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Viniculture is the endless story of rebirth. Of course, you have to go through a little decline first, and that’s a bummer, but there you have it. In the case of Proprietà Sperino, producer of this rigorous yet elegant red, twenty-five acres of abandoned Biella hillside vineyards in Piemonte, near the commune of Lessona, were reclaimed by Paolo di Marchi and his son, Luca: They replanted nebbiolo, vespolina and bonarda grapes at the site of their inherited villa in 2000. Lessona DOC was created by the Italian wine authorities in 1976 for red wine only. The wine laws require the production of nebbiolo (here called spanna) wine which may be blended with 25 percent other indigenous grapes such as vespolina and bonarda. The highly acidic sandy soil in Lessona produces a lighter, sharper, leaner nebbiolo than the more muscular styles produced by other northern Piemonte communes. Villa Sperino’s Costa della Sesia Rosso Uvaggio is a blend of Lessona’s three grapes, matured in barrique and bottle. The 2005 vintage showed a pale garnet core with a complex nose of black cherry, rose, cinnamon, nutmeg, menthol and tar. The wine was dry, with crisp acidity, medium ripe tannins, medium alcohol and a long length. I noted intense, plush, assured and layered midpalate flavors of bacon and molasses giving way to cranberry and sour cherry. The wine receded in my palate like an ebbing tide pool. Mature now, though capable of developing further. Seductive. Much like a Burgundian pinot noir. This wine went nicely with a meaty pappardelle Bolognese, a delightful meal for an autumn evening. Importer: Fleet Street Wine Merchant. $38.00. 11/1/09.

Bodega Bernabeleva S.L.
Camino de Navaherreros
15% alc.
2008
Vinos de Madrid, Spain

If you believe Aristophanes—drink makes a man rich and successful and happy, good to his friends and lucky in lawsuits (I’m a lawyer)—then as far wine can take you, Camino de Navaherreros may be your daily tipple. This is a big red produced in a small DO just outside Madrid, Vinos de Madrid. It comes from the DO’s southwestern subzone, San Martín de Valdeiglesias, where Navaherreros is the welcoming village to the zone. Granite lies below the sandy, infertile soil here. The climate is harsh with hot summers and cold winters. The fundamental worry in this area is producing wines from overly ripe grapes, leaving a flabby, slightly burnt or overly jammy quality. The grape, by the way, is garnacha (Fr. grenache), which is widespread in the region. In this estate, the wine comes from 80-year-old vines. San Martín’s reds generally are meaty, earthy, concentrated with ripe fruit flavors. Bernabeleva’s wine is a masculine one. It is popular in Madrid wine bars. Not much is exported. His Camino de Navaherreros is a good example of San Martín’s breed of wine. Brawny, bold. Not some little taffeta from the Loire. This wine will make the buttons pop off your shirt.

The 2008 vintage shows a deep ruby hue with aromas of bacon, eucalyptus, earth, coffee, tea and black cherry. Despite the perilously high alcohol, it’s well integrated and nicely balanced, thanks in part to the wine’s crisp acidity and high, firm tannins. Flavors are medium intense: again, bacon, with lots of pepper, cherry, graphite and rose petal. The length, medium. The wine is fermented in old wood, with a long maceration and wild yeasts added. Tellingly, after drinking the wine I discovered that the maker is a Catalan with much experience in cool-climate winemaking. On the bottle’s simple cornflower blue label is a roan-colored silhouette of a tiny goddess of the hunt carried on the rounded back of a huge bear. It’s the family owners’ modern-day symbol denoting the Celtic roots of the land. Grrr. This wine, matched with a good steak, will give you the boldness to tackle anything—file a lawsuit, win over a reluctant friend, buy the elusive lottery ticket that makes you rich and happy and the envy of your enemies. It’s a wine for New Yorkers. The Rare Wine Company. $15.00. 10/25/09.

Trenel
Viré-Clessé
13% alc.
Maconnais, France

You’re impulsively browsing the wine racks looking for a reasonably priced, medium-bodied white to drink with or without food. Trolling through “France,” you happen upon a label designated simply as “Viré-Clessé.” It fits the tab. But, scratching your head, you wonder: What is it?

The term is a designated appellation (“AOC”) demarcated along two slopes—220 to 400 meters high—running north and south between the towns of Tourus and Macon on the bank of the Saône River in Saône-et-Loire. Two villages within the area make up this AOC for a white wine created only from chardonnay grapes: Macon-Viré and Macon Clessé constitute one of the newest communal appellations in Burgundy’s Maconnais. The terroir of these two towns is quite similar. And small. So the appellation makes sense. The AOC produces about 550 cases a year from 20- to 60-year-old vines. The soil is limestone over calcareous clay with sandstone pebbles (“chailles”) or white limestone pebbles (“cray”), perfect for cultivating chardonnay grapes. Thanks to the southern location within Burgundy, these grapes are riper than in, say, Chablis. Hence, the wine in Viré-Clessé typically is lively, straightforward and styled to be slightly more rounded.

The House of Trenel has been producing chardonnay wine from this area for about 70 years. The winery is now run by members of the family’s second generation. Fermentation takes place in stainless steel or cement tanks. The hue of the 2007 vintage is light gold with youthful aromas of apple, pine and butter. The wine comes fairly crisp, with medium body and alcohol and flavors of citrus, butter, pistachio and white flowers, front and midpalate, with grapefruit on the finish. The length is long. A good example of a chardonnay from these two communes. You can sip this wine on its own, have it with brie or gruyère or serve with poultry, fish, vegetables. In other words, do with it what you will! A lovely wine.  Importer: Robert Chadderdon Selections.  $26.00. 10/10/09.

Starlite
Viognier
2007
14.5% alc.
Sonoma County, Calif.

I recently noticed that many small Manhattan wine shops whose emphasis isn’t particularly Californian, or even New World, have been carrying a wine from the Alexander Valley AVA of Sonoma County: the 2007 Starlite Viognier. Starlite is a small, family-run winery, better known for its Zinfandels (as is the AVA in which it sits). Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I’m not crazy for viognier as a bottled varietal, despite its fashionable Northern Rhone pedigree. The principle virtue of viognier, for me, are the highly perfumed aroma—think Chanel in a glass—and the fact that it’s best drunk two to four years after bottling. No need to age this wine. Viognier is typically very alcoholic, and not inexpensive. It’s cultivated mostly in limited quantities in small, expensive, agricultural real estate like Condrieu and Cote Rotie in France and in pricey California. All these factors, which in my case produce a serious ambivalence about viogner, nonetheless may account for its modish appeal to both winemakers and consumers alike. A perfect recipe to impress at an utterly fantastic pre-recession cocktail party. It’s the martini of whites.

Now, on to Starlite, which has an unaccountably trite spelling but otherwise stands up quite well for the price. This wine has a deep lemon core with aromas of almond, white nectarine, pear and light flowers. The perfume was more sedate than what you typically encounter in a viognier from the northern Rhone. The wine came dry, initially quite crisp, almost full-bodied, with upfront flavors of lemon skin, peach and pear on the finish. The length was medium. The mouth feel was viscous. The alcohol was high and apparent, but not to such a degree in either case as to deprive the wine of essential harmony. It was quite delicious, actually, though its pleasures were immediate and with no surprises. This is not what you’d call a wine of discovery: Rather, you should expect to hear a friendly, assertive knock on the door and open it to find a beaming deliveryman thrusting forth a package. It’s a COD wine. I had it with monkfish stew with pine nuts. And Fontina cheese afterward. Where a good bottle of Condrieu will set you back $60 to $70, $38 is a good value when you want to put on the ritz. 10/5/09.