Exceptionally good everyday Pinot Grigio with the Lorenzon family

Italy.  Trieste is an oven when we arrive at around 2pm local time.  It rained for 4 hours yesterday but today it is verdant, vibrant summer.  Nicola Lorenzon meets us (me and five men – two from Liberty wines and three other customers) at the airport and after a short drive to the hotel to drop bags (and thankfully, a lie down for 20 minutes), we repair to one of their vineyards, in Borgo. 

This one is 60 hectares and there are two others.  They are not small producers, owning 160 hectares in all and producing over 800,000 bottles a year of Fruilano,  Ribolla, Cabernet Sauvigon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot among others. Mostly, though, they produce Pinot Grigio and are a sterling example of a producer doing this variety justice at a brilliant price for the quality.

 In addition to making a lot of wine they grow apples and peaches which they sell in their own shop and at local markets.  Nicola explains that when his father started out with 5 hectares in 1972 it was expected that locals who came to buy their five to ten10 litres of daily wine could also pick up seasonal fruits and vegetables. 

I am, of course, exaggerating.   Five to ten litres a day would have been excessive, even for Italians, but part of the drive to expand and find markets beyond the local area was the fact that annual consumption of around 60l a head per year (Nicola's estimate - I think it was more) started to fall steadily in the 80’s and 90’s and now hovers at around 24 to 25l.   But they still sell their peaches and apples to their private customers and now have an impressive 12 varieties of the former which ripen from June to September, ensuring months and months of plentiful supply.

 We walk through the vineyards which are ordered and modern (that is, planted to a fairly high density of 4,000 to 5,000 plants per hectare) - one of the big changes bought about in the last 10 to 15 years.   The vines are irrigated by both overhead sprinklers and drip irrigation when necessary, although Nicola does not think it will be this year. 

Mind you, while it rained steadily for hours yesterday, the soils are dry as dust and show absolutely no trace of the deluge. We walk from the vineyards to the peach orchards, passing nectarines first.  Fruit was harvested very recently so there are only tantalising glimpses of ruby red orbs amongst the deep green leaves.  Nicola picks us one for each of us and we happily crunch away.   The fruit is still quite hard but very tasty and the effect is like eating a slightly peach-flavoured apple. 

White peaches, my favourite, come next. Tim finds me a perfectly ripe one, still warm from the sun. It gushes scented juice as I bite into it.  There never is anything quite like eating fruit straight from the tree, particularly when hot afternoon sun has rendered it so perfectly yielding.  The air is heavy with the smell of ripe summer and the cool green corridor of trees is the perfect setting for such an unexpectedly superlative feast.   

We drive to the winery, crossing the Isonzo River which is a shadow of its wintery self, leaving swathes of pristine white river pebbles exposed by the receding water.   On these stony beaches crowds of swim-suited Friulians are lounging, playing ball games and strolling.  It is a slightly incongruous but none the less jolly sight.

 Davide, the wine maker and Nicola’s brother, a meaty man with a large, round face and pale eyes, shows us round.   Matt Thompson, New Zealand vintner extraordinaire, who is now involved in numerous projects in Italy, has been consulting here since 2002 and the must chiller on prominent display, by the crusher de-stemmer outside, is all his doing.   Modern times have come to Lorenzon and it is no bad thing.


This is hardly artisanal wine making; the scale is far too large for that.   They make use of enzymes and all yeasts come from a packet but their fruit, while not organic, is good quality and post fermentation they try to do the minimum intervention.  The results are very impressive at amazingly good price points for the quality. 

Back to the shop teeming with local customers stocking up on peaches, vegetables and of course wine – mainly 5 litre bag-in-box selling for a mere 9 euros.   Davide and Nicola’s 85 year old grandmother, perched on her bicycle and surrounded by a pack of friendly dogs, surveys us approvingly and issues a string of commands in Italian.  We are ushered upstairs to the tasting room, through a kitchen where a 3.5 kg seabass is awaiting a salt burial before being roasted.

 After the weight of summer heat outside, the room in which we eventually find ourselves is a complete anomaly.  Wood panelled, with walls adorned mainly with the skulls of small dead animals, it feels more like some sort of wintery hunting lodge.   The Lorenzon family are apparently very enthusiastic hunters of small, defenceless creatures but they make well priced wines and they are warm, welcoming people, so allowances must be made. 

 On to the tasting.

 2009 Borgo dei Vassali Pinot Grigio

Fresh and very slightly fragrant nose.  Excellent acidity, crisp and clean but with enough honeyed smoke and very slight spice to make it interesting.  This is how PG should taste, at just under £10 a bottle 

2009 I Feudi di Romans Pinot Grigio

More intense on the nose and this carries through on the palate with even more honeyed spice with a fresh grapefruit peel twist on the finish.  Really good PG – the kind that drinkers of supermarket piss would never recognize as such.  It has flavour!  And length! 

The yields for the above are slightly lower than for the Borgo and of course, the vineyard is different.  

2009 I Feudi di Romans Malvasia 

 Ripe grape nose.  Lightly smoked compared to the richly smoked honey of the PG’s.  Good crisp edge though and very easy to drink on a day like today with a fresh, perfumed finish.  Good, and good value.

2009 I Feudi di Romans Sauvignon Blanc

 Peach and grapefruit nose.    Much less enamoured of this.  It has viscosity which I am  never mad about in SB – I like them lean and mean (not too mean, obviously).  I also find the finish very slightly coarse. Quite simply, there are other places that do it better, so I have never completely seen the point of Italian SB at this level. 

Higher up  the quality scale – the wines o f Vie di Romans for example - they start to show an individuality and give an expression that is not found elsewhere, but here it all just seems a bit pointless. 

2006 I Feudi di Romans Merlot  

Used to list this at G & B and have always liked it as a good example of Merlot with plenty of fresh rusticity and a very welcome lack of goop.  Nose very earthy with spicy black fruits.    Served far too warm, sadly, but it was still good.  Fresh red plums and riper black plums with a chocolate and earth foundation.  Great length and a good chocolatey finish.
 
 At this point, a very smiley lady called Anna comes in from the kitchen and goes through a list of what we are about to eat.  Even though all I have eaten since blueberries at breakfast are peaches and outcakes, I feel defeated just listening to it:  

Antipasti of fried fish, salami, olives and pickled onions.
Polenta with scampi
 Seafood Risotto
Langoustines with pasta
The very large seabass
Dessert - a sort of jam tart

 "Are you trying to kill us," asks one of the group?

 Nicola gives a very Italian shrug.   “Yes,” he says with conviction.   

The wall full of small skulls behind him gives some  weight to this answer. 

Anna comes back.  She forgot to mention the Salmon which is part of the antipasti.

 The official tasting is over and we are served glasses of Ribollo Gialla, a very traditional Friulian variety which Liberty doesn’t ship.  This is my favourite of the evening though and I will be investigating the possibility of getting hold of some.  A very good price, it has the lovely tangy freshness which is obviously a hall mark of this variety.
 
 Then the food begins to arrive and this is what we are served.  Please note I said SERVED.  This is not  what I ATE. 





































































 
















































Fabulous new fact of the evening :-  Tarragon in Italian is called ‘Dragoncello’.  It is my new favourite herb, simply because I want to be able to tell people that I am cooking with ‘dragoncello’.