Vittore Alessandria
A Glass of Pelaverga
A Sommelier Presents a Little-Known
Wine Produced Side by Side with BaroloBy Levi Dalton
Elisa Burlotto asked her father the Commendatore what he thought about her plan. There was a long pause and then his considered reply: “I see you are crazy like me.” It was the late 1960s, and the Burlotto family operated then, as it does today, the Castello di Verduno, a wine property in the hamlet of Verduno, population 400, in the Barolo zone of Piedmont in northwestern Italy. (The property also includes vineyards in Barbaresco.) Elisa had asked permission to plant a parcel of Verduno’s Massara vineyard to the local grape known as Pelaverga. Eventually the family agreed, and in 1972 Elisa planted the Basadone section of the vineyard to Pelaverga.
The new vines brought a turning point. “Pelaverga had almost disappeared by the 1970s,” Vittore Alessandria explained to me during a recent cellar tour. He is the fifth-generation owner of Fratelli Alessandria, another prominent producer of Pelaverga (as well as Barolo). “It was quite difficult then to sell Pelaverga as a table wine, by itself, unblended. It was a big risk.” Until the planting of Basadone, the area may have had only a handful of Pelaverga vines, mixed here and there within the rows of Nebbiolo and other grapes. Fabio Alessandria, of the quality-minded G.B. Burlotto winery, said that his family did not even attempt to sell Pelaverga during the 1960s but rather gave the bottles away to friends.
Today the situation is different and yet perhaps for the same reasons — people seek Pelaverga for the very traits that nearly led to its demise. The wine, said Vittore, “has no deep color, no deep structure. But it is good for the food, with not too much tannins.” Indeed, “it seems lighter than it is.” And then there are the aromas: “It is something unique,” Fabio said. “In an easy, drinkable wine, at a young age you have a complex aroma.” He finds in young Pelaverga not only the floral tones often encountered in Piemonte’s red wines but also herbal associations with thyme and rosemary. After only a couple of years in bottle, Pelaverga shows more savory aromas than young red wines often do. When I have asked why Pelaverga is so much more popular now, the producers point to these characteristics and to an increased awareness of Italy’s indigenous grape varieties.
Mario Andrion, Castello di Verduno’s enologist, led me on a sunny tour among the vines of the Basadone. He told me a bit about the grape variety known specifically as Pelaverga Piccolo. Andrion carefully distinguished between this grape, native to Verduno, and Pelaverga Grosso, a different variety associated with Saluzzo to the south. He pointed to the lime-green leaves of the Pelaverga Piccolo, and he told me that for this grape one must be very careful above all about the harvest date, especially in warm vintages. He described fruit that can jump in ripeness overnight, going from lively acidity to producing wine that is flat on the palate. Fabio Alessandria at G.B. Burlotto echoed this sentiment and added that with Pelaverga achieving the proper yield is tricky. Prune too much and the wine is soft, but let the vine do what it will and the growth will be so vigorous that the grapes may not ripen with the desired flavors.
Every Pelaverga producer I talked with — even today there are not that many — mentioned Pelaverga’s versatility at the table. Traditionally, you might drink it with the local carne cruda (chopped raw beef) or salsiccia di Bra (raw beef sausage), but the wine is also friendly toward all sorts of pasta preparations, and the producers say you can drink it with fish, especially salmon. It also pairs easily with many dishes involving chicken. Alessandria loves Pelaverga with snails, but his eyes especially lit up when he described Pelaverga with mushrooms: “This is something special.”
Pelaverga is very popular in Verduno at Easter dinner, and wineries often bottle a version of their wine a bit early for the occasion. Many such bottles end up at the Trattoria dai Bercau in Verduno, which is said to serve more Pelaverga than any other restaurant in the world. There you may see local growers engaged in a card game and whole families dining together at long tables. In summer, customers commonly request their Pelaverga, by the bottle or carafe, a bit cool for more brisk refreshment.
The Verdunesi like their Pelaverga young. Fabio Alessandria of Burlotto, which produces a delicious, nuanced Pelaverga, told me that for him, three or four years in the bottle is ideal. After that, the wine can lose the savory aromas that make it so appealing, and yet nothing may develop to replace them. Fabio and the other growers tend to prefer Pelaverga from cooler vintages, when the acidity they desire is fully present. Even in a warm vintage, however, growers who harvest their grapes a bit early can confound expectations that the wine will be soft.
And some producers are challenging the idea that Pelaverga is only a still red wine. They make lightly sparkling Pelaverga, a return to what some of them remember from many years ago, when Pelaverga was sometimes vivace, as a Lambrusco might be, with a slight prickle of bubbles on the tongue. And since 2006 Castello di Verduno has been making a white wine from Pelaverga by crushing the grapes and separating the juice before the skins color it. The 2011 Castello di Verduno Pelaverga Bianco, called “Bellis Perennis,” shows red currant and rose tones, which you might normally expect from the grape, joined with surprising honeysuckle and linden.
The growers confront a landscape where the question is no longer whether to plant Pelaverga but where. They note strong sales worldwide of a wine that was once impossible to sell. Given the grape’s tendency to ripen fast in warm years, growers are seeking out cooler sites, especially when they want to make sparkling or white Pelaverga. Plantings in east-facing vineyards like the Boscatto, for instance, have increased. And while Pelaverga continues to be cultivated in south-facing vineyards, with each passing warm vintage growers wonder aloud about pruning levels, elevations, and which vine material to use for their next plantings of Pelaverga. ●
From issue 91
