Bulli and that strange unknown of Ortrugo

Bacedasco Alto, province of Piacenza, a land of bubbles or more precisely of sparkling wines, of simplicity and wines for the table, for the meal, for noble or even less noble cured meats, for rich foods and outdoor picnics, to uncork without mental gymnastics, to drink straight from the glass, to enjoy immediately and to try to keep, if thirst allows, for a little while to understand how they evolve in the bottle.

Leonardo Bulli is a natural and naturalistic winemaker, a passionate motorcyclist, a boy – now a man – of another era: cheerful and generous, sunny and hyperkinetic, who produces quite a few wines at his farm near Castell'Arquato.

Among the many: Barbera, Gutturnio, Champagnino, Malvasia, I focused on this Ortrugo, "ortr ug" (other grape), to distinguish it from the extremely widespread local Malvasia, delicate and fragrant, highly productive and vinified in every possible way.

Ortrugo is instead an austere grape, shy, with little aroma, quite the opposite of Malvasia, and Bulli works it with a slightly early harvest to preserve its freshness, and through a natural refermentation in the bottle without selected yeasts. The final result is a wine – this 2012 vintage – that has changed a thousand times over the various tastings done in recent months and that today, at around a year and a half from the harvest, has in my opinion reached its gustatory and olfactory peak.

In the first uncorkings it was a dark, reticent wine, with a straw-grey colour and a rich yet evanescent foam, everything centred on yeast sensations and a marked vegetal quality that on the palate turned into an almost aggressive herbal sapidity and a rough unruliness that made it perfectly suited to rich, sweet-leaning dishes.

Today the straw colour is decidedly transparent, the bubbles are fine and the nose has reached a good level of intensity, ranging from chamomile flowers to fresh linden, from medlar to grass; the foam is white, the bubbles are numerous and of medium persistence though not the finest; on the palate it is briny, fleshy, enveloping, with precise cleansing of the taste buds and a flavour that returns to those initial vegetal notes, of fresh yellow and tart fruit (medlar) and white flowers (lily); it closes salty and artisanal as it should be – and don't be alarmed if a little sediment remains at the bottom of the bottle, the wine is unfiltered and everything you drink is natural with no sulphites added in any significant quantity.

I love drinking it at the end of the day watching the sunset over the Amalfi Coast, perhaps with a couple of slices of local salame and some chunks of fior di latte from Tramonti, but it would not say no to tubetti di Gragnano with pumpkin and wild fennel, or a raw amberjack with pepper and fresh mint – but as they say, "there's no accounting for taste" and everyone can try it with whatever they think fits best...