Friday, May 24, 2013

Wines of the Giro Stage 19: The Stage That Wasn't & Kuenhof Kaiton Riesling

CANCELED

I went to bed early, as one does when the feline alarm clocks go off at 5 a.m. and I woke up to this news:

giroditalia 12:45am via web
Due to adverse weather conditions and, in particular, snow on the stage route in its entirety, stage 19 has been cancelled. #giro

Plus:
Due to continuing adverse weather conditions, the route of tomorrow’s stage 20 has been modified. Here the new route: twitpic.com/cst0pt


Some thoughts from twitter:

simongeschke 12:26am via Twitter for iPhone
And the Oscar for the best actor goes to... "Spring" for his role as "Winter"

I remember waking up excited to see snow. Then I became a cyclist. Now I wake up to snow & have to wait to see if I'm excited or not..
  
Stage officially cancelled. Many riders dancing with joy in hotels and on buses, @rog10 style. Look forward to @HansenAdam's next photo.



That's life. Accidents happen, we make mistakes and some things are out of our control. #giro
micacquarone May 23, 11:08pm via Twitter for iPad
I love basketball, water polo, gymnastics, wrestling, fencing, weightlifting and bowling. Why? They're all playing indoors. #snow #giro

"We've raced in really adverse conditions this year, so it must be awfully unsafe to make the decision to cancel." -Julian Dean on #Giro


The other news of the day can best be summed up in the Podium Cafe headline: "CONFIRMED: Danilo Di Luca is a moron."
From the story: "After the first blow of the day with the cancellation of stage 19 Danilo Di Luca gives the Giro d'Italia a second swift blow to the genitals by returning a positive for EPO in a test on the 29th of April, the week before the Giro. The 37 year old managed to sign last minute with the Vini Fantini squad due to his personal sponsors Aqua & Sapone so that he could once more ride the Giro. He has enlivened the race with plenty of attacking but has just missed out on winning a stage, something which the race-organizers now obviously are quite pleased with."

From the team press release
"Following of the news Danilo Di Luca's positive result at an out-of-competition test performed on April 29th, the team Vini Fantini Selle Italia through its team manager Angelo Citracca specifies the following: "Danilo Di Luca is an athlete who was not part of our group, not wanted by the team and he was included in organic by our Main Sponsor Valentino Sciotti, for friendship and geographical proximity to the cyclist, he insisted and created the conditions for the inclusion of Di Luca in the team. Danilo Di Luca repeatedly involved in problems related to doping and already disqualified for similar violations, repaid the trust of a friend and great entrepreneur with another mistake, whose consequences damages Vini Fantini Selle Italia team even if it is innocent. The athlete, already returned after a disqualification with other teams, was not included in the philosophy and programs of our team, working for years in the discovery and growing of young athletes. Following the news, learned with regret in the morning, the team has dismissed the athlete, intimating him to get away. At this point, Vini Fantini Selle Italia will ask for a compensation for damages, in accordance with the internal Rules signed by all the members of the team". 
The sports director Luca Scinto points out: "I'm devastated, I never wanted Di Luca in the team and I've never made any secret to anyone of this, even receiving some critics. We have built our group on the sacred values of the cycling and we made the mistake to satisfy the request, expressed many times by our main sponsor, who is a uccessful entrepreneur passionate about this sport, to try to give confidence to an athlete dear to him for friendship. Unfortunately this trust has been rewarded with an incredible mistake, which I still can not understand". Echoes the disappointment of Scinto, the deep sorrow of the Main Sponsor, Valentino Sciotti: "What can I say? I believed in man and in the athlete and it is right that I take all the blame because I made a mistake. Maybe I was wrong to believe that after a mistake you can redeem and learn not to repeat the mistakes, maybe I'm wrong to want to help a person I saw in trouble, maybe I was wrong to follow the religious values that my family gave me, maybe I'm wrong in believing that when you talk to a person looking into his eyes, you can also read his heart. I was wrong and I must ask to forgive me the fans, the Team, the other sponsors, my partners and all the other cyclists who are racing Giro d'Italia fairly and honestly and all those young athletes who will be shaken by this news"."

From twitter:

Best bit of Vini Fantini statement: they told Di Luca to make his own way home. Didn't even offer him a lift!


: 'How can we be credible if there's always someone ready to cheat? We can't stand this anymore.'

Danilo Di Luca, vai a quel paese te e chi ti ha fatto tornare a correre in bici! (Danilo Di Luca, go to hell you and who made ​​you go back to riding a bike!)

Typical. Doping news always breaks on grand tour rest days. #giro #diluca

Actually, with DiLuca, the trick would be to test him and NOT get an EPO positive

joelindsey 6:35am via TweetDeck
EPO?! Really? Old habits die hard I guess. Related: Di Luca probably still prints out his emails to read.

lancearmstrong 6:38am via Twitter for iPhone
Knowing I have 0 cred on the doping issue - I still can't help but think, "really Di Luca? Are you that fucking stupid??"

Since I had already tasted today's wine, I'll include it here:

Yes, Boo Berry.
For K's upcoming cereal bar post.

Kuenhof Kaiton Riesling 2011
$32.99 from 67Wine

From 67Wine: Kuenhof, owned by Peter and Brigitte Pliger, is one of the best white wine estates in Italy. Their steep, stony vineyards are in the part of the South Tyrol called the Val d'Isarco (or Eisacktal), not far from the border with Austria. They grow Sylvaner, Veltliner and Riesling organically, and their wines show an almost electric mineral character. If the duty of a great wine is to be distinctive, these wines stand out like beacons -- great terroir, careful grape-growing, brilliant winemaking, and extraordinary wines.


From importer Oliver McCrum Wines:

Kuenhof, owned by Peter and Brigitte Pliger, is one of the best white wine estates in Italy. Their steep, stony vineyards are in the part of the South Tyrol called the Val d'Isarco (or Eisacktal), not far from the border with Austria. They grow Sylvaner, Veltliner and Riesling organically, and their wines show an almost electric mineral character. If the duty of a great wine is to be distinctive, these wines stand out like beacons -- great terroir, careful grape-growing, brilliant winemaking, and extraordinary wines.
Most of the winegrowing in the area known as the Alto Adige (also known as ‘Südtirol’ in the German spoken by the locals) is along the Strada di Vino, just south of Bolzano. The Eisacktal is a separate, very small appellation about half an hour north-east of Bolzano, on the way to the Brenner Pass and Austria. The climate is different here, Continental rather than the Mediterranean found around Bolzano, most of the vineyards are at high altitude (in the case of Kuenhof, between 1,800 and 2,300 feet above sea level), and the soils at Kuenhof are very distinctive, containing schist, quartz phyllite, lots of stones, and morainic layers of crushed rock. The vineyards are terraced, exposed to the south-east, and quite steep. The most recent plantings are in an area that Peter identified as being famous for grape-growing a century ago, but that had fallen into disuse, perhaps because the monetary investment (to repair terraces) and time was too great. Density is high, at 8,000 plants per hectare.
'Kuenhof' is a farmhouse that dates from the 12th century. Just south of the town of Brixen/Bressanone, it was for centuries owned by the Bishop of Bressanone, and then for the last 200 years it has been in the family of the current owners. Until 1989 the grapes were taken to the Abbazia di Novacella, in nearby Neustift. In 1990 the Pligers started making their own wines in the cellar under the farmhouse.
The Pligers farm organically, tending towards the biodynamic approach but not in fact biodynamic. The grapes are picked in October, sometimes as late as the end of October. The wines are fermented using only indigenous yeasts (which take between a month and four months to finish the fermentation), aged in stainless steel and acacia-wood (30%) vessels, and bottled shortly before the following harvest. All the wines are bottled under screwcap, which means that each bottle will taste the way the winemaker intended. (Pliger is proud of his switch to screwcaps.)

The Pliger’s Riesling vines were brought in from France, Germany and other producers in the Alto Adige. Riesling is now making a name for itself in Italy, and Pliger's 'Kaiton' bottling is one of the best. Lime-peel, flowers, petrol and an almost electric mineral character make this wine very exciting to drink; I am reminded of licking a nine-volt battery as a dare when I was younger. Bright balance of acidity and fruit. The name Kaiton is of Celtic origin, and was the name for the area around the estate.

I say: Screw cap! I don't open many of those during the Giro. The grape that I tend to miss the most during this project is Riesling. Not that there are not Italian Rieslings, but many of them are just not that satisfying. Very pale straw in color. Some petrol, citrus and green on the nose. Lots of minerals and some flowers as well. Held up and was very nice on day two.

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