Godello - Galicia’s other white grape
The region of Galicia in northwest Spain (just north of Portugal) has recently exploded onto the international wine landscape riding the near escape-velocity thrust of its calling card varietal Albarino (al ba REEN yo), and a well-derved ride it is - Albarino is something like a dry Spanish version of a Riesling (no actual genetic relation though), and it pairs PERFECTLY with the plethora of seafood dishes so common in the Galician kitchen, especially octopus, squid, and shrimps. But as wonderful as it is, Albarino is not our focus here, it is Albarino’s recently revived stable mate Godello…
Godello (go DAY yo) is most happy in the relatively warm Valdeorras region that it shares with Galicia’s signature red grape variety, Mencia. Under the name Gouveio, the variety also grows on the south side of the Minho river in Portugal. For whatever reason, Godello really took the Phylloxera epidemic on the chin, and by the early 1980s the variety was nearly extinct, but the Galicians, who are ethnically Celtic, and whose language is closer to Portuguese than it is to Spanish, are intensely “nationalistic”, and a few dedicated growers in Valdeorras and Bierzo took a stand for the grape, and began to rehabilitate some neglected Godello vineyards, and eventually, to plant new vineyards as well.
In the vineyard, Godello likes well-drained soils, as well as ample sun, so many Godello vineyards are south-facing. Unfortunately, Godello is not a particularly hearty soul and it is fairly prone to many of the major vine diseases. Godello’s bunches are moderately compact and medium-sized, with smallish, round yellow-tinged green berries. The variety buds and ripens early, with most growers effecting harvest by about mid-September. The vine’s yields are reltively low. All of these relatively minor difficulties alone would not qualify Godello as “difficult”, but when stacked one on top of the other, they surely contributed to the variety’s near abandonment, as well as its slow contemporary “growth curve”.
In the glass, Godello most often exhibits a pale, often silvery color with green reflections. The body is usually quite full and the acidity is moderate. Godello is associated with aromas of apple, pear, and pineapple, lime flowers, and after some age, bitter almond, and an intense minerality. In the mouth the wines are fairly unctuous but well structured. Well-made Godello wines can improve in bottle for approximately five years from the vintage date.
Godello is traditionally paired with seafood, especially shellfish, and richer finned fish, but more contemporary and equally felicitous matches have been made with Chinese and Vietnamese foods, and “creative contemporary” dishes that are more exotically spiced and/or herbed.
So when all is said and done, Godello is not as directly accessible as let’s say Pinot Grigio or Chardonnay, but it is in no way a difficult wine to understand. Right now, we’ve only got one Godello in stock (and a fairly pricey one at that), the wine is WONDERFUL, but if this one’s a little too taxing on you wallet, check back soon for more choices! As always, please post your tasting notes here as comments.
TOM CIOCCO
Life is short - drink often and early
I guess that if you didn’t grow up in a vino-centric culture, alcohol-drinking children might well shock you. But for those of us who did, alcohol’s verboten status in Puritanical America (and elsewhere as well) can be just as shocking. Just look at what many medical “experts” say about drinking and the border with alcoholism. By most group’s definitions HEAVY drinking is defined as:
Having more than a certain amount per day (e.g. more than three drinks per day),
Drinking more than a certain quantity per occasion (e.g. five drinks on one occasion, at least once a week), or
Drinking every day.
By these definitions, I’m a triple heavy drinker. Maybe even an alcoholic. Now maybe I’m turning a blind eye (as well as a hardening liver) to the problem, but I say “Bullshit”. I know first hand what REAL alcoholics are, and not for nothing (as we say here in New Jersey), but even lots of those that I’ve known, have lived relatively long (though perhaps not so happy) lives.
So back to the kids…I speak officially only for myself here, but I know that my story is a common one. I honestly don’t remember how long I’ve been drinking, but I’d have to say I started when was about 5 or 6 years old, and haven’t looked back (it makes me dizzy sometimes)…I had always loved that smell, and so my dad always let me take a couple of sips of the beer that he might have after mowing the lawn on a hot Summer day (and it was love at first taste, but that’s another story entirely), and while we didn’t drink wine every night as a family, Sundays and holidays often saw bottles of wine hit the table as my family convened for four-hour dinners, lots of screaming, and even more laughs…I’m sure lots of Italian-Americans (and Portuguese, Spanish, etc.) will remember an Aunt Josie or an Uncle Ray mixing up “half-and-halfs” with a fiasco-wrapped Chianti jug in the left hand, and a glass-and-styrofoam bottle of Seven-Up in the right, and not only for the kids mind you, but for her husband or his wife too! We (the kids) were allowed only one, and we we closely watched for signs of inebriation, and were even sometimes made to walk the “linguine line” and recite the Italian alphabet backwards as sobriety tests…
OK, I made that last part up, but I just want to be clear that NO ONE was allowed to get drunk, ESPECIALLY not the children. There was an unspoken but pervasive notion that getting drunk was a sign of weakness, gluttony, or generally self-abusive behavior, and it was frowned upon. But to deny even the children wine was like telling them that they could eat the roasted pork, the cavatelli, and the wheat pie, but not the caprese salad. Wine was, and still is, a FOOD like any other - one that was to be treated with a greater level of respect, sure, but a type of food nonetheless. In fact this last weekend, I headed up to my mom’s house with my wife for a family dinner with my brother, his wife and their toddler. I of course brought the wine (one of the crosses that one has to bear when you’re “ITB”), and mom cooked WAAAY too much food as usual, but we all enjoyed the meal and the wine, and my mom made sure that the “baby” got a taste of what we were drinking by dipping a finger in her own glass, and sticking it in my nephew’s mouth…maybe it was my imagination, but I think I saw his eyes light up, but I’ve always said that appreciation for my own good taste is one of my family’s best traits 
Listen, I’m not up here stumping about the virtues of getting to get kids drunk (but they do sleep REAL well after they stop falling down), but rather instilling a healthy attitude toward drinking a healthy beverage at an early age. Study after study has shown that those introduced to alcohol by their families in a reasonable and “normal” way at a very young age, have far FEWER incidence of binge drinking and alcoholism and the health problems that come with these behaviors. In essence, though this is not the idea that drives the behavior, getting kids comfortable with alcohol at a young age quite effectively nullifies the “forbidden fruit” phenomenon, and puts wine into its proper context of food, family, friends, and something that we all know is important to most Italians - R E S P E C T - for the power and the profound history and “nobility” that wine carries in itself, as well as for the people and the world in which we all live. If you have kids, teach them about, and let them DRINK wine (sensibly). IN VINO VERITAS!
TOM CIOCCO
“Typicity” - A slippery but core wine concept
I LOATHE Emeril Lagasse (and I KNOW that I’m not the only one!) but there is one of his little quips that doesn’t send me diving for the remote to annihilate his presence from my screen, and that one is “(now were going to roll up these basil leaves and slice them thin, which is called a chiffenade)” - “BIG FANCY COOKING TERM”…Yes, I know, he’s trying to bring “fine” cooking down from the stratosphere into the real kitchens of Ma and Pa Frontporch, and this appraoch I do admire, I just wish he could do it with a bit more articulation, and a lot less overdramtization…but I digress…So the matter at hand here is not a “big, fancy cooking term” but a “big fancy wine term”, and that term is TYPICITY.
The first problem that you might note with this term is that it doesn’t really exist in English, so if you go looking for it in the dictionary, you’ll be looking a long time. The word is derived from (just an Anglicized version, really) of the respectively Italian and French terms “tipicita`” (tee pee chee TA) and “tipicite`” (tee pee see TE) both of which refer to an item that displays clearly the classic traits that make an “X” an “X”. For example, an orange that is a bit bigger than a baseball, is orange in color, with deilcately but markedly dimpled skin, and spoons of sweet yellow/orange juice that can be expressed from the fruit’s segmented orange-fleshed fruit that can be exposed by peeling it back with your hands shows great “orange typicity”.
The application of this concept to different grape varieties is quite easy to identify as well. With regard to grape varieities, typicity refers to how closely a wine cleaves to the flavor, aroma, and texture that over many years, has been identified as immutably linked with that variety. For example, a Cabernet Sauvignon that is colored deep garnet/purple, has a chewy, dense, and tannic mouthfeel, and smells clearly of black currants, green peppers, and cedar is said to possess great “typicity”. This term is nearly always applied in a complimentary manner…Easy enough…
So those of you who are using your heads for more than hatracks are probably about to ask “Well why are wines that are said to possess high levels of “typicity” not all exactly the same, and therefore boring?” And before I can even answer, you think you’ve got one of these “wine pros” cornered, and you ask “hey, wait a minute, how do you square ‘typicity’ with ‘terroir’ and a winemaker’s individual ’style’ - they seem to be inherently contradictory!” And when I finally get a chance to answer I’ll say “Good questions all - here’s my take”:
Typicity is a good thing in and of itself, without even bringing the other oenological “ideals” mentioned above into the ring. Think of it this way - do you like bananas that taste like lamb chops? What about potatoes that taste like minty fresh toothpaste? All snarkiness aside, I think we all know the answers to these questions. Besides, those of us who pay close attention to our sensory perceptions as we eat know that even two different bananas from the same bunch or potatoes from the same bag can taste subtly different…Here’s a direct wine example…my collegues and I recently tasted a Bourgogne Rouge that we thought TASTED very nice, but three of us agreed that, though it was quite delicious, if given the glass blind, we would have ALL sworn that it was Syrah, not 100% Pinot Nior…what good is that? When you order a steak, and you get a plate of fried chicken set down in front of you, are you happy? What’s wrong? they both taste good…
So let’s let the tigers in…So how does typicity square with terroir? How could something be both typical and terroir-driven? Well, as is the case with SO many things, we’re dealing with varying and relatively small gradations of difference and a deft balancing act, not MAJOR departures. Think of it this way - if you look at your friend Jocko through an orange-tinted sheet of plastic and then through a blue one, Jocko certainly looks different through one than the other, but is identifiable as Jocko nevertheless. In this case, Jocko represents the concept of typicity and the plastic sheets stand in for terroir - Jocko is exactly the same person, but the plastic (terroir) applies not a radical, but certainly clearly notable effect on what Jocko looks (tastes, smells) like.
Now onto the concept of “style”… First, what the heck is it? If a winemaker is being faithful to the nature of the grape from which she is making her wine, and is being equally faithful to her terroir, and the influences that that place wants to imprint on the fruit that grows out of it, where does style enter the scene? Think of it this way… In Barolo, as well as in Burgundy and other places too, many of the most famous vineyards are shared by scores of winemakers, each one harvesting and vinifying a certain percentage of the total tonnage in his or her own manner, and bottling them as special single-vineyard wines. And because Barolo and Burgundy are single-variety wines, it is very common to encounter scores of wines that are made from either 100% Nebbiolo or 100% Pinot Noir that were grown in the same vineyard in the same vintage. A comparison between a 1999 Marcarini Barolo Brunate and a 1999 Francesco Rinaldi Barolo Brunate leaves the winemaker as the only difference between the bottles, and so the mark of “style” steps to the fore. Thankfully, style is the easiest winemaking “pillar” to quantify. Winemaker #1 does lots of green harvesting, tends to pick a bit later than his compatriots, fements for 12 days in temperature-controlled stainless steel tanks, and ages his wines in 100% new, high toast, French barriques. Winemaker #2 does no green harvesting (but does employ an INSANE level of triage), picks at a “normal” time, ferments his wines in tini without temperature control for 25 days, and ages his wines in 50 hectoliter Slavonian oak casks that are now about to receive their 16th harvest…It doesn’t take a Master of Wine to know why these wines are going to taste different, and even to fairly easily tell you which is which with just a few sniffs and sips…
For so many more casual wine drinkers these concepts (”typicity”, “terroir”, “style”) seem like the rarified vocabulary of effete wine snobs - concepts that are either believed to be beyond the grasp of most non-professionals, or for the more cynical, just a lot of hooey that wine pros have concocted over the years to make their jobs sound more nuanced than “I like this one/I don’t like this one”. But as I hope I have succinctly illustrated, these concepts are VERY real, and are quite easily explicated, the devil is in, as with so many things, the ability to determine which of these “pillars” is supporting what and for just how much, and this ability, just like the finer points of trapeze acrobatics, chess, or creating new knitting patterns is determined by desire, practice, and plain old natural-born talent. Keep up the good work.
TOM CIOCCO
If you play it, say it!
This is neither a new nor an original idea, but one I think whose time has come..ready? Right to the point… ALL Wine labels should be required to list all grape varieities contained therein as well the percentages levels at which they are present. I just can’t see any reason not to. It’s a pretty simple idea really, and one that would require almost no extra effort for the producer, but the benefits that this very simple change would bring is vast. I think we’ve all been “there” too…you pick up a bottle from a wine shop shelf. The label is intriguing, or maybe it’s from an unfamiliar region, but you don’t know anything about the grape types included, overall style, or even just where the hell this bottle comes from exactly. You spin the bottle around hoping for a little edification, and the only thing written on the back label is the surgeon general’s warning about avoiding alcohol during pregnancy and the directive to stay off of the heavy machinery when you’re having more than one, or some goofy doggerel about gentle breezes that blow off the adjoining swamp that lightly but firmly tongue-kiss each grape…you know what I mean…
To me, not listing your “ingredients” and stytlistic choices just seems like a lost opportunity to introduce yourself if not as a winemaker, then at least as one representative of the region in which you work. If you are in a “traditional” growing zone, Cahors for example, you can let your drinking public know that for example, even though Tannat and Merlot are permitted in the blend, you choose to make your wine with 100% Malbec because of A, B, and C…
And for New World producers that operate under far fewer appellation constraints, a “full disclosure” requirement would help to guide the drinker, and likely reduce the number of displeased people, the ones that took a chance on “Booboo’s Blend” out of Napa, only to find out that the cuvee`is comprised of 70% Thompson seedless grapes, and 30% Gros Plant. The average gal or fella, would likely say “EEEEWW”, and put the bottle back in place. But, this gives those whose tastes range from the odd to the downright perverse, (or perversely curious at least), an opportunity to scratch that strange itch they’ve developed…
Precise varietal labeling would also allow newer wine drinkers to begin to formulate rough sensory “identikits” for each grape variety as well as the more common blends (meritage, GSM, etc.). And, once you know what Tempranillo “tastes like”, when you encounter that one your brother-in-law brings over - the one from Bhutan that he thinks is “killer” - (and you’ve been hitting Ribera del Duero HARD), you can truly begin to understand how profoundly terroir can texture a wine…
Another kind of benefit in this labeling requirement comes for a “nativist” stickler like me. For example, I am absolutely LIVID about the latest amendments to the Chianti norms which now permit fairly significant percentages of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and even Syrah to be blended into one of the most ancient, storied, and esteemed wines in the world. To me, this is an abomination, and having this info would afford me the opportunity to leave as many of those bottles on the shelf as possible.
So what does everyone think? I don’t forsee any sort of rancorous debate on this, but maybe I’m missing a big downside to this sort of detailed labeling? Do some feel that good wine is good wine, and the varietal composition is beside the point? Come one, come all!
TOM CIOCCO
