Natural Instincts - Marzemino in Trentino

When we walked into the chateau, it felt - and looked - like a family's storage room, filled with boxes of wine and smattering of colorful elementary school drawings. Immediately, the worlds of work and private life blurred into a rustic suggestion that the two were not in this case mutually exclusive.

The woman who took us through, Tamara, was the winemaker's wife and certainly much more in the daily operation of this boutique winery in Trentino. With amber-colored hair tied back in a casual ponytail and no-nonsense work boots, she expressed a down-to-earth, laid-back demeanor with a touch of grown-up hippie for good measure. Tamara offered a broadstroke introduction to the Azienda Eugenio Rosi winemaking philosophy and essentially welcomed us into the home she shares with her husband, Eugenio.

For the first time in this sommelier school odyssey, I took in the experience of wine as a product of grapes, and as a product of the soil, grown by a farmer, the first human touch of the libation as it were. And here was a farmer, or farming family rather, and therefore united by love and commitment to each other and to the earth, who decided to take winemaking into their own hands, independently and courageously according to the principles of biodynamic farming. From planting to harvest, barrique to bottle, Eugenio, the winemaker, and Tamara, his wife, had chosen to follow nature, in lieu of technology.

Eugenio came out to join Tamara in telling the story of their vineyard with an equal dose of humility and groundedness. His feet were on the ground, this ground, in Trentino, all of his life. Like all Italians, he getured with his hands, and what hands! Rugged, worn and dirt-ridged, they spoke of the soil, of his years working for a 'cantina sociale' or wine-making collective. He explained that he had been making wine from grapes rown on a collection of land parcels from around Trentino, and was 'born under a Marzemino vine'.

Marzemino is an autoctonous red varietal from the pre-alpine region of Italy, and Eugenio grows his in the hills between Calliano, Volano and Rovereto. He gives the grapes all the time they need on the vine, within reason of course, and lets them mature further in a process called appassimento, or raisining, or drying of the grapes (think raisins). He uses large Slovenian wood barriques and small cherry wood barriques to age his wines, and doesn't cut corners.

Eugenio Rosi has been called the proletariat God of Marzemino and an artisan-winemaker. The down-home style in which he has chosen to make his wines includes just under ten hectares and 18,000 bottles produced, counting among them Marzemino, Chardonnay, Bianco IGT Vallagarina (Pinot Bianco 60%, Nosiola 20%, Chardonnay 20%), Cabernet Franc and the magnificent Doron 2005 Rosso Dolce VdT.

In his Marzemino Poiema 2006, Eugenio raisined 30% of the grapes, creating a succulent contrast between a crisp, acidic entrance in the mouth and a rich, mature fruitiness on the finish. A 'capolavoro', as the Italians say (a work of art).

The Doron 2005 Rosso Dolce VdT was a lovely finish to our tasting. It is an appassimento (dessert wine made from grapes that have been raisined). Eugenio has managed to capture the terroir of his corner of Trentino in the glass, with temperature shifts that create lively acidity and the super-maturation of the grapes adding their fruity sweetness, combining to form a wine that tells the story of its origins. Not unlike Eugenio himself, and the lovely Tamara, it is a wine that invites you into its home, amongst sweet children's drawings, and transmits a depth of passion found in small producers making rather big waves.

Rice and Gold

Risotto alla Milanese. Risotto allo zafferano. Risotto al Nero di Seppia. These succulent and savory rice dishes of northern Italy satiate the palate and define the region's cuisine. Their very ingredients define the region's agricultural and maritime history, and point to a rich commercial and cultural exchange with the Far East. So just how did a pasta-loving country become Europe's biggest producer of rice, a foodstuff from China?



There was a time when this nutrient-rich grain turned up on farmacy counters rather than dinner tables. Its medicinal properties have long been touted for many uses and cures, including cosmetic treatments for skin hydration and emmolience in Asia.



The Venetians, a folk known for embracing foreign cultures, adopted this grain in the kitchen, absorbing rice as their own. With an openness this maritime city exhibited in the face of new and foreign customs and foodstuffs, from spices to the concept of sweet and sour they did not discriminate in terms of good culinary taste, regardless of the ingredient's origin.


Lombardia, however, is where our Italian rice story starts. It all began in the fourteenth and fifteenth century in the provinces of Vercelli. Cavour created Europe's most modern irrigation systems, helping rice to really take off in the region, and by consequence, country. The canal which bears his name, Canale Cavour, winds from the Po in Chivasso into the Canton Ticino in Switzerland. The deviation of freshwater used to soak these northern Italian rice paddies gave birth to a rice cultivation that continues to supply the grain to the rest of the continent to this day.



Risotto allo Salto is a delectable example of this grain's preciousness in the annals of northern Italian cooking. It was a dish savored exclusively by nobility, who would dine on the saffron-scented creation at Milan's reknowned Scala. Between the first and second acts of the opera, on small ovens in backstage dressing rooms, their servants would cook this mid-performance snack, ready for their 'salto', or intermission. A bit of home for the weary aristocracy when out about in their best frocks, its warmth and intensity coated them in a comfortable carbohydrate-rish meal not unlike 1980s American TV dinners, taken to a whole new level.


The mixture of salty and sweet is exemplified in Risotto al Melone. This luscious dish combines the musty, soft sweetness of melon and the dense, creamy texture of risotto finished in butter and Grana Padano cheese (not unlike a good, aged Parmesan cheese), and creates a perfect marriage. Some melon is kept apart from the risotto and left to boil in a water that will be added to the risotto, bit by bit, along with vegetable broth, adding more melon depth to the dish.


According to ancient Chinese legend, a feudal lord moved by the sight of his starving serfs, asked his farmers to irrigate his fields with water from the nearby river. He then put his own teeth into the water. Millions of rice plants grew, feeding his people and putting and end to their hunger and suffering. The legend associates rice with abundance, with the lord's teeth serving as symbols of seeds of future happiness, peace and prosperity. This Asian superstition, as it were, was brought to Italy and is now incorporated in the throwing of rice at weddings. The gesture is a benediction and a communion, for the couple, that they never be in lack, neither literally nor figuratively.

Castelmagno - Royal Blue of Piedmont

Aromatic, sapid and persistent, the cow's milk cheese Castelmagno enriches many of Piedmont's 'primi piatti', or first courses. The complex and earthy cheese takes its name from the town of the same name, in the province of Cuneo, at the foothills of the Italian Alps. It is produced today in Castelmagno, Pradleves and Monterosso Grana.

Records from 1272 prove a long and mighty reign for Castelmagno. The Marchese of Saluzzo, feudal lord of Valgrana and Valmaira, accepted the cheese as a form of payment for rural taxes. The exchange of a food product for its equivalent monetary value speaks not only of evident proliferation of Castelmagno in the region, but also of its codifiability. We can assume that any cheese could have been chosen to appease the medeival taxman. A certain standardization and guarantee of quality must have been well established and accepted, and therefore Castelmagno's history likely stretches back further than we can trace.

There are four principal factors that render Castelmagno a rather unique and expressive cheese. The microclimate of the region, at 1100 meters above sea level, must first be considered. The southern cut of Piedmont is enriched by alpine air, humid days and cool nights. Of course, the gray-white cows grazing in the area's pastures, of the Piedmontese breed, may produce less milk than their northern Bruno-Alpina cousins, but make up this lack in spades of richness and texture. The cows' steady diet of fresh, local cheese and hay from surrounding fields helps to create a creamy and erbaceous materia prima, and ultimately a truly Piedmont foodstuff.

In Italy, quality food products are regulated by the government, and guarantee to cheese lovers not only the confirmation of their regional origins, but the very means of production. The DOP, or Denominazione di Origine Protetta, which means Protected Designation of Origin, was established for Castelmagno in 1996.

Castelmagno is produced with whole Piedmontese cow's milk, with the allowance for a small percentage of sheep's milk or goat's milk, which adds either a spicy or buttery texture, respectively. The raw milk is mixed with liquid rennet and made to coagulate at 35-37 degrees Celcius. The resulting curd is then cut and placed in a container for 24 hours, when a second beaking of the curd takes place, during which the cheese is seasoned with salt and placed in wood moulds.

Castelmagno's crust, initially thin and of a pinkish-yellow hue, darkens and thickens as it ages, and the pasta, pearl or ivory, becomes yellow, with thin, blue-green veins. The veins are the result of the fungus penicillum, added to the cheese during the aging process. Traditionally, Castelmagno belongs to the family of blue cheeses, although this is changing as a dangerous market trend dangers the very essence of this king of Piedmont.

The polemic of Castelmagno's shrinking veins is, some would say, a mirror of the cheese's own disappering act. Today, the consumer prefers a delicate, moderately sapid flavor, and without herbs. To this end, a shorter aging period is chosen, with the addition of sheep's milk or goat's milk, up to ten percent by law. It is still possible to find Castelmagno with blue veins and a good amount of aging balanced on aromatic shoulders, the same way it has been produced for centuries. The problem is that market-led changes to the cheese's production are the very characteristics that make Castelmagno such a unique whole milk cheese.

It is always a tenuous situation in the gastronomic world, taking into account the philosophy of Slow Fooders and back to the earth traditionalists who believe in purity first and foremost, when the consumer's whim can spark the demise of a food that has resisted certain death for over 700 years. What is a producer to do, risk short term loss in reduced sales in exchange for the preservation of his craft? I would argue that this cheese is worth saving. There are always two roads to take - educate the end-user about its history and essential properties, or crumble in the face of the dollar and create a pseudo-Castelmagno whose destiny is to become unrecognizable and anonymous, yet more consumer-friendly.