The best Italian wines are the ones you don’t know yet
The universe of Italian wine is vast — maybe, ultimately, unknowable. Over 2,000 indigenous grape varieties originated in the country, claims expert Ian D’Agata, more than Spain, France and Greece combined. (Of those, just 377 are cultivated, according to Jancis Robinson’s “Wine Grapes.”) Some, like Sangiovese and Nebbiolo, will sound familiar (at least vaguely familiar) to American wine lovers. But for every up-and-coming variety — Rossese, Lagrein, Frappato — there are dozens languishing in obscurity. Caloria, anyone? Quagliano?
Italian wine’s heterogeneity is what makes it exciting, though it may also explain why its neighbor to the west is more often represented on top U.S. wine lists, even those that look beyond the big names in Bordeaux, Burgundy and the Rhone. Whereas it’s easy today to find restaurants with specialties in French regions like the Loire Valley or the Jura, it’s still the rare sommelier who stakes a special claim in Italy’s Friuli or Valle d’Aosta.
Yet it’s from these fringe regions where Italian wine’s greatest pleasure can most often be accessed: the pleasure of discovery.
Brunello, Barbaresco and Barolo, Italy’s trophy wines, have never been scarce among great wine lists. You can find deep, impressive selections of these great bottles, in many cases with vintages stretching back more than half a century, at Bay Area restaurants like Acquerello, Gary Danko, Quince and Cotogna.
But in recent years we’ve seen a different type of Italian wine list emerge: lists focused on the back roads of Italy, celebrating the idiosyncratic, heterogeneous creations of less-familiar regions. Here in San Francisco, we might call it the A16 model. (In A16’s case, the restaurant was literally named for the back road.)
When Shelley Lindgren opened A16 in 2004, it was a novel concept to base a list on a subregion of Italy that wasn't Tuscany or Piedmont. Yet it made perfect sense: The exuberant table wines of Campania were a natural fit for the restaurant's Campanian food, most of all the simple, hearty Neapolitan pizzas. Lindgren stocked her list full of sunny, salty whites like Fiano and Greco and Falanghina and grippy, savory reds like Aglianico and Piedirosso. Compared with lists steeped in Barolo and Brunello, the A16 wine list is loaded with bargains.
You don't go to A16 to drink a trophy wine. You go there to taste something you've never had before — maybe something you've never even heard of before.
Lindgren was not the first sommelier to create an Italian wine list like this, but her restaurant helped give shape to the genre, at the same time as its style of food — the produce-driven pizza-and-salad model, which we see now in places like Del Popolo and Fiorella — began to proliferate. And when she opened SPQR in 2007, she established an A16-style wine list there, despite the fact that the restaurant is much more upscale than its pizzeria predecessor.
In San Francisco, we’re lucky to live among a number of restaurants, in addition to A16, whose wine lists revel in the quintessentially Italian pleasure of discovery. Here are some of the best.
La Ciccia: Of the roughly 200 selections on La Ciccia’s wine list, all are Italian and roughly half are Sardinian — a remarkable showing for the small Mediterranean island. Although Sicilian wine has become a hot commodity in recent years, Sardinia remains in the shadows, and La Ciccia owners Massimiliano Conti and Lorella Degan may be its most effective proselytizers in this country. Sardinia’s wines, like its food, are heavily influenced by the period of Spanish colonial rule; major grape varieties include Cannonau (Grenache) and Carignano (Carignan). Don’t be shy about asking for a staff recommendation when ordering a bottle.
Flour + Water: The Mission District restaurant’s dim lighting and earthy cuisine echo its eclectic, back roads-heavy wine selection. Wine director Sam Bogue has compiled a list that’s heavy on delicate styles and natural wines, spanning Italy from north to south. Although recognizable names dot the list, like Frank Cornelissen in Sicily, Ar.Pe.Pe in Valtellina and Quintarelli in the Veneto, the list is organized primarily by flavor profile (Elegant & Floral; Crisp & Mineral), prompting you to take a chance on something unfamiliar.
Uva Enoteca and Fiorella: The all-Italian wine list at Uva Enoteca is organized less by political boundaries than by topography: the Alpine border, for example, or the central Tyrrhenian Sea. Owner Boris Nemchenok celebrates indigenous varieties; you can find bottles here of Tintilia (a deeply colored red grape from Molise) and Albana (a full-bodied white from Emilia-Romagna). Wines with some age are often available by the glass here, which is always a treat, such as, on a recent visit, a nutty 2009 Verdicchio and an elegant 2006 Merlot-Sangiovese Toscana blend.
Nemchenok’s Outer Richmond restaurant Fiorella offers a kind of pared-down version of the Uva list, with some California wines thrown into the mix. It’s especially strong in its bottle selection of Italian whites. Note: Both spots serve 8-ounce glass pours, which is larger than the typical 5- or 6-ounce glass you’ll find at most restaurants, making it feasible to share a glass (or several) between two people.
54 Mint: Under wine director Gianluca Legrottaglie, this Roman-style restaurant serves only Italian wines made from indigenous grapes (though you will find a super Tuscan or two, Sangiovese blended with grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon). As at its sister restaurant Montesacro Pinseria, the central Italy region of Lazio — where Rome lies — is given a little more attention than at other Italian restaurants. Try a wine from the red grape Cesanese, a Lazio specialty (and, historians believe, a favorite of the ancient Romans), which can be peppery and full of light, bright red fruits.
AltoVino: Claudio Villani handed over his casual, neighborhood-centric InoVino earlier this year, having moved on to the newer, more ambitious AltoVino, which replaced Mason Pacific. That Villani is originally from Tuscany is evident in the AltoVino wine selection, which leans heavily on that region’s two most famous wines, Brunello and Chianti. But the list has plenty of surprises too: a full section of Pinot Nero from Alto Adige on the Swiss border; Zinfandel (not Primitivo!) from Puglia; Syrah from the outlier Tuscan appellation of Cortana.
P.S. It’s not a restaurant, but the wine shop Biondivino deserves a mention among these lists. Owner Ceri Smith is dialed in to the most exciting wines from all over Italy, both established and up-and-coming, and I’ve never visited the shop — which has locations in both Russian Hill and Palo Alto — without discovering something extraordinary.
Esther Mobley is The San Francisco Chronicle’s wine critic. Email: emobley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Esther_mobley Instagram: @esthermob
