The trials of Pinot Grigio

Pinot Grigio used to be considered quite a good Italian white wine, and by many people it still is.  You drank it as an aperitif, and took a second glass.  It went well with shellfish or chicken, with olives, artichokes and, of course, pizza.  It was the perfect accompaniment for spaghetti alle vongole, and for mussels.  Then something happened.  Wine critics began to dismiss it as boring. It grew cheaper. a convenient bottle-party wine so long as you did not ask what it was you were drinking, or add that you really liked it.  In supermarkets it was always being marked down from £10.99 to £5.99, or briefly being marked up from £5.99 to £10.99, at which price people were sometimes careless enough to buy it. Today, at £5.99, it has established its price level and has won plenty of friends.  Sold by the glass it’s a safe-ish pub wine, so long as the bottle has been newly opened, but don’t expect it to be more than that.

The same sort of thing  once happened to Beaujolais which, when it was freshly bottled, people used to dash across France to buy. But Beaujolais is recovering, however slowly, and a good Beaujolais is properly recognised as a delicious drink. So, for that matter, is a good Pinot Grigio. But what is a good one? You’ll find out if you lunch in Edinburgh at Valvona & Crolla, where there are always a few such bottles - obtainable by the glass - on the wine list.  

Valvona & Crolla know about Pinot Grigio, which - since they are Edinburgh’s best-established sellers of Italian wine - they should do. So does Centro Tre, the excellent  Valvona & Crolla breakaway at 103 George Street. Once you have sipped a Pinot Grigio in one or other of these places, you will inevitably find most supermarket Pinot Grigio disappointing. But don’t expect Valvona & Crolla’s to be cheap. This is Pinot Grigio in the upper price bracket, where it rightly belongs, but at least you’ll remember drinking it. The shop price for Valvona & Crolla’s house Pinot Grigio, from the Veneto region, is currently £8.99.

The basic rule  about this wine is that most of it - and usually the most nondescript of it - comes from the vast Veneto region outside Venice. If you notice the word Veneto on the label, you have to be be careful. It won’t necessarily be drab.  Indeed it can be extremely nice, as Valvona & Crolla’s is,  so long as you know what you are buying. But a very much  safer bet is if the wine comes from the Alto Adige/Trentino region, above Lake Garda, which - while also north Italian -  is not the same as the Veneto and is, in my view, often more reliable. 

Nor should supermarket Pinot Grigio be automatically shunned. There are good ones as well as dull ones and Waitrose at present are selling a couple of good ones, first a minerally 2013 LaVis Vigneti Montagna Pinot Grigio from Trentino/Alto Adige  in the foothills of the Dolomites,  costing £9.99, the other a lushly fruity 2013 St Michael-Eppan Pinot Grigio from the same area, also known as Sudtirol. This at present costs £11.99.  

19 June 2014