Mirco Balliana, the head winemaker of Andreola, has a mission. He wants to drive up the quality and reputation of his Valdobbiadene DOCG sparkling wines and he believes he’s doing the right things to achieve just that.
Mirco Balleana - man with a mission at Andreola
Andreola is a medium-sized producer with a mosaic of tiny plots, totalling 76 hectares, based in the village of Col San Martino in the north-western Italian region of Veneto. Some vineyards, explains Balliana, are no bigger in area than the Brasseria restaurant in Notting Hill in London where we’re meeting for dinner to try some pairings.
As a producer, Andreola has got a story to tell. First there is its so-called heroic viticulture. In other words, it has some of the world’s most extreme vineyards, in Andreola’s case steep slopes of Glera grapes up a giddy three-in-four gradient. Secondly, all but one of its wines at this tasting come from a particular rive – each of these single-vineyard wines embodies the distinct character of a specific micro-area of soil, altitude, and climate.
Balliana, now thirty years old, has already made it on to lists of the top 100 winemakers. Still, I get the decided impression he is impatient to go further faster with the quality of his Valdobbiadene wines.
There are two parts to the Prosecco DOC area. Valdobbiadene is the smallish, posh old part full of hills and glorious scenery. Then to the east is the new part on flat uninspiring countryside stretching far to the east towards Trieste. Since the Prosecco DOC was created a decade or so ago, the flatter area has been churning out industrial quantities of wine from around 34,000 ha with extraordinarily high permitted yields of up to 20 tonnes/ha.
Andreola’s labour costs per hectare in the hills of Valdobbiadene are seven or eight times those in the wider DOC, complains Balliana.
Some purists rail against the renaming of the Prosecco variety as Glera. That became a bureaucratic necessity when in 2009 the DOC was enlarged to take in the village of Prosecco in order to fend off the use of “Prosecco” for any old sparkler. But to Balliana, the grape is simply excellent to work with thanks to its “generosity”.
The bubbles in Valdobbiadene wines are made using the tank method rather than the more prestigious (and costly) traditional method. Balliana makes no apology for this. He insists that: “Other sparkling producers do what is good for them, we do what makes the best wines for us.” He is also proud about changes to winemaking techniques, using free-run juice and filtering less and less.
Tasting the Andreola wines
Our pairing starts with 26° 1° Rive di Col San Martino (11.5% abv, €14.20 a bottle retail). This is a zero dosage that is proving popular among Italian customers. From a single vineyard, this has peach and some white flowers on the nose and a good salinity on the palate.
Next up is the Col del Forno Rive di Refrontolo (11.5%, €14.20 a bottle). This brut has a dosage of 7g/l but is still pretty dry. With fruity notes on the nose, this is one of the producer’s best sellers. The food pairing is notable too. The bubbles work a treat with wonderful traditional fat Bigoli pasta in butter topped with anchovy fillets. So exquisite are the Cantabrian anchovies, the chef can’t resist the temptation to flourish the tin in front of us diners – that’s a first for me, at least.
Now we move away from the single estate to the Dirupo Brut (11.5% abv, €13.00 a bottle). This is a brut with 8g/l dosage. ‘Dirupo’ roughly translates as ‘cliff-edge’ and this wine comes from some of those vertiginous plots that earn the “heroic” label. To me this assemblage approach works best, with pastry notes and an appealing creaminess. The wine held its own, with a challenging pairing of beef fillet with girolles.
Mas de Fer Rive di Soligo (11.5% abv, €14.20 a bottle) takes us into the extra dry category with a 14g/l dosage. It has a little less structure but some lovely ripe fruit notes.
Last, we move on to the Nazzareno Pola Rive di Santo Stefano (11.5% abv, €28.00 a bottle). This too is an extra dry with a dosage of 17g/l and a relatively new addition to the range. It moves us up a tier quality wise with a good freshness and decent complexity emerging. One Michelin-starred restaurant in San Francisco is selling this by the glass very successfully.
The word Prosecco moved on to the back label of Andreola’s wines a decade ago and then disappeared altogether about four or five years ago. Balliana would clearly like fellow winemakers to do the same and to carve out their own prestigious identity for the up-market wines of Valdobbiadene.
