Italian Wines 2002

Rating:
Summary: We'll rate no wine until we feel like it
Review: (If you have never looked at a copy of the Gambero Rosso Guide to Italian Wines before, I recommend you first read my review of the 2001 edition on Amazon, dated October 3, 2000, before continuing with this one.)

Over the past 6 months there can be little argument that the most heralded and sought after Italian wines on the US market have been the '97 Brunellos, which have been spoken about in the wine press with the same gushing, vintage-of-the- millenium enthusiasm as the 2000 Bordeaux. Don't take my word for it: here's James Suckling in a recent issue of the Wine Spectator:

"My blind tasting of 1997 Brunellos delivered the highest percentage of outstanding wines I have yet encountered in my tasting career. Even Bordeaux in a great vintage such as 2000, 1990 or 1989 hasn't had as high a percentage of great wines. I gave no fewer than 83 Brunellos scores of 90 points or
more. Sixteen of those wines received scores of 95 points or above, earning a classic rating. That's three out of every four bottles being of outstanding quality or better. In fact, I only found two wines unworthy of a good rating (80 points or higher)."

Now, guess how many '97 Brunellos are rated in the recently released (May 2002) edition of the Gambero Rosso Guide To Italian Wines? The answer: zip, zero, niente, nessuno. In other words, while every store I shop in was filled with '97 Brunellos, the brand new 2002 Gambero was of no value whatsoever in helping me select among them.

And so we are at the core of my love/hate relationship with this absolutely indispensable publication. I am addicted to the Gambero. For my taste, their rating system is virtually infallible. I carry the Gambero Rosso proudly every time I walk into a new wine store and consult it religiously when considering auction purchases, certain that all Italian wines with any merit are likely to be covered under their distinctive "one to three glasses rating system" (more about this later).

But Gambero's greatest weakness is that it takes forever for them to get this book out, and as a result it lacks timeliness, which is a vital quality in a book that rates individual wines. There are two root causes, as far as I can tell. One, their judging process, described in the introduction, appears to be the most rigorous and objective of any I'm aware of, and apparently takes months to reach its conclusions. The panels who evaluated the 12610 wines in the 2002 Guide started their assessments in March 2001. Could the failure to rate the '97 Brunellos have something to do with the commercial availability of the wines in Italy at the time the panelists begin? Parker and the Spectator seem to have no problem sampling and rating wines before they're released, so what's the problem?

Second, the English language availability of the book took forever. I pre-ordered my copy in February for March delivery and it arrived in mid-May, even though the book had been available in Italian for months. Someone in their distribution chain just doesn't seem to care about the American market. I guess it shouldn't be a surprise when the Italian publisher is named Slow Food Editore and its logo is a snail. Next year I'm going to buy the Italian version and get a head start, but the '97 Brunello's will be long gone from retailer shelves by the time the 2003 Gambero gets around to covering them.

Readers of previous versions of the book will find some welcome enhancements this year. First, they have adopted a color-coding scheme that recognizes three glass winners and the top performing two glass wines by printing them in red. This makes the best wines easier to find, but most importantly, it distinguishes between those two glass wines that were judged merely good and the wines that fell just short of three-glass status. Second, they have greatly expanded both the number of second-tier wineries rated as well as provided brief notes for all of them. Now it can truly be said that if an Italian wine is worth drinking, you can find it in the Gambero.

One final note. I have a favorite wine that was first served to me in a very authentic Italian restaurant in New York. It is a brilliant and idiosyncratic wine. It isn't terribly expensive. After I tried it for the first time, I eagerly grabbed my Gambero to check the rating (confident it was an easy two, maybe three glass winner), and was stunned to find the producer wasn't listed at all among 1770 producers in the 2002 edition. How could this be? The Italian sommelier who had recommended the wine told me that the Gambero is rife with politics. I hope this isn't true, but on the other hand, I'm glad they have left my discovery out of the book so there's more of it for me.

Use this book and you will never again have to say "mi dispiace" (I'm sorry) about a purchase of Italian wine (assuming your choice made the cut-off!).