This is not an easy time to be an Italian winemaker. There is climate change to deal with, of course, and the global fall in wine (and alcohol in general) consumption. Add to this the dramatic 28 percent decline in shipments of Italian wine to the U.S. market that has been reported recently by the Unione Italiana Vini. U.S. consumers love Italian wines, which is why they are the biggest import category, but the combination of tariffs, unfavorable exchange rate movements, and pre-tariff stock-building have taken their toll.

The headwinds are the same for all wine producers. Small wineries may lack economies of scale and scope, but small can be beautiful in a crisis. A small winery doesn’t have to push vast numbers of bottles and cases through the distribution pipeline to balance its books. They need the right customers to find them in just the right number to balance the books. It’s a problem and the current economic environment doesn’t help, but it is a human-scale problem.

Italian by Design

This is one of the lessons we have taken away from our recent discovery of Bulichella, a wine estate in Suvereto on the Tuscan coast between Grosseto and Livorno. The Suvereto appellation may not be large or famous like many others in Tuscany, but it boasts DOCG status, so its quality is recognized.

Sue and I were surprised to be invited to a Zoom tasting of Bulichella wines with the winemaker Nico Miyakawa because this didn’t seem the moment to take Italian wines to the U.S. market. But I guess we were thinking big wine. So we listened, sipped, and learned.

Bulichella is a project that Hideyuki Miyakawa began in 1983, first in partnership with friends and eventually as a family project of his own. Miyakawa is Japanese by birth and, I guess you could say, Italian by nature. He was a cofounder of ItalDesign, the famous automotive design practice. ItalDesign achievements include cars for Fiat, Alfa Romeo, DeLorean, Volkswagen, Maserati, Lotus, BMW, and Audi. The designs, both limited-output and mass-market, have helped define the modern auto era.

The Labels Tell a Story

So it is not entirely surprising that Miyakawa brought a certain style to Bulichella (named for the locality within the Suvereto appellation), which continues today with his grandson Nico Miyakawa. Sue and I found ourselves attracted to two very different ideas of design when we sat down to try the wines.

The labels, which were created by members of the Miyakawa family, are very personal and can almost be read like parables. The label of the Coldipietrerosse — a Cabernet, Merlot, Petit Verdot blend — shows  the winery, organic farm and vineyards, the sea, and the island of Elba in the background. All the pieces seem to fit together naturally, without tension or conflict.

The label for Rubino, a blend of Sangiovese, Merlot, and Cabernet, shows a family of wild boar in the vineyard. Are they the Miyakawa family? That’s my guess, especially when I look at the label for Tuscanio, a 100 percent Vermentino wine. Two generations of wild boar look down on the vineyards and territory. What are they thinking? What should we think?

The thing that is hardest to make out on the Bulichella labels shown here is the name of the winery! Bulichella, Suvereto, Tuscany is printed in teeny tiny type. The story is the brand, not the winery name. An interesting design choice, don’t you think?

Designed by Nature

So there seems to have been much thought given to how nature and family fit together at Bulichella. Would this design influence the wines themselves? The only way to answer the question was to pull corks.

We started with Rubino. At about 15,000 bottles per year, it is the winery’s flagship and largest production wine. The wine was fresh, elegant, and restrained. The heavy hand of a winemaker was nowhere to be found. The finished wine didn’t really taste like its components (we would not have guessed Sangiovese), so what did it taste like? The place? The terroir? Hard to tell, since we’ve never been there.

Tuscanio, the Vermentino wine, confirmed our suspicions. It was different from any Vermentino we have ever tried. Nothing like Sardinia. Could we sense the rocks and the sea that define Bulichella’s domain? Yes, that’s how it seemed to us. And the wine didn’t just hold up as time passed, but it seemed to become more and more like itself.

This prepared us pretty well for the limited production Coldipietrerosso, which is named for the hill with the red rocks that you see on the labels. Seamless, elegant, refined. Not quite like anything else.

Small is Beautiful

Before you ask, you won’t find these wines in the United States. Not yet, at any rate. Nico and company are looking for the right distributor partners to bring their wines to America. They don’t need a big mass-market pipeline because they couldn’t possibly fill it. And the wines are so particular to place that they are best seen as hand-sells.

So the tariffs and the falling dollar are problems, but not the most important challenge. Find the right people to drink the wines, to distribute the wines, to import the wines. That’s the human-scale problem these wines were designed for. Small really is beautiful sometimes, don’t you think?

If you flip to the back of my 2017 book Around the World in Eighty Wines, you’ll find a list of the wines from my global adventures. I didn’t want to just list them alphabetically or sort by price or critic rating. Organizing them by country of origin didn’t seem right, either. So I invented categories that would link wines with similar characteristics.

The Joy of Lists

The first category, “Wines of the People,” includes Two Buck Chuck, Mateus Rosé, Mouton Cadet Rouge, and Four Cousins Sweet Rosé from South Africa, among others. These are very different wines united by their popular appeal and market success. Do you see the connection?

Next up is “Noble Wines,” and it starts with Chateau Petrus and continues with Henschke’s “Hill of Grace” from Australia and several others. You can probably think of the wines that you’d add to the Noble list. I admit the lists are totally subjective. I’d probably include different wines today. That’s part of the joy of wine (and of lists).

One of my favorite groups is called “Philosopher Wines.” Sometimes we encounter wines that demand more attention than others and provoke a certain amount of introspection, too. You don’t drink them so much as contemplate them. And we are sad when the glass is finally empty.

Philosopher vs Philosopher’s

These are the “Philosopher Wines” and just reading the list (which starts with a 100-year-old Tawny from Seppeltsfield in Australia and ends with Methode Ancienne Cabernet Sauvignon from Springfield Estate in South Africa) gives me a special feeling.

I don’t plan to revise or update my 80-wine journey but, if I were to update the list, I think I’d have to add a new category. In addition to “Philosopher Wines” I’d have “Philosopher’s Wine,” wines made by philosophers. I’ll bet there are more than a few (didn’t  Warren Winiarski of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars study  political philosophy at the University of Chicago before he went down the wine rabbit hole?).

This thought is provoked by an online tasting of Tenuta Licinia wines that Sue and I took part in a few weeks ago. Tenuta Licinia is a small (6.5 hectares of vineyards) winery in a part of Tuscany that doesn’t get too much attention.  This particular area near Lucignano had a long history of wine that faded in the 20th Century. Now it is coming back.

A Certain Idea of Wine

The project started about 50 years ago as the personal mission of Jacques de Liedekerke, a prominent Belgian attorney. He recognized the potential of certain vineyard plots in the region and, over 20 years, slowly brought them back to life.  His vineyards and his mission eventually passed to his grandson, James Marshall, who, like Winiarski, has followed a path from the serious study of philosophy to the serious study of viticulture and enology.

Talking with Marshall via Zoom reminded me (in a good way, I want to point out) of any number of conversations I have had with philosophers during my academic years. There were thoughtful pauses and occasional clouds of self-doubt mixed with sure statements of principle and intent.

Marshall has for sure a certain idea of wine (to paraphrase Charles De Gaulle), which is based on particular sites with their aspects and soil profiles and particular grape varieties and getting the combinations just right. Winemakers, like philosophers, need to have strong principles that they constantly question, I guess.

Marshall has a number of provocative ideas about wine and one that I like a lot is that his wines should be so good that they appeal to novices, people who don’t know much about wine or don’t have much experience with it. This struck me as odd at first because we normally think of novices as having simple tastes that need to be developed over time to appreciate the best wine.

The Magic Words

But then he said the magic words, Chateau d’Yquem. D’Yquem is widely recognized as one of the world’s greatest wines (indeed, it is often named the world’s best). Yet, Marshall noted, it is immediately appealing to both experts and rookies. His goal isn’t to make a Tuscan d’Yquem, but to make wines as delicious and appealing in their own ways as d’Yquem is in its way.

We were lucky to receive four wines to sample. The Tenuta Licinia Montepolli (named for the vineyard) is an IGT Toscana blend of Merlot and Petit Verdot that was elegant and delicious. The IGT Toscana Sasso di Fato, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, and Petit Verdot, was complex, elegant, and memorable. One of the best wines of the year so far. Both wines were light and bright and refreshing, but serious at their core.

Sue and I agreed that the wines did not especially remind us of their component grape varieties. They tasted like … well, I guess they tasted of the place more than the grape and, if this is true, it reflects Marshall’s intent and his attention to detail.

The Petit Verdot Question

We also received half bottles of varietal Cabernet Franc and Sangiovese and we are working on a sampling strategy for them. But the wine that I would love to taste is the 100% Petit Verdot Sasso di Licinia because Marshall brought it up so often in the Zoom interview.

He really doesn’t like the Petit Verdot, he said a couple of times. Wrong grape, wrong place. Subsoils not exactly right. Not what he wants to do. But it is really good with the local Tuscan steak and in fact a neighborhood restaurant wants him to put some in bag-in-box for by-the-glass sales, which makes sense. Marshall really doesn’t like the idea of bag-in-box any more than he likes the Petit Verdot itself, but the wine is really nice with the steak. That’s a fact. So maybe he should do it.

And so on, around and around. Maybe yes, maybe no. It’s kind of fun to turn it over in your mind and see where you come out. Oh, philosophers, you are so interesting! And some of you make really good wine. I’d love to hear from other philosopher winemakers in the comments section.

What do you remember about the hit 1985 film “Back to the Future”? Doc? Marty? The “Chuck Berry” scene? How could you forget that time-traveling DeLorean sports car?

I don’t know if anyone thinks much about the film’s deeper messages anymore, but the idea that the future is somehow buried in the past is a theme that has long been of interest. It shows up in wine in various guises. Here are two “Back to the Future” stories from the Piemonte region of Northern Italy.

The Return of Cerrati in the Land of Barolo

The Rossi Cairo family has been making wine, especially Gavi DOCG,  at their biodynamic farm, La Raia, since 2002. They began a “Back to the Future” journey in 2015 when they expanded their vision to Tenuta Cucco in the prime Serralunga region where the Nebbiolo grape and Barolo wine are firmly rooted.

Tenuta Cucco presented the Rossi Cairo family an opportunity and a challenge in the form of the Cerrati vineyard. Cru Cerrati was well known and respected in the past, receiving special note in Renato Ratti’s Map of Barolo in 1971, for example, and even in the 1990 Slow Food wine atlas of the Langhe, but its glory faded over the years until Piero Rossi Cairo, working with La Raia winemaker Clara Milani, determined to convert the project to organic viticulture and to revive the vineyard and the reputation of the Cerrati zone.

Sue and I enjoyed the opportunity to taste the wines and participate in a Zoom call with Piero Rossi Cairo and Clara Milani. About 80 percent of Tenuta Cucco’s production is exported; the United States is the biggest single market.

The two estate vineyards total about 20 hectares and total production is about 70,000 bottles (6000 cases) each year including  white wines (Chardonnay), a traditional method sparkling Pinot Nero, Rosé, and, of course, the reds. The Barolo DOCG Serralunga d’Alba, a blend of grapes from the two vineyards, is the main focus with production of 25,000 to 40,000  bottles depending on the year. Only about 2400 bottles of single-vineyard Barolo wines from Cerrati and Bricco Voghera are produced each  year. And 5000 to 8000 bottles of a fresh and fruity Langhe DOCG Nebbiolo are made.

The “no wood” Langhe Nebbiolo was simply delicious, with beautiful color, light body, soft tannins, intense aroma, and complex fruit flavors. If you are looking for a “Baby Barolo,” this isn’t it. But who wouldn’t enjoy a wine like this with cheese and salami or a light pasta? And the Serralunga d’Alba was delicious, too, a great culinary wine because of its medium body and nice acidity. The single-vineyard products are philosopher wines, to be appreciated at a relaxed pace. We haven’t decided which one we like best, but are very much enjoying the opportunity to study them.

Ruchè Renaissance

Wines made from the Ruchè grape variety are full of contradictions. Wine Grapes tells us that “Varietal wines tend to be headily scented, often with aromas of roses. They can be spicy and the tannins so marked that the wines can sometimes leave a bitter aftertaste.”  Roses, spicy, bitter — not something you find every day.

Sue and I first stumbled on Ruchè back in 2011 when we attended a food and wine festival in Moncalvo, near Asti. As I wrote then, “I had never heard of Ruchè and honestly didn’t know what it might be until I happened upon the stand of the Castagnole Monferrato group. They were cooking with Ruchè, marinating fruit in Ruchè and selling it by the glass — they were obviously very proud of their local wine. I had to try it and it was great. Suddenly I saw Ruchè everywhere (a common experience with a new discovery) and enjoyed a bottle at dinner in Asti that  night.”

Ruchè very nearly disappeared at one point as attention focused on market-friendly grapes such as Barbera and Nebbiolo. As Ian D’Agata explains in the chapter on Ruchè  Italy’s Native Wine Grape Terroirs, Don Giacomo Cauda, Castagnole Monferato’s town priest, was obsessed with Ruchè, studied it, collected specimens from scattered small plots,  and promoted Ruchè as the region’s signature wine. Ruchè di Castagnole Monferrato received DOC recognition in 1987 and was elevated to DOCG in 2010, putting it up among the elite of the Italian wine world. A long climb from near-extinction to the summit in just 50 years.

But DOCG recognition does not automatically translate into sales. Almost everyone around Castagnole Monferrato probably drinks Ruché, but almost no one does anywhere else. Selling an unfamiliar wine like Ruché requires creativity and determination. So we were intrigued to learn that a local importer, Mallard Libations in Woodinville, Washington) has taken up the challenge so that those who know Ruché  will have an opportunity to enjoy it and hopefully help spread the word.

We’ve started our new Ruchè research with the Ferraris Agricola Ruchè di Castagnoble Monferrato Riserva DOCG, which featured medium body, a memorable nose, and more depth than I remember from the wines we enjoyed in Italy. This single-vineyard wine deserves its “Riserva” designation. It is one of five different Ruchè wines that Ferraris produces. We are especially looking forward to trying the flagship Opera Prima Riserva.

Ferraris Agricola takes Ruchè and its history very seriously. Luca Ferraris, a.k.a. “Mr. Ruchè,” has created a Ruchè Museum that chronicles Ruchè’s history and celebrates its rebirth. We have added it to our “must-see” list for our next trip to Piemonte.

Discovering new wines or wine regions is always interesting. Re-discovering (and perhaps even rescuing) over-looked wines and regions is even more satisfying. Innovation, we are told, is especially important in today’s wine market environment. Back to the future can be part of that process.

[This is the third and final article in a series inspired by our recent visit to Collio DOC in north-east Italy. Click here to read the first report and click here to read the second.]

What does it take for a wine region to stand out in today’s crowded market? Excellent wine, of course, but good wine isn’t enough because there are lots of quality wines around the world; consumers need a reason to buy one instead of another.

Brand and Identity in Wine

What else does it take? There are many ways to think about it, but in my book Wine Wars II, I focus on two necessary (but perhaps not sufficient) factors: brand and identity. Brand is the image that distinguishes your wine from the competition. Identity is the quality that defines the brand.  Many wines suffer from the lack of a memorable brand. Others may have a brand, but its power is limited because it doesn’t actually stand for anything. Put wine, brand, and identity together and much can be achieved.

Sometimes an iconic wine can define a region, giving it a brand and identity.  The market for wines from Bolgheri on the Tuscan coast, for example, was shaped by Tenuta San Guido’s famous Sassicaia, Bolgheri, Sassicaia, Super-Tuscan.

Sometimes a singular event can provide the spark. Here in the United States, for example, the Oregon wine industry’s rise to prominence was at least partly due to success at the Wine Olympics of 1979. I wrote about this in the Wine Economist on the occasion of the Eyrie Vineyards’ fiftieth birthday:

The Wine Olympics was a competition, sponsored by the French food and wine magazine Gault Millau, that featured 330 wines from 33 countries tasted blind by 62 judges. The 1975 Eyrie Pinot Noir Reserve attracted attention by placing 10th among Pinots, a stunning achievement for a wine from a previously little-known wine region.

Robert Drouhin of Maison Joseph Drouhin, a Burgundy negociant and producer, was fascinated and sponsored a further competition where the Eyrie wine came close second behind Drouhin’s own 1959 Chambolle-Musigny. Thus was Eyrie’s reputation set (and Oregon’s, too). It wasn’t long before Domaine Drouhin Oregon (DDO) was built in the same Dundee Hills as Eyrie’s vineyards — a strong endorsement of the terroir and international recognition of the achievement.

Oregon wine was a thing, the Willamette Valley was the brand, and Pinot Noir was the identity. Oregon produces other good wines besides Pinot Noir. And Pinot Noir grows in other parts of Oregon. But the wine, brand, and identity were established anyway.

Building Brand Collio

Collio DOC, which hugs the Slovenian border in north-east Italy, has long been known for its excellent wines and it is home to many strong private wine brands. Sue and I visited Livon on our recent trip, for example, enjoying the delicious wines and the amazing view from the tasting room deck. The sleek wines are easily identified by the distinctive art nouveau-style label, which is just risqué enough to have been banned by authorities in at least one state in the American South!

A strong regional brand benefits all producers, so the Collio Consortium, which celebrates 60  years in 2024, has worked diligently to establish the image and reputation of the region and its wines.

Sue and I encountered the “SuperWhites” campaign about 20 years ago at an event in Portland, Oregon (not “Porland” as printed on the event poster shown at the top of this page). Sponsored by Slow Food Friuli and supported by a range of regional organizations, the promotion was inspired by the success of “Super Tuscan” red wines. The idea is that Friuli (and Collio) are to Italian white wines what the Super Tuscans are to Italian reds.

Although the Super Whites theme seems to have run its course, the commitment to collective effort persists, along with the color of the Collio wine region, bright yellow, is still very much alive. (I think of it as Tour de France Yellow Jersey yellow, but that’s just me). Yellow is Collio’s color, featured in all the promotional literature, the capsules found atop many of the wines, and even a bright yellow Vespa scooter that seems to show up in many photos of the region. If you are in Collio and you see yellow,  you can’t help but think Collio wine.

More recently there has been an effort to promote a trademark Collio wine bottle shape, which is also shown in the photo above. The distinctive bottle actually requires a special cork to seal it properly. Adopting it is a serious decision from a practical standpoint.

The Collio bottle shape is instantly recognizable on store shelves and when you look around at what is on tables at a restaurant. Although its use is strictly voluntary, not mandated by consortium rules, we saw it almost everywhere and sensed a certain pride in the identity. It makes a strong statement about the Collio brand project.

Collio’s Identity Quest

If Collio has been purposeful and successful in building a regional brand, the road to a specific identity to back up the brand is less clear. Indeed one person we met told us he thought that Collio was still searching for an identity.

Thirty or forty years ago Collio was pretty much synonymous with a wine they called Tocai, made from the Tocai Friulano grape variety. The grape variety’s name is still the same, but the wine can’t be called Tocai anymore because of objections from Hungary’s Tokaji region. Now the wine is Friulano and if you ask for a glass of local white wine at a bar or restaurant, it’s what you’ll get (and happily drink, I think).

Having lost control of its signature wine’s name, some winemakers in Collio looked in a different direction for a regional identity. The result, we discovered when we visited in 2019, was an emphasis on white wine blends under the name Collio Bianco. The wines we tasted on that trip were terrific. White wine blends are under-appreciated. But aside from their high quality, the wines didn’t have enough in common to be the foundation of an identity. Some were blends of native grape varieties. Others were blends of traditional grape varieties like Chardonnay, Sauvignon, and Riesling. Others combined native and traditional grapes.

The Collio wine identity remains a work in progress and perhaps that’s how it always will be. What all the wines really share is not color or grape variety but sense of the place, shaped by the local ponca soils and hillside vines. If I had to pick a grape variety it would probably be Tocai Friulano, but why do that? It seems like it would exclude so many great wines and accomplish very little.

No, I think Collio isn’t any particular wine. As we suggested in the first two articles in this series, it is best to think of it as a particular place and a deep experience. You don’t just drink Collio DOC, you experience the place through the wine. I know that that’s inconvenient when it comes to marketing, but important indeed when it comes to the wine.

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Sue and I recently received a very thoughtful gift, a copy of The Food of Italy by Waverly Root (1971). We turned quickly to the section on Friuli and found this:

“Our wines,” laments a writer from Friuli, “are more exquisite than renowned.”

More than 50 years have passed and I think the wines are even more exquisite, if that’s possible. Renowned? Not as much, but the word is getting out there and Collio’s reputation is fast catching up to its reality.