Italian wines are as varied as the soils, the saints and the seasons that produce them. Travel south from the serene, smooth, temperate hills of Piedmont to the baked volcanic ridges of Calabria, and you will encounter a new varietal, a new technique, a new flavour and very often a new shape of bottle with each successive township. The Italian love of locality has survived the assaults of the global market, and it is to Italy that we owe the noble Slow Food movement, which has moved so slowly that it has barely reached these shores. The reason why Italy attracts so many tourists is that it is a place where most people aren't tourists, and where local customs are still honoured more highly than the strangers who come trampling all over them in their ghastly summer clothes.
Friuli was kept under wraps by the Austrian authorities, and was little visited before modern times. Even now it makes no special effort to be known in the wider world, fearing, no doubt, the fate of Tuscany. However, the marl and sandstone subsoils of the colli orientali produce wines of great finesse and character, which are often the match of the French originals. This is particularly true of those produced at La Tunella by Massimo and Marco Zorzettig. Mourning the untimely death of their father, the Zorzettig brothers have decided to commemorate him by improving his vines. The three examples on offer from Corney & Barrow are proof of their great skill and seriousness, and if you baulk at paying £8 for a bottle of Italian, you should consider that these wines are the equal of many made from the same grapes in France which sell at twice the price.
Especially delicious is the Pinot Bianco, which is fermented in two ways - in barrique for fullness and on the lees for zest - before blending to a rich counterpoint of fruit and flavour. This grape does as well in Friuli as in Alsace. However, it rarely reaches, in my experience, the kind of clean, balanced leafiness achieved at La Tunella. Well worth a try, if only for the sake of your education.
Equally delicious, and with a similar complexity beneath its grassy summer smile, is the Sauvignon. This wine radiates happiness, and has a wild-flower and summer-fruit aroma that more than compensate you for staying at home to enjoy it. As for the Pinot Nero, this matches grape and subsoil so perfectly as to be a Burgundy in all but name, with a summer-pudding aroma and good-natured, almost conversational flow through the system. It cried, "Down, wantons, down!" to our dish of eels, and prepared the way most courteously for the young but muscular Chianti that followed, and which was the perfect complement for our late pig Singer's fatty guts.
