Wine & Spirits - August 2017 - 30

Looking east from
the center of Genoa.

"These are
honest, foodfriendly wines,
quirkiness
and all."
-Ceri Smith
30

WINE & SPIRITS

verbena quality to wines like vermentino and pigato,
a characteristic that helps balance the textural richness and density these varieties can pick up.
While Smith has stocked vermentino and pigato
from classic producers like Punta Crena and Bruna
since Biondivino first opened its doors, in more
recent years she's expanded those offerings into one
of the most impressive collections of Ligurian wine
west of Genoa. There's bianchetta and çimixa from
the storied Bisson winery in Chiavari, of course, but
where things get interesting is with Smith's array of
rossese (she's determined to have all of the rossese
in the market if she can get it).
Rossese hails from the western end of Liguria and
shares genetics with tibouren in Provence; however,
for growers like Antonio Perrino at Testalonga in
Dolceacqua, it's less that the two grapes are nearly
identical, genetically speaking, and more that the
vines have long since adapted to their growing area
and therefore yield a distinctive wine. Smith considers Testalonga-with its nervy, bright cherry flavor
and delicious freshness-benchmark rossese.
If Liguria's better-known white varieties face a
chronic land shortage that effectively limits how
much wine can be produced, then I should point out
that rossese isn't much easier to find. Still, just a few
short years ago there was hardly any rossese in the
American market, and yet today Biondivino is able

AUGUST 2017

to offer eight different cuvées, ranging from feisty
and fresh efforts from the likes of Danilo Pisano to
the more serious and structured wines of Maccario
Dringenberg.
A common criticism of Ligurian wine in the past
was that the wines were too scarce and too expensive to ever really catch on. Yet, in a market that is
constantly searching for something new, and where
there's now an infrastructure of importers in place
to specialize in scarce artisanal wines, it seems like
things have shifted. Already, more Ligurian wines
are entering the market, including an avant-garde
of the local natural-wine movement with producers
like Selvadolce and Stefano Legnani, both of whom
are pushing regional stylistic boundaries with nods
towards traditional skin-contact white wines, in
addition to organic farming and promoting a minimal interventionist attitude in the cellar.
"In talking with people there, you see over and
over that these growers know each one of their vines
individually, like students in a classroom," Smith
says. "They have a belief in their land, and thankfully in their native grapes like çimixa, mattaousu,
pigato and rossese. There is no 'elevated status'
among wines; they are what they are, and are made
and used how they've always been made and used.
Liguria is a land of ghosts but the ghosts are alive and
they are the protectors of tradition and history." n
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Wine & Spirits - August 2017
