottle.” The key to preserving the freshness and acidity of Arneis is cryomaceration, during which super-cooled liquid carbon dioxide is sprayed on the grapes, chilling them down almost to freezing in just three seconds. As the carbon dioxide evaporates as gas, it takes the heat in the grapes with it, Mr. Ceretto explained. A bit of residual sugar cancels out the bitterness.

Arneis, according to Mr. Ceretto, means “a difficult and demanding person” in Italian. Ditto for the grape: So much effort to give such simple pleasure. Thanks to technology and a light hand, however, Arneis Blange emerged as a palate-refreshing wine tingling with crisp apple and pear flavors along with surprising fullness. “It’s a wine that makes women feel happy,” said Mr. Ceretto. Guys, too.

The first of a quartet of 2001 barolos introduced by Mr. Ceretto is called Zonchera (about $35). It’s the least expensive and tannic, and most delicate, of the offerings, and the first that will be ready to drink. Not that this example had fully bloomed. It needs at least a year or two to open its light, spicy plum scent and flavors. Next to be poured was the Barolo Brunate ($65) from a southeastern-facing vineyard in La Morra. This was more floral and deeper than the Zonchera, with the first signs of the broader contours and depths that say “barolo.” With the Zonchera, it was served with pasta topped with San Daniele prosciutto, radicchio, and parmigiano, and infused with truffle butter. For a wine that can evoke a walk in the woods after a cool, early fall rain, this dish was the ultimate partner.

Similar to the Brunate, but just a smidgeon spicier, was the Barolo Prapo 2001 ($65) from Serralunga d’Alba, the first of the Barolo vineyards painstakingly assembled by Bruno and Marcello Ceretto in the 1970s. Brunate and Prapo seemed to fully express the depth and nuanced character that barolo is all about. But that was before I tasted the wine at the apex of Ceretto’s quartet, the Bricco Rocche Barolo Bricco Rocche 2001. The redundancy in the name indicates that both the 3.7-acre, south-facing vineyard and the family’s ultramodern winery are on one of Barolo’s best hillsides. Also on that hill is a small, formerly abandoned chapel, which has been reimagined by the British artist David Tremlett and the American Sol LeWitt.

Few wines on this earth are as deep, full, and lingering as the full-throttle expression of nebbiolo from Bricco Rocche ($170 for the 2000 vintage). It was served with hanger steak, and even though the pasta with truffle butter had come and gone, I tasted an echo of truffles in this wine, along with dried cherries, potpourri, and a whisper of licorice. This and all the Ceretto wines seem to hover between traditional barolo style and an updated version that is somehow cleaner and more accessible. And that’s how the new generation wants it. “One thing we hope to do,” Mr. Ceretto said, “is give the feeling that barolo is not just an old wine, not passive. We want a wine that wants to open up and meet people, just like me and my sister and our cousins.”

WHERE TO BUY THE WINES

Ceretto Arneis Blange is available at Morrell,1 Rockefeller Center, 212-688-9370, www.morrellwine.com. While awaiting the 2001 vintage barolos, now being shipped, good selections of previous Ceretto vintages are available at Morrell and at Zachys, 16 East Parkway, Scarsdale, 866-922-497, www.zachys.com.


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