red wine for breakfast?

I was at this super fun party at my friend, Fabiola’s place last weekend. She works in a computer area like a lot of other folks in the Bay. There were a bunch of computer-types there. Since this was a kind-of after hours Friday night party, everyone tended to obsess over the biz. But in between talk of layoffs and shake-ups in Silicon Valley, there was a lot of chatter about food and especially wine.

Fabbi’s originally from Sicily, which I think is pretty cool. A couple of the other guests were Italian, too, though from different areas of the north. I’d no idea of the extent of the rivalry between the Italian north and south! One of her friends, Tomas, is from a small town to the north of Italy in the region Alto Adige. Fabbi kept teasing Tomas all night about being “German” because his town is so close to the Austrian border. Another party-goer from Milan kept making fun of Fabbi’s accent, repeatedly and exaggeratedly rolling her “r’s,” apparently in imitation of Sicilian pronunciation of the language.

At any rate, this Tomas guy had some pretty interesting ideas about wine from Alto Adige. He had apparently trained as a sommelier in Italy for three years when he was younger. He proposed that I try a variety of Italian red, schiava, that he claims is “so light that you can have it for breakfast.”

Red wine for breakfast?!? That’s a new one. I’d never heard of this grape but looked it up over the weekend in “The World Atlas of Wine.” It seems that it’s actually grown in two areas of northern Italy, Alto Adige and Trentino. These places are very close to one another and I’ve seen them lumped together as one in a lot of wine guides. It also goes by some aliases: vernatsch is another Italian name and Trollinger in German.

The Atlas didn’t have much good to say about schiava. In fact it seemed to express with some relief that schiava vines are being ripped out more and more lately, to be replaced with presumably more marketable grape varieties. So I don’t know. I was not totally ready to let go of this whole red wine at break-ie idea quite yet. Plus I trusted Tomas for no good reason. The only thing to do was to order some and have a non-blinded weirdcombos crew tasting ASAP!

My local wine shop had two kinds of schiava:

2007 Tenuta Waldgries St. Magdalaner Classico (Schiava) $15.99

2007 Baron Widmann (Vernatsch) Schiava $19.99

When I went to K and L to pick it up, the clerk that got me the order spontaneously asked, “Are you having a schiava tasting?” Then he proceeded to tell me that he particularly liked the Baron Widmann.  Since I’d already paid for the wine, my natural paranoia was eased, and I became even more excited about the upcoming tasting. After all, the guy must actually like the wine rather than just saying so to get me to buy it. He wasn’t so sure about the whole breakfast concept, suggesting that a picnic might make more sense.

I scheduled the tasting for the following weekend, for dinner instead of break-ie. I’m just getting too old to drink that much during the daytime.

This is what the weirdcombos tasting crew thought:

The Waldgries

Jazz said that “it’s nice.” “It’s not sugary but has a jellybean taste.” Kenny adds that “you expect that the taste will expand, but it doesn’t, which is what I really like.” “It has a subtle bold taste.” Hegui thinks that it would go well with grits for breakfast. Billy thinks that it’s a pale red sort of dusty color. Very fruity with a cherry flavor. We all agree that this would go well with omelets.

The Baron Widmann

Jazz thinks that this one tastes “sharper” and might go better with omelets after all. Kenny finds it bitter compared to the Waldgries. Hegui would serve this one with ratatouille. Billy thinks that it has an enjoyable smoky flavor and has more depth than the first. We all agree that it would work well with a picnic but maybe not for breakfast.

Finally, we took a vote for which one we preferred overall. Kenny and Hegui went for the Waldgries and Jazz and Billy voted for the Baron Widmann. Try some schiava yourselves. There’s no accounting for taste.