Magazines » May/June 2009 Issue » That's Amore: Beer lives in Italian Wine Country
The Italian back roads that wind toward the village of Torrechiara demand we have faith in our GPS. At one point it directs us off a thin strip of blacktop onto a dirt path with grass growing between two slightly muddy ruts. We’re happily surprised to reach a two-lane road that wanders through crimson and yellow vineyards, dips into another valley, then climbs to reveal Torrechiara’s famous 15th-century castle looming through a cool fall fog. In the village below, we know, a beer called Panil Barriquée Sour is made side-by-side with wine. Tracking down beer in Italian wine country can be an adventure.
A few years ago the Italian beer section in a liquor store amounted to a few mainstream lagers. Today, Italian craft beers occupy several shelves at Oak Tree Discount Wine and Spirits in South Plainfield, N.J., sitting prominently next to the Belgians. The number of small breweries has ballooned from a handful in 1996 to almost 200, according to Lorenzo Dabove, cultural director of the beer advocacy organization Unionbirrai. Stories about innovative beers brewed with chestnuts, flowers, and all manner of spices appear in newspapers across the United States.
Sounds like time for a road trip, to visit regions of Italy famous for wine and food, making beer part of the experience. Think of a journey into California’s Sonoma County, haunting winery tasting rooms by day, then settling in for dinner and beer at a brewpub like Bear Republic in Healdsburg or Russian River in Santa Rosa. Except, to be honest, the food will likely be better.
“In Italy we have a culture of wine, food, and good things,” says Stefano Simonelli, an assistant brewer at Birrificio Italiano. Simonelli, 25, is part of a new generation intent on adding beer to the mix. When the brewpub opened near Turin in 1994, brewmaster Agostino Arioli focused on traditional German styles. Now Arioli tosses rose and violet petals into a beer called Fleurette and further adds elderberry juice and black pepper to the recipe, but also continues to brew a brightly bitter pilsner that tastes like a trip to Germany’s Franconian countryside.
Farther south in Torrechiara, wine and beer are particularly close, and food is never an afterthought. The Losi family has produced Lambrusco-style wine south of Parma for four generations, and in 2001, Renzo Losi talked his father into letting him brew beer on the same property. Now he makes more beer under the Panil label than he does wine. His Panil Barriquée Sour, a beer favorably compared to Rodenbach Grand Cru, has won international acclaim; beer tourists also show up for the spontaneously fermented Divina.
The brewery-winery doesn’t have a dining area, but visitors are welcome to picnic in the car park on cheese and sausage available along with beer in the gift shop. Better yet, first do a bit of foraging in the province of Emilia Romagna, Italy’s “food valley” that’s rich with fresh produce. In addition to wine, the region is justly famous for prosciutto di Parma ham -- half of production is in the hills just south of Torrechiara -- and parmigiano-reggiano cheese.
Much as in California but unlike France, regions known for food and wine -- most notably Lombardy and Piedmont -- have nurtured fledging breweries. The Slow Food movement began in Bra in 1986, while only 15 miles away, brewer Piozzo Teo Musso opened a bar, Le Baladin, the same year, before turning the pub into a brewpub in 1996. The charismatic Musso isn’t shy about trying unusual ingredients, charging sometimes astonishing prices for his beers, and packaging them in bottles as stylish as his own wardrobe. More recently, he opened Birreria Baladin, a restaurant and hotel that further promotes the connection between beer and fine dining, across the town’s small plaza from Le Baladin.
“He’s done a lot of things to promote ‘the moment,’ a lot for the culture,” says Leonardo Di Vincenzo, another of the new generation of brewers. At Birra del Borgo, located about 60 miles west of Rome, Di Vincenzo brews beers with ingredients such as spelt unique to Italy and gentian root, but uses a good dose of American West Coast hops in others.
“I think all Italian brewers feel pretty free to brew without traditional styles on their shoulders,” he says. “So they feel free to experiment and modify traditional styles. I think also this is the first step for making an Italian beer style.”
Di Vincenzo calls chestnut beers “the essence of Italian brewing.” More than 300 varieties of chestnuts grow in Italy, some of them earning a protected mark from the European Union. On any October weekend you’ll find a chestnut festival in at least one Tuscan village, each a celebration of local food. “There are 40 breweries making chestnut beers, but with different chestnuts and using them in different ways,” Di Vincenzo says.
Di Vincenzo started his brewery in 2005, selling a modest 70 hectoliters (comparable to 750 cases) that year and 300 hectoliters the next. These days he brews two batches a day and almost 200 hectoliters a week. Northern hot spots in Turin and Milan sell his beers, but his brewery’s growth best reflects increasing interest in artigianale beer within Rome. Nearly 300 pubs sell craft beer, which is about 299 more than when publican Manuele Colonna and his partners launched the groundbreaking Ma Che Siette Venuti a Fa in 2001. On any given night-into-morning, the bar may offer draft beer from tiny Belgian breweries, Italian craft beers, and specialties from upper Franconia in Germany, all served with loving care.
In 2007, Di Vincenzo and Colonna opened a restaurant, Bir & Fud, almost across the street from Ma Che Siette Venuti a Fa. Bir & Fud focuses on traditional Roman and regional plates, particularly pizzas, that are beer-friendly. Thirsty customers have two choices: beers from all across Italy or water. It’s the only restaurant in the trendy Trastevere area where customers can’t order wine.
Few other cities, including tourist destinations such as Florence or Venice, offer as broad a selection of Italian craft beers as Rome.
That’s why the best way to explore the Italian beer frontier is to invest in a GPS. Many breweries or brewpubs are in towns too small to appear on basic Michelin maps. Villages like Vernante, home to small brewpub The Troll, for instance, is an easy drive if you approach from Piozzo to the north and east, a white-knuckle adventure if you drive up from the French Riviera.
Alberto Canavese installed a small brewhouse in the basement of his bar on the edge of this ski-bum friendly town in 2002 and began calling it Birrificio Troll. On this October evening, he is pouring beers, working the small dining area decorated throughout by troll figures, chatting with customers. When an English-speaking customer -- we aren’t the only ones -- asks for a fork, Canavese laughs. “This is the mountains,” he says. “We don’t use silverware.” The pub opens at 6 p.m., but cooking the meat starts later. A wood-fired pit occupies the middle of the dining room and the fire won’t be ready until at least 7.
The menu isn’t fancy or packed with pricey choices -- a plate of local cheeses costs but 4 euros, and the serving is large enough to be a meal -- but it is long and beer friendly, including dishes cooked with beer. The beers, brewed by Italian brewery Le Baladin’s former assistant brewer Daniele Meinero, are Belgian-inspired.
Canavese is celebrating this particular day because a new shipment of Troll beers has just reached the bars of New York City. Business is good enough that he has bought new equipment, and Meinero now brews Troll beers in a nearby town. His brewery is bigger, Canavese says, but still not big.
“Some Italian breweries are mee-cro,” he says, “We are still pee-co.”
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This article originally appeared in the May/June 2009 Issue of DRAFT Magazine
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