SommSelect Editorial Director David Lynch returns to his beloved Friuli-Venezia Giulia, and this time it’s not for a mineral white—it’s for a Bordeaux-inspired red blend that speaks to this northeastern region’s unique terroir and diverse (and delicious) wine output.
The first trip I ever took to Italy as a wine journalist was to Friuli-Venezia Giulia, in the country’s northeast corner. And I wasn’t there to report on the region’s white wines, headlined by varietal bottlings of its acclaimed native grape, Friulano. No, I was there to talk about Friuli’s reds. Along with neighboring regions like the Veneto and Alto Adige, Friuli produces much more red wine than most people think—to an Austrian, this is a relatively warm, southerly, red-friendly locale (Friuli was under Austrian control until the end of World War I), and as much as 40% of the region’s wine output is red. When I was there that first time, in the late-1990s, the red wine discussion still centered largely on the so-called ‘French’ grape varieties—Merlot, the Cabernets, and the mysterious ex-Bordeaux grape Carmenère, alternately mistaken for both Cabernet Franc and Merlot in the vineyards. Bordeaux-style blends, or varietal reds from one of the component grapes (especially Merlot, pronounced locally with the hard ‘t’ at the end, e.g. ‘mer-LOTE’), were usually the top reds in a Friulian vintner’s portfolio. This 2009 Collio Rosso from the tiny Renato Keber estate had me feeling nostalgic, to say the least: It’s a blend of the Cabernets and Merlot from vineyards on Italy’s border with Slovenia, but it could just as easily be from Pomerol. It is an extremely impressive wine, beautifully integrated now thanks to some extended bottle age, and I wouldn’t hesitate to insert it into a blind tasting with some top-tier Right Bank Bordeaux. Friuli is like that: It’s a region that goes from strength to strength, and this is a class-act red I’m confident you will love.
It’s not like there’s no precedent here: Even casual observers of Italian wine have likely heard of the culty Friulian reds of Miani (made in nearby Buttrio), and there are myriad examples of noteworthy Bordeaux-inflected reds from all across Northeast Italy—one of my favorites is the great San Leonardo estate in Trentino, nicknamed “The Sassicaia of the North” for its skill with Cabernet-driven wines. Renato Keber’s 15-hectare farmstead in the hamlet of Zegla, just outside the Collio appellation’s anchor town of Cormóns, wasn’t really on my Friulian red radar, but it sure is now: This Collio Rosso is the real deal.
Traditional Friulian reds from the Bordeaux varieties were often lean and green—which, I confess, I often love—either because they were over-cropped or harvested at the same time as the white grapes (or both). But this is a long way from the norm today: The Collio DOC, which is effectively bisected by Italy’s border with Slovenia (more than half of the traditional wine zone, called Brda, is in Slovenia) is indeed a cool climate, with refreshment coming from the nearby Julian Alps, but it’s not so cool as to not be able to ripen reds. The soils in Collio are a mix of calcareous marl and sandstone referred to locally as ponka, infusing the wines with a solid mineral core, and while there’s an Alpine influence at night, there’s a warming Adriatic influence during the day—villages such as Cormóns, in fact, are effectively equidistant from the Alps and the Adriatic both. Just as the whites are not lean and green—some are, in fact, quite powerful—the reds, when treated with care, can be very serious, indeed.
As we learned from Keber’s new West Coast importer, this wine was aged about a year in large Slavonian oak vats and then rested in bottle for an extended period in bottle before release. More recent vintages may be on the market in Italy, but this is a wine Keber typically holds back, on purpose, until he thinks it’s ready. This wine had been in Keber’s cellars since it was bottled, and was only recently shipped to the US, and its perfect provenance is readily evident in the glass, in the form of still-robust color and freshness.
In the glass, this 2009 Collio Rosso is a deep, nearly opaque garnet with purple reflections at the rim. It is roughly 60% Cabernet Franc and 40% Merlot, although there are small measures of Cabernet Sauvignon and Carmenère in the mix as well. The aromatic profile is at first sappy and fruit-driven, with notes of black currant, huckleberry, and mulberry leading into more earthy notes of tobacco, underbrush, licorice, and crushed stones. The minerality shows through nicely on the palate, which is medium-plus in body and framed by very refined, silty tannins. There’s still great freshness from the acidity and a wet violet floral component on the finish—all in all, an extremely elegant, smooth red that’s enjoying the mellowing effects of a little bottle age. If you’re drinking this now, which is incredibly pleasurable and easy to do, decant it about 45 minutes before serving in Bordeaux stems at 60-65 degrees. You might also want to lay a few bottles down and blow a few minds down the line a bit, maybe 2020 or so. It is likely to keep getting better. While the ideal scenario for drinking this wine would be alongside a traditional
fogolar (open hearth) in a Friulian
osteria with some meat roasting on a spit, but in the absence of that, braise up some beef shanks and serve them over some soft polenta. That’ll do nicely, actually. Enjoy!
— D.L.
