Food I'm Eating: Wine from the Cinque Terre at Cucina Paradiso, in Petaluma

Locals have been flocking to Cucina Paradiso in Petaluma for about five years now, it seems. I don't know how I missed hearing about this restaurant until just a few days ago, but I'm glad I recently had a chance to get acquainted with the place.

I visited on a Saturday night. It was packed, but the service was up to the task of handling a full house, and the food came promptly but not so quickly that things felt rushed--just the way I like it. Solid Italian fare, an interesting wine list, and surprisingly reasonable prices for food of this quality make the place hard to resist; a meal for four with appetizers, main dishes, desserts and a $45 bottle of wine was just over $200--including tax and tip. While not cheap, high-end local restaurants in the area far too often ask considerably more than that for food much less good. I had ravioli filled with roast duck under a sauce of sundried tomatoes, pine nuts, and basil (below). The restaurant uses organic vegetables exclusively. At dessert, the tiramisu was excellent.

What most impressed me, however, was seeing a bottle of Cinque Terre wine on the extensive (but not bloated) wine list featuring many good Italian and local wines. The Cinque Terre wines are delicious and extremely rare. The entirety of the Cinque Terre zone is only about 200 acres. Most of the small output is consumed locally. Cinque Terre is hard to find even in Italy outside the immediate area of production. Exceedingly dry but flavorful (reminiscent of a good Riesling from Alsace) these wines are the perfect accompaniment to Italian cooking--northern Italian cooking in particular. This one (pictured above), was from the cooperative that makes most wines labeled "Cinque Terre." It was less interesting than some of the (even rarer) wines bottled by individual Cinque Terre producers I've had, but a pleasure nevertheless; deceptively simple at first--like so many Italian whites--but with a delicate balance of fruit and acidity on the mid-palate and a lingering finish. I look forward to my next visit to Cucina Paradiso (114 Petaluma Blvd. North, Petaluma, CA 94952, (707) 782-1130).

Here's a blog post I uploaded from Italy a couple of years ago while visiting the Cinque Terre.

Wines I'm drinking: Cinque Terre

Having decided to stay in Riomaggiore, we found an inexpensive yet spacious apartment for a night. Had a good dinner at restaurant Dau Cila, right at the marina in Riomaggiore. There is a terrace with a view of the sea (reservations more or less required). The interior is attractively decorated and comfortable if you can't get a place outside. Not great food, but very good food, and there is an excellent selection of Cinque Terre wines by the glass. Dau Cila turned out to be a perfect place to get a feel for the local wines.

I knew very little about the Cinque Terre wines, having only heard of the sweet wine made here, known as Schiacchetrà (which I did not taste), as a rarity of the wine world. The Cinque Terre also make dry white wines that simply bear that name--Cinque Terre (granted DOC status in 1973). Both these and the sweet wines are made mostly from three grapes, Bosco, Albarola, and Vermentino blended. The wines must contain at least 40% Bosco. Up to 20% can be other white grapes approved for winemaking in the area more generally, besides these three. The vines are grown high on steep, terraced hills that recall the vineyards on the Duoro river that make port or some of the steep plantings along the Moselle and elsewhere in Germany. The vines are trained high and flat--almost espaliered.

Schiacchetrà is made from the same blend, but it is a passito wine. Essentially, some of the harvest is reserved and allowed to raisin in the sun (typically on straw mats; these wines are sometimes known as "straw wines") or hung in the rafters of buildings until partially dehydrated, which greatly increases the sugar content, allowing a powerful dry wine or production of sweet, concentrated wines like Schiacchetrà or Recioto della Valpolicella, the sweet wine made around Verona, of which Amarone is the better known dry version.

How have I missed these to date? I had no idea such interesting wines were made here. The only logical explanation is that production is so small (the entire producing area is only 200 acres), that they rarely make it far from home. I feel lucky to have had a taste. I understand that most of the wine labeled Cinque Terre DOC is made at a cooperative, but there are bottlings by individual producers as well. All four of the wines I tasted were of the latter type. They are likely to be unavailable outside of the Cinque Terre. Indeed, searching on WineSearcher yields nothing available for purchase from the Cinque Terre DOC at all*.

I tried four wines. I didn't take extensive notes, but a few comments based on the notes I did take will serve to give some sense of what these wines are like. I had the 2009 Cantina Litàn Casata dei Beghee Cinque Terre (from Riomaggiore), with an intriguing smoky, bacon fat scent. It was bone dry, but richly flavored and very long on the finish. I had the 2008 Luciano Capellini Cinque Terre (from Volastra), which was interesting for its lemon rind scent and extremely dry, slightly bitter character--but again tempered by an intense richness. All the wines were remarkable for seeming very rich and lush yet extremely dry at the same time. This was a more alcoholic, headier wine. The 2008 Agricola Campogrande Cinque Terre smelled of honey, anise, and watermelon. It was similarly intense, yet dry. The 2008 Walter de Batté Cinque Terre was one of those wines that just keeps on going on the palate, lingering a minute or more. Perfumed, rich, giving the impression of sweetness and opulence without being sweet at all. It had a deep, brandy-like color. All the wines were the tawny hue of an old white wine, but they were fresh and crisp, despite the concentration of their flavors. Excellent. What a shame they are so hard to come by!

*More recently searching WineSearcher I see that some of these wines are, in fact, available. They are worth trying.

On the road (Europe 2010): The truth about the Cinque Terre

The Cinque Terre are usually described as isolated fishing villages on the Italian Riviera, clinging to steep cliffs and left behind by time. That's a half-truth. They are isolated. The villages (from south to north, Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso al Mare) do cling precariously to steep cliffs. It's as natural to park a boat in the street here as it is to park a car--more natural, actually. But time has not stopped. The underground walkways that link the train stations of the five villages are dark, dirty, covered with graffiti, and smell of urine, like the worst of such subterranean walkways in Tokyo. The streets are crowded with tourists. At night, some of the café and bar terraces are noisy with people that have had too much to drink. There is a surprising amount of litter. The waste of the towns is collected from large, unsightly plastic dumpsters in the narrow alleys that smell of garbage. The architecture of the buildings is undistinguished--mostly plain, brightly colored plaster facades. The quaintness of the steep narrow stairways that link the streets quickly fades. The steep passages become tiring and tiresome. Finally, if you want to walk the paths that connect the five main towns, you have to pay a €5 fee (although I have some sympathy here; this is technically a fee to enter the Cinque Terre National Park. €5 gives you all-day access to the trails).

Having said that, the setting is undeniably dramatic. The cliffs plunge straight into the sea. I went swimming in the harbor at Manarola, one of the five main towns, where it's possible to dive directly into the ocean from rocks a few yards from dry land. Five feet out, the water is 50 feet deep. Fishermen still tend their boats and nets in the streets. The vineyards are beautiful. They are on terraced slopes--certainly among the steepest man has ever tamed to nurture grapes on--, the dry white wines are wonderful (see next post), and good seafood is abundant, fresh from the fishing boats. The Cingue Terre are both beautiful and ugly. The place is certainly worth a visit, but don't expect to walk back into time.