Slow Wine Guide Tasting: Italy, California & Oregon (Part 1)

When you're confronted with about 300 wines available for tasting, you have to make some hard decisions. In only four hours, no one can properly taste and give respect to all of those wines so you need to be very selective as to which of those wines you'll sample. Forced to be selective, I knew that I'd miss out on tasting some interesting and delicious wines. However, I was pleased to find some compelling wines which were well worthy of attention.

The 2019 U.S. Slow Wine Tour visited five cities, starting in San Francisco and ending in Boston, where it took place at the City Winery. The Tour was intended to showcase the release of the 2019  Slow Wine Guide, a wine review guide which doesn't use numeric scores to assess wine. This guide is an offshoot of the Slow Food movement, which was established in Italy, in Piedmont, by foodways activist Carlo Petrini as a way to protect the world’s gastronomic traditions.

Their website states their basic philosophy, "Slow Food believes that wine, just as with food, must be good, clean, and fair--not just good. Wine is an agricultural product, just like any of the foods we eat, and has an impact on the lives of the people who produce it, as well as on the environment--through pesticides, herbicides and excessive water consumption which are all commonplace in conventional wine production." The first edition of the annual Slow Wine Guide, centered on Italian wines, was published in 2010, with an English translation released the next year. To review their wines, they visited each winery, spoke about their agricultural practices & wine production, blind-tasted their wines, and then composed their reviews.

In 2017, Slow Wine decided to expand their coverage to California, so they traveled there, visiting and evaluating hundreds of wineries. The 2018 Slow Wine Guide was the first to include reviews of California wineries, 70 in all. For the 2019 Slow Wine Guide, they expanded their California coverage to include over 130 wineries. In addition, they have added coverage of Oregon, including about 50 wineries. As their website states, "Oregon’s commitment to sustainable wine-making and respect for the terroir is consistent with Slow Wine’s principles and its mission to support local agriculture."

In addition, they note, "Like last year’s book, the 2019 guide isn’t intended to be exhaustive or comprehensive: it’s a growing, living, and breathing almanac that’s meant to give voice to the new wave of America’s viticultural renaissance." Next year's guide will continue to grow, including more wineries from California and Oregon, and possibly reaching out to other U.S. states as well. Though the inclusion of other states might take a bit longer.

I didn't know until I arrived at the Slow Wine tasting that approximately 300 wines were available for sampling. I was pleasantly surprised at the size of the event. Representatives of 85 wineries were present, including 79 from Italy, 3 from California and 3 from Oregon, each pouring about three wines. Some of the Italian regions covered include Emilia-Romagna, Lazio, Marche, Piedmont, Veneto, Puglia, Sicily, Tuscany, Umbria, and more. There were also three joint tables, representing the Prosecco DOC, Lugana DOC, and Bardolino Chiaretto DOC, which added about another 50 wines. Some of the wineries were seeking importers but a significant amount are already available locally.

In the tasting event guidebook, some of the wineries and wines were marked with various symbols or phrases, indicating something special. The wineries might be marked with a Snail, Bottle, or Coin while the wines might be marked as Slow Wine, Great Wine or Everyday Wine. In short, the Snail indicates those wineries whose values align with the Slow Food movement, the Bottle indicates high quality, and the Coin indicates excellent value. The Slow Wine designation represents "an expression of place, originality and history," while the other two phrases are self-explanatory.

The tasting was spread out over three rooms, and though it was well-attended, by various representatives of distributors, wine stores, restaurants, the media, and more, it generally didn't feel too crowded. There was a table of food, snacks to help cleanse your palate, and there was plenty of bottle of water too. The event seemed to run well and I encountered plenty of other attendees that I knew. There was a casual vibe, though plenty of work got done as well.

A few of my highlights of the tasting included a Tannat/Malbec blend from Oregon, a delicious Italian Rosé made from a blend of Barbera, Groppello, & Sangiovese, and an Italian wine made from a grape that only a single winery in the world is allowed to produce. In the next couple weeks, I'll be writing in detail about some of these highlights as well as some of the other wines I tasted, sharing the best of what I tasted.

To Be Continued...