Three inexpensive Italians

At a casual dinner for students last night, I tried three moderately priced (low teens) Italian wines bought at Big Red earlier in the week. (1) I liked the Zardetto Brut Prosecco. I used to think of Prosecco, the high-production sparkling wine of the Veneto, as a kind of cheap champagne, worth about what it cost. But when you travel around the small towns of the Veneto, you see it as a different sort of thing, something more like the world’s most luxurious ginger ale. I think especially of a day in Montegnana. I had just visited a church to see some frescoes, I forget whose or why, but I remember leaving with some embarrassment when I saw that I was about to intrude on a funeral rather than an art museum. I walked gravely over to the nearby bar for a coffee. Next to me were a half-dozen elderly gentlemen, rather soberly dressed and quiet, gathered around poured but undrunk Prosecco, accompanied by a bowl of potato chips. As the bells tolled, they lifted their glasses of sparkling wine to the departed, a scene hard to imagine with Champagne. With all the earnest seriousness surrounding the Schiavo case this weekend, I think my own end-of-care directive calls for a good Prosecco for my friends. The Zardetto brut would be a fine choice, drier than most with a sharp apple taste and a lot of zest for life. (2) Back to last night in Bloomington, we then had a Marcato 2003 Soave. I thought it was a disjointed and somewhat ill-defined wine. The nose hinted at tropical fruit but the dry and flat taste seemed a real disappointment in context. I have a bottle left, which, for a gathering of law students, tells a very complete story. (3) But then we had a really lovely red, the Poliziano Rosso Di Montalcino 2002. The year was generally not a good one for Montalcino but this wine was a real exception. I have read that the grapes weren’t quite good enough for the pricier Vino Nobile that Poliziano specializes in, so they were declassified for the plain Rosso – but there was also a good bit of merlot added in to the sangiovese and clearly some time in oak as well. The result was some nice cherry fruit with a spicy finish, an appetizing wine at a good price. And, speaking not of wine but of a good finish, BLU (http://www.bluculinaryarts.com/) provided a delicious Zuppa alle Fragole, a combination of cake, ricotta and strawberries with a precise and perfect balance.