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Travaglini--Nebbiolo at Its Best

This beautiful pale sparkler is made from a red wine grape--Nebbiolo. 

It's the Nebolé 2013, produced by Travaglini, a family-owned Italian winery that specializes in this grape.

Only the tips of the bunches are used for Nebolé, said Cinzia Travaglini (above) at a tasting and luncheon at Angelini Osteria in Los Angeles. These are greener and higher in acid, while those closer to the vine are better for red wines, she said.

Founded in the 1920s by Clemente Travaglini, the winery is located in Gattinara, a small area in northern Piedmont. It's the largest producer there, although just 52 of its 59 hectares (146 acres) of land are under vine.

Cinzia Travaglini runs the daily operation, and her husband Massimo Collauto is the head winemaker. Their daughter Alessia, at left, took part in the presentation in Los Angeles along with her mother. 

The area's rocky, mineral-rich soil produces elegant, easy to drink wines, Cinzia Travaglini said. For the Travaglini winery, this means only Nebbiolo, six of which were poured at the tasting, from young to library wines. 

The youngest was the Nebbiolo Coste Della Sesia DOC 2017, aged in stainless steel for 4 months and then in Slovenian oak for 10 months. Recommended for starters, pastas and roast meats, it paired well with the first course, an insalata caprese.

The next youngest was the Gattinara DOCG 2015 followed by two wines from 2013, the Gattinara Tre Vigne DOCG, which blends grapes from three vineyards, and the Gattinara Riserva DOCG from Travaglini's oldest vineyards. 

Two pasta dishes were now on the table, lasagna verde, made with green lasagne noodles and beef and veal ragu, and bombolotti alla Norma, large tubular ridged pasta with eggplant, tomato, basil and dried ricotta. 

Next came wines from two great vintages, the Gattinara Riserva DOCG 2009, made with the choicest grapes from the oldest vineyards, and the Gattinara Tre Vigne DOCG 2006 (above), a three-vineyard wine aged four years in Slovenian oak.

During the last year, part of the 2006 wine was removed, aged separately and then blended with the remaining wine, which then rested in the bottle for 10 months. Both of these are in limited availability. 

To go with wines of this caliber, Angelini offered a choice of grilled branzino filet (above), organic chicken or grilled hanger steak.

Alessia Travaglini explained that at first the emphasis at Travaglini was on quantity. Then her grandfather, Giancarlo Travaglini, switched the focus to quality. 

The last wine poured was his final project, Il Sogno 2014, which means The Dream. For this wine, Travaglini designed a special bottle that could capture sediment inside as the wine was poured.

Rather than crushed fresh, the grapes were dried for 100 days until half the moisture had evaporated. The sugar content is higher than in the other reds, but the sweetness is moderate (4.2%), and Il Sogno could go with red meats as well as aged cheese and, at the end of the meal, dark chocolate.

At Angelini Osteria, dessert was a cheese plate.

And a platter of housemade biscotti.

The wines in the photo were those served at lunch. Travaglini exports 65% of its production, and the United States is the main export market. Company policy is to maintain a good price point as well as quality, Cinzia Travaglini said. 

The Nebbiolo Coste Della Sesia DOC 2017 is a reasonable $21. The Gattinara DOCG 2015 is $33, and the prices rise from there to what one would expect for the dream wine Il Sogno, $128.

At Last, World Class Indian Wines

Pairing Indian wines with Indian food seems like a great idea.

But where will you get the wines? Probably nowhere, because they're so rare. Three years ago, I tasted very good wines from an Indian company that promised distribution in California. Only it never happened.

Now a new team has taken up the cause--Jean-Charles Boisset of the Boisset Collection of family-owned wineries and Kapil Sekhri of Fratelli Vineyards in the Indian state of Maharashtra.


Together, they've produced three top-quality Indian wines. These are in such limited production that only 40 cases out of 200 have been sent to the United States.

Fortunately, some of this wine went to the Bombay Palace in Beverly Hills, which staged a dinner to wind up Sekhri's recent American tour. 

Dinner started with papads, chutneys and JCB No. 47, a sparkling Chardonnay Brut named for the year India became independent (above). This lovely, not too dry wine is very food friendly, no matter how spicy the dish. It was made according to the traditional Champagne method, fermented first in French oak and then in the bottle.

During the tasting, Sekhri  (above) explained that Fratelli is the only winery in a place called Akluj, six hours by car from Mumbai. There, only table grapes had been planted until Sekhri and six other investors started Fratelli in 2007. The first vintage was 2016.

The estate vineyard is 250 acres. Local farmers under contract grow grapes on another 250 acres, and an additional 50 acres will be planted each year. Production will remain small. The goal, Sekhri said, is to produce wine "of international quality, not an Indian wine for India."

The next dinner wine was the J'NOON white (above), a blend of 60% Chardonnay and 40% Sauvignon Blanc from the 2017 vintage.

The name J'NOON was adapted from an Urdu word that means passion. Boisset and Sekhri chose it to reflect the intensity of their feelings about their joint venture. The J'NOON wines are "both subtle and intense--just like India," they say.

The first course for dinner was a tandoori prawn, chicken tikka and a kebab made from spinach, cheese and chickpeas (above). 

Next came a puffy deep-fried poori filled with butter chicken or, for vegetarians, chickpeas (above).

The wine was the J'NOON red blend--66% Cabernet Sauvignon co-fermented with Petit Verdot and Marcelan, plus 4% Sangiovese.  This big wine goes well with strongly flavored Indian dishes.

Another wine joined it, the Boisset Collection's JCB Passion (above), a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot from the Napa Valley. Both held up when paired with the lamb curry rogan josh (at the top) and the sumptuous spicy black lentil dish called dal makhani.

To cool things down, there was icy pistachio kulfi for dessert along with the milk dumpling gulab jamun, soaked in rosewater and honey.  

This was the first wine dinner held at the Bombay Palace since it opened in 1985, said owner Deep Sethi. No doubt he was inspired by the caliber of the J'NOON collection.  "Someone has done it and done it really right," he said. 

For more information on Fratelli Vineyards and the collaboration with Boisset, read this article by wine writer Mira Advani Honeycutt in the Napa Valley Register. Honeycutt visited Fratelli during a trip to India in 2018.

Bombay Palace,  8690 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA 90211. (424) 351-9485.