Italiano
Costa Marina, aromatic herb-scented seawater (2)
As promised, here is an interview with Fabio Lambruschi and a vertical tasting of Vermentino Costa Marina.
DoctorWine: With Cinque Terre and Versilia, two popular tourist destinations, and two ports of enormous importance like La Spezia and Livorno close by, wouldn’t it have been more profitable to produce whites that were more technical and less territorial?
Fabio Lambruschi: In my small way I am able to produce a technical wine with a proper amount of technology in the winery. However, my primary goal is to produce a wine that expresses the territory.
DW: A Vermentino cru is quite a novelty almost anywhere, not just in Liguria.
FL: We decided to produce one because the Costa Marina vineyard is on a unique hill, the name of which derives from the fact that you can see the sea from it. The soil is rich in minerals, not unusual considering its vicinity to the Carrara quarries, and in some parts of the vineyard the earth is red due to the presence of iron, as well as lime. The vineyard was planted in two stages: the first in the mid-1970s, the second at the end of the 1990s. The older rows are slowly being replaced and they are planted on terraced, grassy embankments.
DW: In order to produce a semi-aromatic white wine near there sea, where there are limited temperature variations between day and night, do you have to resort to technical means during fermentation?
FL: We benefit from excellent temperature variations despite our vicinity to the sea. We also use select, Bayanus yeasts but only to stop fermentation. In this way the wine remains more defined and the aromas of the varietal are more distinct, at least in my opinion.
DW: Given the vicinity of the sea, is powdery mildew a problem?
FL: Being on a hill, the vineyard is quite ventilated and we only need to intervene in unusually wet years. Although we are not organic we have adopted an integrated management approach. Powdery mildew is a problem we treat with agronomical methods and specifically created anti-mildew treatments without ever resorting to nitrogen-treated fertilizers.
All the following are 100% Vermentino wines that have fermented and aged in steel. Each one sampled has a non-incisive but bitterish acidity. These are wines that should not be drunk too cold and should be treated like Rhone whites, thus consumed in the first two years or when they are five years old.
The wine’s aromatic herb-scented seawater flavor makes it easy to pair with seafood dishes based on white fish (sea bass or bream) or white meats (rabbit alla Liguria).
