 Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back to exotic wine travel. I am your host, Maddie Roche. Hi, I'm Sherin Tan. Welcome back to the show. Do you like the wines from Piedmont? Do you? Piedmonté? Do you? Yeah, that's a very generic question because today we're going to change your impression of Piedmont. Are we? Okay, so Piedmont... where is it? Piedmonté in Italian. Piedmont Italy is in northwest Italy. It's famous because it's home to some of the world, some of the world, some of Italy's great in the world. Some of Italy's greatest wines, namely Barolo and Barresco. The two big beans. Made from the great Nebbiolo wines that I love very much. You too? And that's what wine says, I love very much. But you know what? Piedmonté is a treasure trove of unique grapes. It's not all Barolo and Barresco, which are made of Nebbiolo. Of course, you have Raro for, sorry, Arneis for whites, I'm sorry. Mascato di Asti, a friendly sparkler, sweet sparkler. But you have other stuff too, and that's what we're going to talk about. Some of these lesser known grapes, some that you like very much. Very, very much. And that's why you should always tend to co-op sometimes because they play with all these lesser known grapes. Yeah, I said, oh, this is also a cooperative, Vincchio Vaglio, Vincchio and Vaglio, two villages in Montferratto. They come together and make a cooperative for those of you that don't know. Cooperatives are, you know, a bunch of farmers have vineyards, have land. They can't afford all this expensive wine making equipment, so they all send to one central location. The wine all gets vinified, bottled there, and then there's a brand. I think honestly, you know, me personally, with all this talk about small producers, people want to support small producers, I don't know why people don't want to support cooperative wineries more, because that's the real small guy. The guy that can't even start his own brand. This is a completely different conversation to have, which we have to do another episode of, but yeah, okay, yeah. Okay, so let's get started. We're going to start, we're going to taste some of these grapes. These are all three grapes that you're going to see in Pia Malte. They're a little bit lesser known, but that's what this show is all about, right? Let's get into it. First, we have the Lenoke Grignolino D'Asti 2018, fresh, fresh, fresh, fresh, fresh. This is a grape that I used to hate, and now I'm really starting to like. You're going to see a lighter color. Grignolino is a grape. From what I'm told, the locals actually, they have it when they're quite young actually, right? And they serve it at church as well. It's an aromatic grape with small tannins. Sounds like Nebbiola, right? But they taste the structure and the flavor with anything but Nebbiola. You're going to get this like strawberry rhubarb color. You probably like color, yeah. This has rhubar smell. This is pretty green on the nose. That's the one some people would like actually. So Grignolino has, I think, a little bit of crushed flower type nose, crushed flower, crushed herb, strawberry, earth, right? Is that typical? Flower is definitely quite typical. It's a floral, it's a floral, light one. This is a grape that, you know, it takes some getting used to because people aren't used to floral when we're thinking about red wines. But these are the types of wines, you know, you can have fresh, you can have out in the summer, have them a little bit chilled, they're delicious, they're going to go with charcuterie as well. Yeah, it's like 13% alcohol and just chill it down, they're lovely. So why I like Grignolino is because it's always fresh, you know, it's light to drink, but I like that the tannins make the wine smell a little bit more serious. I am picking on the nose a little bit because the rhubarb, the greenness is a little bit too strong for me. It's quite earthy on the nose, but a palate is really nice on this wine. It's still quite rosy, floral, and I like the tannins. You know, I can sum up this wine to me in a couple of thoughts of story. This reminds me of my grandmother used to be great at making strawberry rhubarb pie, so think of me taking a strawberry rhubarb pie out to sit in her garden where there's rose petal, there's earth, there's grass, and then all those aromas, that's what it smells like to me with light body, just a touch of tannins. Yeah, I like it. I really like this. The tannins are interesting, right, because it's kind of grubby and dry, but at the same time, it's quite like refreshing because of the estrangeance. So I think the tannins really work on this wine when it's such a light wine. I've had this before, it tastes a little bit better, chill, don't you think? To me, I always like Grignolino, pretty chill. I mean, I'm around the 87, 88, I'm going to say 87 points on this. Don't get thrown off by the score. I think it's a delicious wine, and especially Grignolinos, you're going to get under seven, eight euros when you're in Piemonte. Give them a try at that price point, it's not going to hurt anybody's wallet. They're delicious. I think there's a really unique drinking experience, right? Yeah, just know what you're getting yourself into, and I think you will be in for something really interesting because it's a super light wine really. The next we're going to move on to is the Ribus. This is the Rucay, the Castiglione Montferratto, 2018. Rucay, to me, I described it almost as a, well, first of all, they believe it might have been French, and I'm brought to Piemonte hundreds and hundreds of years ago. But Rucay, to me, is like a bigger, beefier Grignolino. You can see that in the color. It's almost, if you control, it's almost like, I feel like Grignolino is the barbaresco to Rucay as you have real borrola and barbaresco. Oh, you like this, right? I feel like I'm in a candy shop when I smell this. Oh my God. It really does smell like a confectionary, a candy shop. I'm in a candy shop. With flowers too, right? Yeah, I think, yeah, precisely, rose. Yeah. Rose, candy, cherry, candy, strawberry. Just pure confectionary, man, tons of sweets. You know, I never picked up on Rucay. This has a watermelon jelly rancher type note to it as well. A little bit darker in color. Rucay has a touch of tans like Grignolino does as well. This has a little bit, this is like, a rich, licorice taste to it too, on the palate. Oh, it's super candy. It's not sweet though. It's flavors of candies, but it's not sweet. This is a bump up in complexity too. There's a little more tannin, right? A little more complexity. The volume, the lip palette is wider. Yeah. I think in this style, I'm scoring against other Rucays in this style, I think I have 89 points on this Rucay. I think it's really good for the style. This is a great option for somebody that wants to try Rucay for the first time. I think these wines are very inexpensive. I don't know what the market prices are, but I'm pretty sure in Europe at least, you're going to find them under 10, maybe in the US, under 15-ish. This is really nice Rucay. Anything else you want to add on this? Yes, there's something I want to add. Okay, you tell me. I think, you know, and Rucay definitely have that place, you know, for even the most serious wine drinkers because, you know, in the summer days, sometimes when you want red wine, right, you really want something lighter and more aromatic. And I think both grades, they're not like super aromatic, but they're quite aromatic, quite floral. And they just have a place, you know, in the afternoon. It's delicious wine. I love the tannin in this one. Really nice. Good job. Okay, next is a grape and a wine that lately we have been falling in love with. It's a sweet wine. When people think Pia Mante, they think Muscato D'Asti, which I think people poo-poo on Muscato D'Asti too much. I think they're fabulous wines. They're delicious. Sometimes you want something sweet, bubbly, but this is another red bubbly. This is Brachetto. So this is the Nevasco, Pia Mante Brachetto from Vinkio Valia Cera. 2018, the locals drink this, even though it's sweet, you can see it's bubbled too. There is carbonation in it. They drink this actually with Shakutri, not just desserts, but with Shakutri as well. The low in alcohol, this rolls in at 6.5% alcohol, so you can just pop on it. You're going to see some fizzy going on. Light, light color, light cherry color. It's adipopsicle. It is. I can't remember the exact specs, but Brachettos, they usually come in 70, 90 grams per liter of residual sugar. I can't remember. I think more towards the 40. Okay. Okay. Maybe I was wrong. I may be wrong as well, but I don't think it's right. So there's going to be some sweetness. Don't get scared of this. Right away, this to me, smells, you know, when I was a kid, there was a trendy soda in America called Jones soda. And Jones, it was a soda, it was like a craft soda. Always had different pictures, a little different, like, photography street, photography pictures. This is what it smells like. I think of just pure cherry juice, right? Anything else? Cherry, a little bit of earth. Did you see that? Did you see that? I'm just drinking it. I carry it wet out. And it's so funny. You know in sparkling wine, the bubbles can get over aggressive. This really has soda like bubbles, right? Yeah. If you say soda, like, doesn't it mean that it's aggressive? No, no, no, no. Well, I'm thinking of my Jones soda that I used to drink the bubbles used to be a little bit fine. This is just delicious. This wine's so hard to score because for some people, this could be like 100-point wine because it's so delicious, so beautiful. You know what, in the brochetto style, I haven't had a ton of bad brochettos. We've had some exceptional ones. I'm going to go there. I'm just going to say 90 out of 100 because it's so delicious to drink. Yeah, absolutely. On a hot summer day, if you have a little pursuit melon, you have some other shakutri, some cheese. This is a perfect aperitif, don't you think? I think it's also sometimes hard to score this kind of more fun, fruity, sweet or dry wine, right? Because you've got to think about the full context that this is probably like the best that this is great kind of cheese, almost the best. This is super delicious. It seriously tastes like cherry. So guys, check out brochetto. Another great thing about brochettos, if you find them, if you do find them, you're going to find them sometimes on sale. You're going to find them at very inexpensive prices. Great way to try something new. You know, most people think of when they think of white sparkling wine, sweet sparklers, when they think of sweet sparklers, they think of white, but reds like this, some sweet lembrich goes can be fantastic. So remember, Piamante is not all Neveolo, Barbera and Dolcetto, right? Yeah, there's so good job, Vincchio Vaglio. I, so it's the cooperative I think that's doing a fantastic job. Every wine that I've tasted from them has been of high quality and at exceptional prices, so you have to check them out. Anything else you want to add? Drink adventurer. Remember, drink adventurously, expand that palate, expand that mind. And if you liked this video, please subscribe to our YouTube channel, Exotic Wine Travel. We will see you in the next episode.