This past week we had two, that's right TWO, top level Stage Races happening at the same time on two different continents. The
Giro d' Italia continued with its second week of racing and the
Tour of California countered with 8 high powered races from San Diego to Santa Rosa.
I called in my expert from the South (California, that is) to deliver a Battle Royale featuring California Barbera tangling with Barbera from the Homeland - Italy. So, here it is. Without further ado, the Main Event. Brought to you by Foxall...
I’m really excited to be guesting on Lucha Vino’s blog
again. When I dropped him a line to
point out that this might be a first—two stage races in great wine country at
the same time—he immediately took me up on the idea of a Tour of California v.
Giro matchup. Sure, lots of cycling
races travel through great wine country—France, Spain, Europe, Australia all
have major stage races—but two at one time!
Then I learned that Lucha had already stolen California’s
thunder by pitting our grape—our grape, I tell you!—Zinfandel against its
Italian counterpart Primitivo. I could
have been crushed.
But there’s not just one Italian grape in California.
The first major Californian wine makers were
people like Robert Mondavi and the Gallos.
Just recently, the last of their generation, Frank Indelicato of
Delicato Family Wines, left us.
Those
aren’t French or Spanish names, my friends, and Italian varieties were planted
all over the place back in the day, at least when you could tell what was
growing where.
Not all of them did well,
and you’d be hard pressed to find any old-vine Nebbiolo or Dolcetto.
There’s a smattering of Sangiovese (an ex-girlfriend
of mine once noted that Mount Diablo, where Stage 7 of the California tour
ended today, looks amazingly like Chianti), but not much of it is good. (One
huge exception:
Two Mile
Polesky-Lentz Sangiovese.)
But those old Italian farmers drank Barbera, and eventually
a lot of it wound up in the Central Valley.
Grown for volume, most of it wasn’t very good. But up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada,
they grow some excellent examples. So,
tonight’s match—think of it as the undercard to the Zin v. Primitivo with a
couple middleweights-- pits a Barbera from Amador County, California, against
an established grappler from Piedmont, in the foothills of the Alps.
