Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
those DOCs are meaningless, as there is little
sense of place or type attached to any of them,
your best bet is to remember the name of the
producer whose wines you like. In Australia,
Adelaide Hill's By Jingo Wines has made a very
interesting fi rst vintage of Grillo wine, with
grapes from Riverina.
weather in Calabria is not as fi ckle and cold as
in more northern parts of Italy. Guardavalle is
a rare variety, grown mainly around the city of
Reggio Calabria, especially in the eastern
vineyards of the region in the viticultural
zones of the Kalipera, Locride, and Bivongi on
the side of Calabria that looks toward the
Ionian sea.
wines to try:
Terzavia***, Marco De Bar-
toli*** (Grappoli del Grillo), Tasca d'Alme-
rita*** (Grillo Mozia; but it won't be made for
the next few years because voracious rabbits
recently wreaked havoc on the Mozia vineyard),
Baglio Hopps**, Feudo Montoni**, and Feudo
Arancio*.
Which Wines to Choose and Why
One doesn't hear much about Guardavalle and
monovarietal wines, but it has been recently
recovered and re-evaluated by local viticultur-
ists and producers. Having only recently
emerged from decades of indifference, hope-
fully it will be studied more, such that there
will be more monovarietal wines to choose.
What I have tasted in monovarietal versions has
left me suitably impressed: Guardavalle can
make good wine, with a complex nose that will
remind you of hazelnuts, red fruit, and tobacco,
fi nishing long and with an almost tannic
mouthfeel. It may be that many “greco bianco”
wines I have been given to taste over the years
were in reality made with Guardavalle, which
would mean the variety has a lot of potential,
since many of those wines were either already
quite good or showed enormous potential. Fur-
thermore, given that this variety's synonyms
hint at its ability to withstand air-drying and to
make
passito
wines, I think it would be wise if
estates tried making Guardavalle sweet wines
too.
Gropello
s
See
GROPELLO
GROUP
, chapter 3.
Guardavalle
where it's found:
Calabria.
national regis-
try code number:
105.
color:
white.
Guardavalle is named for a little town located
between Locri and Noverato in Calabria, the toe
of Italy's boot-shaped peninsula (though this
cultivar is occasionally called Vardavalli). It is
also likely that the name at least in part derives
from this variety's penchant for hillside vine-
yards, as
guardavalle
in Italian means “to look at
or over the valley” (De Bonis 2002). It's not a
particularly vigorous variety and is character-
ized by relatively late phases in all its vegetative
cycles, with late-season budbreak and harvest
dates, though fl owering occurs early. Studies
have shown that Guardavalle is identical to
Greco Bianco di Cirò (Costacurta, Calò,
Antonacci, Catalano, Crespan, Carraro, et al.
2004) and that Montonico di Rogliano, Uva da
Passito, and Uva Greca are also synonyms
(Schneider, Raimondi, and De Santis, 2008a).
Guardavalle is characterized by medium-
sized, conical bunches and medium-sized ber-
ries. Budbreak occurs late, so that spring
frosts are not a concern with this variety, but it
tends to ripen late as well; fortunately, autumn
wines to try:
Santa Venere* (Vescovado; the
estate deserves credit for reportedly producing
a monovarietal Guardavalle from organic
grapes), Cantina di Bova* (Feingas; contains
up to 40 percent “Greco Bianco,” which could
be Greco Bianco or Greco Bianco di Cirò, so it's
diffi cult to understand what Guardavalle is all
about in this specifi c bottling).
Invernenga
where it's found:
Lombardy.
national reg-
istry code number:
277.
color:
white.
