A row of Dogarina bottles, two wine guys and I
I’ve been to a lot of wine tastings where classroom-style forward-facing tables tables were set with stemware and dump buckets, and a wine-maker or sommelier up front who introduced and then poured the wines. But Friday was different. I was invited to an early-afternoon Dogarina Vigneti wine tasting at Q’s in the Hotel Boulderado, where to my surprise, a few tasting glasses and nearly a dozen bottles were lined up on the restaurant’s bar.
To condense a long story, the hotel and restaurant people who were supposed to be there excused themselves because they had big private events to prepare for, so I ended up being the solo taster with Marco Giovanni Zanetti representing Dogarina, a winery in the Campo di Pietra, an ancient region that is part of Italy’s Veneto, and Colorado-based Tom Witham, the wine guy in the beer-dominated world of Paulaner HP USA, which is interestingly broadening its scope and importing these wines too. Zanetti (below) is a multi-faceted guy. He grew up knowing his way around the kitchen because his father was/is a chef, and he himself is both competent in in the winery. He has been a winemaker and is a trained Diplom Sommelier who worked in three Michelin-starred restaurants. And he is fluent in five languages.
Dogarina’s vineyards are planted tightly, Marco explained, both in terms of density in each row and right rows. This mandates hand-picking in most of the roughly 270 acres of vineyards that are currently in production. The pickers go through twice, collecting only ripe grapes, which are then re-selected in the winery. The grapes are fermented stainless steel, then barrel-aged for 12 to 15 in oak (Slavonian, new French, old French — depending) and then bottle-aged for another two to three years, resulting in elegant wines. Interestingly, despite an international presence facilitated by Marco Zanetti, 60 percent of their wines are still sold on the domestic Italian market, and part of the remaining 40 percent is poured in Lufthansa first and business class cabins. This is remarkable, because Germany makes some very good wines.
First we tasted a two of the three Prosesccos the Sforsin frisante and the the prestigious Prosecco Brut VSAQ. Then we moved on to the Manzoni Bianco, a hybrid of Pinot Bianco and Riesling created in the 1930s and thought to have disappeared — much like Carmenere, which was rediscovered in Chile. Created by Professor Luigi Manzoni and named after himself, this wine was rediscovered in a vineyard where a small percentage of the grapes seemed to ripen about six weeks after all the others. The Manzoni grape was rediscovered, and Dogarina makes an unfiltered wine from it that has unusual almost smoky qualities. Ros de Plana, a Cabernet Sauvignon-Raboso blend is the winery’s big red.
Having started in the ’70s, this winery is a fairly new kid on the Veneto block, but their respect for some of the old ways and attention to detail is impressive. For instance, they use twine tied in a specific traditional way rather than a wire cage over the cork, which is removed with a regular corkscrew rather than popped. It is a traditional way in the region, and it only works for the frisante, a gentler bubbly with less pressure than the spumante.
Locally, Frasca’s wine list includes Dogarina’s Decano, a Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot blend that we did not taste. Marco has done a wine-pairing dinners in Boulder and perhaps there will be another. Meanwhile, I had the chance to taste some of these wonderful wines — just two wine guys and I at Q’s bar. Extraordinary.
