La Casaccia: Margherita has a surprise
La Casaccia, April 2022
Margherita has a surprise. She’s animated. All smiles is her default setting, but something is different today.
We’re meeting in a strange setting. Cold for such a warm person, whose place in my work life has become closer to a friend than a wine provider. We’ve gone running together, in Durham and in Cella Monte. We’ve shared too many meals to count, and spent hundreds of hours criss-crossing my home state selling wine. We’ve even picked grapes together.
It’s a strong bond, made in the spaces where we live and work. But today we are meeting in a vast conference center in the drab industrial outskirts of very beautiful Bologna. It’s the first-ever Slow Wine fair, and I’m happy to be catching the last few hours of a three-day event. Time enough to reconnect with a half-dozen winemakers whose bottles will be in our warehouse this spring.
The surprise: La Casaccia have a new wine! A metodo classico rosato, lees aged for two years. One hundred percent Grignolino. The label is fanciful. It mirrors Margherita’s ebullience. The wine smells of strawberries. The new wine is a success. It’s nice to see her happy, and proud of this project.
Speaking of Grignolino, 1,200 bottles of the ever-popular “Poggeto” 2020 Grignolino del Monferrato Casalese are arriving now. It’s basically why you have this missive to read. The flagship red wine for Margherita’s small estate spends three days on the skins. It’s quite floral. Poggeto is a wine of enduring aromatic appeal. There’s always a fine edge of tannin. Margherita says Grignolino is quite resilient in the face of climate change. Good news, because I need bottles for my summertime chillable red wine fridge, no matter how high the mercury rises.
Also arriving now are 900 bottles of the 2019 “Giuanin” Barbera del Monferrato. The wine is accessible, ripe, as reliable as anything we import. Little to no tannin, fresh acidity, and an overabundance of pure plummy Barbera fruitiness. If you’ve spent too much time in challenging, hipster hairshirt wine purgatory lately, here’s the remedy.
The 2019 “Monfiorenza” Freisa feels structured alongside the Giuanin. It smells like macerated strawberries. Also faintly floral, and a tad spicy. There’s some dry tannin on the finish. If you love classic Piedmontese reds but occasionally wish the linear aromatics of your favorite Langhe Nebbiolo would loosen up a little bit, check out Monfiorenza.
For a short time there will be 2020 La Casaccia “Charno” Chardonnay in North Carolina. Unoaked, lees-aged in stainless steel, it overdelivers in a very similar manner to the La Ca Barbera. If you enjoy the low-key appeal of Chardonnay that isn’t trying to be Meursault or a fruit cocktail, this wine can be an unfussy visitor to your dining table. Loud and dissonant flavor gets noticed and rewarded. It’s a relief to taste a white that’s succeeding with quiet charm.
Also tasted: The 2015 “Ernesto” Grignolino has come a long way since Margherita and I first tasted it in their cellar a few years back. At that time I was uncertain about the desire (rooted in tradition) to long-age Grignolino in large wooden tank. Now I see that the Rava family were correct. After three years in barrel and two in bottle, the wine has become really nice. It smells good, a mix of Grignolino’s red fruit and secondary maturation characteristics. Everything that stood out as disjointed mid-project is harmonious now.
2017 “Bricco dei Boschi” Barbera spends one year in big barrel. Each year La Casaccia bottle their best Barbera vineyard parcel as Bricco dei Boschi. The 2017 is remarkably good. Deep black fruit aromas, secondary spicy notes. Graceful texture. I typecast La Casaccia as making reliably delicious everyday wines. This bottling shows an estate whose top wines are worthy of consideration among the best of the Monferrato.
We went to dinner. Left the antiseptic environment of the convention center, for a very neighborhood place called Nonna Rosa. The restaurant’s walls were covered in movie posters, coffee grinders (?) and a large collection of signed Bologna FC jerseys. Dinner was nice. We laughed a lot. It was unpretentious and good. The rooms bustled. Somehow I ordered tortellini in cream sauce, followed by a veal cutlet in cream sauce. I was so full. Margherita walked me halfway back to the city center. I needed the steps. And the cool air. Margherita had a mushroom ravioli (she’s vegetarian.) By the end of dinner I envied her selection. It looked great. I don’t think she was dying from calorie poisoning. I was grateful for the miles of covered sidewalk that make central Bologna exceedingly pedestrian friendly, even when the weather is a tad damp. I looked at some centuries-old dormitories and churches, then called it a day. Dreamed of being chased through a maze of ever narrowing roads by a mob of rabid chefs wearing cappellacci. Bloody chef’s knives drawn, ready to carve me up for scaloppine. Kafka's cream-fueled calorie nightmares.
