This week Italy’s largest wine expo touched down in the city and I stopped by for a taste.

Here are the highlights.

Azienda Vitivinicola Villa Alme’ El Rasego Raboso Piave DOC Black Label 2006 undergoes a Valpolicella-style appassimento process and is aged 30 months in large oak barrels. The result is a fascinating cluster of aromas that spans dried dates, sun-baked bricks and bubble gum, and an clay-like ashy tannin that you can practically chew on. This is a Veneto varietal worth exploring.

Ca’ del Bosco Cuvee Prestige NV is the quintessential Franciacorta sparkler. A Champagne style blend comprised of Chardonnay, Pinot Bianco and Pinot Noir, it’s yeasty with a massive floral bouquet.

Cantina Produttori Cormons presented mineral-packed whites true to the character of Friuli Venezia Giulia. DOC Collio Friulano 2010 is a joy. Flint, matchsticks and mimosa. Crisp and clean with traces of spice. An excellent exemplar of the varietal. The DOC Collio Sauvignon 2010 exudes pure white peach that returns with an acidic prick on the palate.

Barolo Fossati DOCG 2006 comes from a higher altitude vineyard in La Mora and gleams with a petrol-like aromas. Darker in every way, it still leaves an immensely pleasant yellow apple aftertaste on the palate.

Historic Veneto winery  Zonin colonizes Tuscany with their Rocca di Montemassi Sassabruna Monteregio DOC 2009. A blend of Sangiovese, Syrah and Merlot.  Rich, a bit gamey and true to Maremma stylings, you can taste all three varietals in an interesting harmony of solo players. It bursts with sunbaked fruit and flowers and has that rustic, on-the-verge of refined quality that makes Maremma so unpretentiously good.

D’Alessandro Azienda Agricola’s D’Alessandro Inzolia Sicilia DOC 2010 smelled of bone dust and sea water. Pure Sicilian.

 

 

My first exposure to Atelier Cologne encapsulates much of what the niche house aims to do: story-telling.  I received a bottle of Orange Sanguine, a fragrance built around Sicilian blood oranges, designed to recall breakfast on a sun drenched Italian terrace.

I sprayed in my linens many morning and love the way it streams through my house like pure joy.

Recently I attended a masterclass at the Atelier Cologne boutique in NYC, where I had a chance to meet co-creator Christopher Cervasel and perfumer  Ralf Schwieger and learn more.

Most interestingly, the line takes its name (Cologne) and inspiration from perfumery’s quintessential first cologne, Aqua Admirabilis created 300-some years ago by a homesick Gianpaolo Feminis  living in Cologne, Germany.

The fragrance, delicate, citrus-driven blend of bergamot, orange, neroli, rosemary and lavender  was meant to recall his beloved Italy. It was reformulated by Feminis’ nephew the 18th century  and  renamed Eau di Cologne. The style, light and citrusy, set the stylistic standard for years to come, distinguishing eau de cologne from eau de parfum.

Atelier Cologne pays homage to Feminis and his original blend, while intensifying the percentage of perfume essences and writing their own fragrance stories, beginning as it happens with that summer morning in Italy.

At the masterclass I sampled the entire line of  Colognes Absolues.  In the interest of space, these were my favorites:

 

Grand Néroli, created by Cécile Hua, is strikingly nostalgic. The heady Moroccan neroli and Sicilian bergamot overtones create a vintage quality that reminded me of old cologne bottles in my grandfather’s medicine cabinet. It softens however with musk and vanilla – just enough to lend it a ladylike accessibility that is still intriguing.

Trèfle Pur, pure clover, exudes brightness and green. As it happened we were gathered on St. Patrick’s Day, and the luck of the Irish was streaming through the city. I loved the clean earthiness of this scent. Top notes of bitter orange, cardamon and basil rebuild the herbaceous  quality of clover, and the actual heart note of clover does come through, if slightly  insinuated, and rests on a bed of moss and musk.

Ambre Nue, the latest fragrance in the line, was born on a Dolomite mountainside. During a recent Italian vacation, Cervasel and his wife and co-creator Sylvie Ganter discovered a tiny red flower, the nigritella rubra, that smelled overwhelmingly of amber.  While there is a bit of the actual flower essence in the blend, they’ve constructed a sumptuous amber with Sri Lankan cinnamon along with notes of mandarine and bergamot, a tribute to the flower’s crisp Italian context.

For me, this fragrance  is the essence of terroir in perfumery. Its construction carries on a legacy. There is sentimental connection to the place that inspired the perfume, and lastly, a piece of that place, the orchid nigritella rubra in extracted form, is in every bottle.