I had a long lunch this afternoon with some wine bloggers and Carlo Veronese, managing director, Consorzio Tutela Lugana DOC, and Luca Formentini, president of Podere Selva Capuzza and president of the Lugana Consortium.
They were in town to promote the wines of the region. Veronese didn’t mince words: They want to boost their sales to the U.S. “We think the U.S. is the market that can appreciate this wine,” Veronese said. That means they’re looking for distributors.
About the wines: As longtime readers know, I don’t do wine ratings, for many reasons, including I don’t have a trained palate. But: Were the wines enjoyable? Yes. Would I order them at a restaurant or buy them at the wine store? Yes.
We had five wines, starting with a pleasant sparkling wine, following by Catina La pergola Lugana DOC 2014. Some 80,000 bottles of that wine were produced. That was followed by Tenuta Roveglia Lugana Lmme DOC 2016, of which some 570,000 bottles were produced. Next up was the 40,000-bottle Selva Capuzza Lugana DOC 2016, followed by the scare Perla del Garda Lugana Riserva Madre Perla 2013, of which only 4,000-5,000 bottles were produced.
They want to posture themselves as the alternative to Pino Grigio, and noted that Santa Margherita recently bought a winery in the Lugano region, saying Pino Grigio is primarily sold to the U.S. and they had detected signs Americans were growing weary of Pino.
Only 2% of Lugano’s production is sparkling wines, they said. One reason: It’s easier to produce still wines than sparkling.
While much of Lugano’s production is organic, you won’t see “organic” on labels sold here. U.S. standards for sulfites in organics wines is 10 ppm or less. What you might see on their labels is: “Produced from organic grapes.”
A lot of producers do a 50/50 organic split. It’s the same wine, Veronese explained, just different labels. “A lot of people think it’s not worth doing organic.”
Veronese said his winery – which has just produced its 100th vintage – stopped using herbicides 10 years ago. They want to do what they can for the environment, he said, but he views organic claims skeptically. “For many companies, organic is the new marketing tool.
“The major cause of wine industry pollution is the bottle.” Producing it generates pollution, transporting it generates pollution. Disposing of the empty bottle generates more pollution.