Tom's Wine Line

Grappa is such a marvelous after-dinner drink, it constantly puzzles me that it isn’t more popular. The continuing – and frequently encountered – slur that grappa is jet fuel indicates to me either that people haven’t tried it for themselves, or if they have, they’ve chosen a poor example to match with their particular meal.

I can see how that could easily happen. After all, grappa isn’t one thing: It’s legion. It’s now distilled all over Italy, and everywhere it occurs it’s made from the local resources. That is to say, wherever a grappa is made in Italy, it’s distilled from the pomace of the grape varieties that grow in that region. A moment’s thought about the many varieties of Italian wine will give you some idea of just how many different kinds of grappa that can give rise to, each with its own varietal flavor and regional style to set it apart from any other grappa from elsewhere in Italy. If you approach grappa with the idea that it’s always the same thing – well, you’re bound to have problems.
.

.
Way back when Diane and I were embarking on our earliest journeys through Italy, wherever we had our dinner we always made it a point – especially if the local food was really good, as it was almost everywhere back then, before the tourist hordes descended – to ask if there was a local grappa. Invariably, the answer was a proud “there certainly is!” We got to taste a lot of different grappas that way, and I can honestly say we enjoyed them all.

Nowadays, when we have guests for dinner, we usually finish up by pulling out anywhere from two to six grappas (yes, I keep a lot of grappa around: It makes me feel secure), pulling out their corks, and urging everyone to just sniff the bottles before choosing one (or more: I’d never curb anyone’s enthusiasm) to drink.

.
The reason for that is simple: grappa, like wine, responds differently to different foods. A grappa that smells all cheesy after eggplant parmigiana might be richly floral after veal scaloppine, and different noses and palates might like either or neither. Among its many other pleasures, grappa makes for very interesting conversation as bottles pass from hand to hand and different reactions to it arise. (Among the many I’ve heard, never have I heard anyone say it tastes like jet fuel.)

Just as an example of how this works: one recent evening, Diane and I finished a supper with two fine cheeses, a lightly aged Manchego and a not-yet-runny Fromage d’Affinois. For the fun of it, I set out four grappas: two different monovarietal grappas of Barbera, a lightly barrel-aged blended Piemontese grappa, and a blended grappa of Friulian origin.

• The first Barbera grappa, from Marolo, was distilled from the pomace of Barbera d’Alba.
• The second, from Mazzetti d’Altavilla, I am 90% certain was distilled from the pomace of Barbera d’Asti.
• The barrel-aged grappa, from Berta, was a blend of the pomace of two Piemontese varieties, but exactly which two I have not been able to discover.
• The final grappa was from Jermann, distilled from Friulian pomace, almost certainly mostly if not exclusively of white varieties.

I thought these four grappas should be sufficiently different from each other to provide some interesting contrasts. I was certainly right about that. Not only were the grappas different from each other, but Diane’s and my responses to them differed too, sometimes slightly, sometimes widely.
.

.
Marolo Grappa di Barbera is normally one of my favorites. This particular evening it smelled to me of generic red fruit, light and fresh. On the palate it was similar – light, fresh, and warming, with a long red fruit finish. Very pleasing. Diane picked up aromas of ripe grapes, stone, moss, and acid. For her, the palate showed some sweetness and sharp acidity.

The Mazzetti d’Altavilla Grappa di Barbera Giovane struck me as having a sharper, higher-toned nose than the Marolo – still the aroma of red fruit, but seemingly more acidic. On the palate, the grappa continued in the same vein, and it seemed very cleansing. Diane smelled some fruit, but predominantly fresh bread and cookie crumbs; on the palate she found it heavy and not at all fruity.

The aroma of Berta’s Monprà Grappa Invecchiata almost suggested sherry to me: sweetish, with wood vanilla masking the grapes. The palate was cognac-like, with less grappa character than I usually seek. I thought the finish quite sweet that evening, though I haven’t always thought it so. Diane distinguished steel, wood, and raisins in the aroma, and on the palate some nearly chemical (rather than wood) notes.

The final example, Jermann’s unpretentiously labelled Grappa, I would normally serve after a seafood dinner, but it followed up that evening’s cheeses quite well. Its nose struck me as very harmonious, very composed, with a distinct white grape character. In the mouth, it was smooth and warming, with an almost spicy finish, recalling Moscato. In all, quite lovely. Diane’s reaction here came closest to resembling mine, and we both agreed, to our surprise, that this was the digestivo of the evening.

That, of course, was one meal, one night. A few nights later we tried the same four grappas after a dinner of spareribs braised with oyster mushrooms, and our reactions were very different again. After that meal, we both chose the Marolo grappa as our digestivo.

Each evening, our chosen grappa did a wonderful job of rounding off the dinner and leaving us just a bit more content with our life. The amazing variety of grappa may seem a bit daunting, but think of it as simply one more component of your dining, a finishing touch that completes the experience. That’s not a difficult decision: That’s a pleasing prospect.