At Fiore, Sangiovese making itself at home

Talking to Mike Fiore the other day time-warped me back in my grandparents’ kitchen in south Philly; the thick accent, the joy for everything food and wine, the zest for life.

He’s a native of Italy, a former vineyard owner there, who arrived in the Baltimore area in 1962 and met his wife within the year, according to the Fiore Winery Web site. They bought a small farm in northern Harford County in 1975 and, while he worked his day as a technician at the Baltimore Gas & Electric Company, they slowly let the idea of planting a vineyard ferment. In 1986 they opened the winery, and it has grown from producing 1,500 gallons to more than 35,000 gallons. It makes 21 wines, including Prosecco, an Italian off-dry light sparkling wine that could find itself on your table for more occasions than holidays.

So it didn’t take much prompting for our discussion to wander to the subject of Italy, which I visited for the first time in January and Fiore heads back to annually. “Italy has come a long way when it comes to food,” he said. “I notice that around me the whole world eats Italian food now, even some of our French neighbors. From what I find [they] consume more Italian food than French food. My response is that it took a long time, but you finally got smart. Wait until you get addicted to Italian wine.”

That would include the Sangiovese, the primary grape for the Chianti and Chianti Classico of Tuscany and one that is bringing Fiore much delight. The winery is selling its 2006 Sangiovese now; the grapes from last year’s harvest probably won’t see a bottle until later on next year. “I want to give it a little more time inside those barrels to pick up some more wood,” he said. Not as long as the Chambourcin or Cabernet Sauvignon. “But the style of Sangiovese I want to make, I like a nice, crispy, fruity-style Sangiovese [that] has a lot of Italian flavor in it.”

It’s the first bottle of the varietal that they’ve bottled. In the past, after what Fiore called “exceptional years,” that Sangiovese has found itself as the primary grape in a blend called Caronte that also includes Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. “The last time we made it was 2002,” he said. “We haven’t made it for a while because actually it wasn’t that we didn’t have exceptional years, but I didn’t have enough Sangiovese to do it.”

They grow about 2 acres of the grape, one of the few locations in Maryland that does. “The more we make it in Maryland the more we’ll realize what the Sangiovese is going to be like,” he said, optimistic that others will follow his lead. While admittedly a grape that's finicky and easy to bruise, Fiore said he's encouraged by the strategy adopted the past two years of lightening the bunches to allow the remaining grapes more room to develop. “The ‘06 we didn’t drop too much of it but I thought we needed a little more body to [the wine], so the ‘07 we dropped a little bit more and the 08 we’re dropping it down to a little less than three tons per acre, and you can really see a difference in the structure of those grapes and an improvement in the quality.”

Several days ago I posted a short about how much I liked the Sasyr, a blend of Sangiovese and Syrah. It's not a marriage you'll find at Fiore's winery. And he didn't mind saying so. “Syrah takes over, like a big bully with a weaker kid. However, that’s not what I’m after. Maybe it’s the Italian pride of me that makes me do that . . . I wanted the Sangiovese to stand up on its own two feet.”