When I was growing up in the 1970s, the son of an Italian-American mother, the most ubiquitous Italian wines in the US hailed from a trio of appellations north of Verona, near Lake Garda: Bardolino, Valpolicella, and Soave.
These were the bottles suggestively decorating the tables of the red-sauce Italian restaurants of my youth—immensely popular with consumers but saddled with the “cheap and cheerful” moniker in the eyes of the critics. When I started getting into Italian wine seriously in the late-’90s, Verona’s big three were still saddled with a downmarket image, but once I saw the region in person and met its more artisan-scale producers, I found a trove of great wines with much more going for them than nostalgia. I always perk up when a Bardolino comes our way because when I look at broader trends in the modern wine market, I think Bardolino is perfectly positioned to capitalize: Especially when it’s an organically farmed gem like today’s 2018 from the Fasoli family. Lighter weight, un-oaked, brightly fruited red wines are having a well-deserved moment right now, especially among natural wine enthusiasts who prefer authentic, easy-drinking ‘table wines’ to the more pumped-up behemoths that capture the big scores. I look at how crazy our subscribers have gone for the bright reds of Beaujolais and I think:
Bardolino is Italy’s answer! Italy always has an answer, and to say that Fasoli Gino’s Bardolino drew oohs and ahhs from the SommSelect crew is putting it mildly: Inserted into a wide-ranging lineup that included many big-ticket reds from “prestige” appellations, this one stood out as the wine everyone most wanted to drink. It’s pure, unpretentious pleasure with a price to match. Get it on your table early and often!
The Bardolino growing zone is immediately west of Valpolicella Classico, extending to the eastern shores of Lake Garda near the Veneto/Lombardy border. Stylistically, the reds resemble Valpolicella and incorporate the same grape varieties, with the local Corvina the headliner. I always think of Bardolino as “Valpolicella Junior”—it is almost always much lighter and brighter in style, and usually un-oaked (and as much as I love the reds, I also never pass up a Bardolino “Chiaretto,” one of Italy’s greatest contributions to the world of rosé wine).
The Fasoli family has been a fixture of the Verona wine scene since the 1920s, and while many of Italy’s biggest mass-market brands are headquartered here, the Fasoli operation is a farmstead, not a factory. Brand namesake Gino Fasoli, the second-generation proprietor of the estate, developed an allergy to some of the chemicals regularly used in vineyards in the late-1970s. This prompted the family to become one of the region’s early adopters of organic farming practices, which third-generation brothers Natalino and Amadio Fasoli have wholeheartedly embraced. Their vineyards in the Bardolino appellation are on rolling hills overlooking Lake Garda, in soils of glacial moraine.
Think of some of the spicy mountain reds of the Savoie, add a little exuberant fruit à la Cru Beaujolais, and you’ve got Bardolino mostly figured out. Grapes for this 2018—mostly Corvina, with smaller amounts of Corvinone and Rondinella—were hand-harvested during the third week of September, then fermented and aged briefly in stainless steel. These are wines designed to drink young and this one is ready and raring to go: Pull the cork, pour a (nicely chilled) glass, and you’ll get a bright garnet-red wine moving to pink at the rim, with inviting aromas of red cherry, brambly woodland berries, rose petals, a touch of tomato leaf, black pepper, and underbrush. It is light-bodied, with modest alcohol, soft tannins, and mouth-watering freshness—a great candidate for serving with a slight chill and the ultimate in easy-drinking table wine. It bridges the meat/fish divide effortlessly and is tailor-made for tomato-sauced pastas. A chilled bottle of this and a nice big slice of lasagna? I call that living the Italian-American dream. Salute!
