Exultet, a Fiano without smoke (1): An interview with Luigi Moio

If there is an area in southern Italy that has little if anything in common with the rest of the region it is Irpinia, a cold and mountainous land which makes up almost the whole province of Avellino in the region of Campania. It is a quiet place, anything but folkloristic and still carries the scars, at least in memory, of the devastating earthquake of 1980.
But Irpinia is also and perhaps is above all the main winemaking area of the whole region and one of the best in Italy. Its wines are excellent, both the reds, Taurasi most of all, and the whites which include the fantastic Greco di Tufo and Fiano di Avellino.
Greco and Fiano are like Castor and Pollux. The first is acidic, rich and sulfurous, while the latter is tasty and smoky and ages better in the bottle.

Luigi Moio is one of the most important people in the Italian wine world. He has a chair of enology at the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II and is a consultant to many local wineries. You could almost say that Professor Moio was ‘born in wine’, a world he has known since birth given that his father was Michele Moio, an historic winemaker in Campania who in the 1950s brought back Falerno, a wine that the ancient Romans loved.
After spending a long time in France, where Moio studied wine aromas at the Istitut National de la Recherche Agronomique in Dijon, Burgundy, he returned to Italy in July 1994 with the intension of creating a place where he could fully develop his ideas, creativity and love of wine. In 2001,he set up the Quintodecimo winery in the heart if Irpinia where he works exclusively with the region’s great indigenous grapes which aside from Greco and Fiano include Aglianico for the reds and the undervalued Falanghina white grape. He is thus the ‘go to’ person when it comes to the area wines.

Doctor Wine: Why does Fiano get a little smoky when it ages in the bottle? Does it have something to do with the soil, method of cultivation, malolactic fermentation or the use of clarifiers? 
Luigi Moio: The fumé note is a generic one. Fiano, in fact, has an aroma of moss, herbs and linden as well as some balsamic and mentholated ones and, on the rare occasion, scents of hazelnut and almond. The smoky note has to do with the tendency the wine has to reduce, in other words to have more hydrogen than oxygen. It is a note than can come out in any wine, in particular those that tend to reduce, like Sauvignon Blanc. Compared to Greco and Falanghina, Fiano is richer in terpenes, both in their pure form and those linked with other aromas. This explains its extraordinary ability to age. Fiano is an authentic reservoir of aromas.
DW: What do you think about fermenting white wines in their skins, like red wines, and using large wood barrels for Greco and Fiano?
LM: I’m not a big fan of whites fermented in their skins and think it hurts rather than helps the wine. Above all because the wines lose some of their fragrance, a decisive component of a white wine’s elegance. White grape skins also do no add much, unless they are very aromatic grapes like Sauvignon Blanc. Furthermore, with a dark must and a high concentration of oxygen, a lot of esters, which add to aromatic freshness, are lost. Greco also has a very thin skin, rich in proanthocyanidins and catechines, which is the later phase of ripening are very present in the grape. With Fiano, on the other hand, since it is rich in terpenes, cryo- maceration can be helpful, in other words fermenting the grapes with their skins at a cold temperature before the pure must ferments.
In the end it is just a question of method. I cannot just wake up in the morning and start fermenting my Fiano and Greco in the skins just because it’s the latest craze. One should never do anything by chance or without a clear vision. I extract only what it need for my enological objective, the model of wine I envision and wish to create. Not all the substances found in a grape are useful for achieving quality in a wine, only the good ones should be used. And the good things are not the same for all varieties of grapes.
As for the use of large wood barrels, I don’t think they are very useful, except as a means of insulation. This is why historically they have been used in colder climates, for example in Alsace or Germany and – an aspect that should not be undervalued, other areas where very aromatic grapes are used.
DW: Greco and Fiano are quite different in regard to their acidity and amount of terpenes. Why do you ferment and age them in a similar way?
LM: An interesting question. In order to better understand the character of each different grape, and the effect the pedoclimate has on them, it is necessary to reduce the variables as much as possible, those concerning the grape was well as the winemaking process. Once I have done this, I try to use winegrowing and winemaking methods that can best amplify they character of the grape and, eventually, the pedoclimate it grew in.
It takes many years to be able to produce great wines and it involves a lot of knowledge and patience. And then as I have often said, it will be important in the future to focus on the individual grape. In other words to specialize in ‘Fiano-ology’, ‘Greco-ology’, Nebbilolo -ology’ and Sangiovese-ology and so on. This because there are enormous physiological and biological differences between grapes. Unfortunately, it is still too early to draw conclusions, especially in regard to Italy’s many indigenous grapes. I am firmly convinced that the practices used in Bordeaux, In Burgundy and in Alsace cannot be duplicated elsewhere, for example in Irpinia or other areas of Italy. Grape varieties need to be studied and analyzed with a critical and constructive spirit and in the proper winegrowing context and, above all, in consideration of what one is trying to achieve.
DW: Greco and Fiano are, all things considered, two grapes that complement each other. Would it be too utopian to think of a blend? I mean, an Irpinia DOC is potentially more interesting than a Fiano di Avellino or a Greco di Tufo?
LM: A blend already exists and it is Fiagre di Caggiano, a wine I first made in 1994. But shifting a whole territory in that direction would be self-defeating. There would be too great a risk of standardization.
DW: Let’s turn to a more current topic. What do you think of the new products to close a bottle?
LM: Different ones are good for certain types and qualities of wine. The more a wine is important, especially the reds, the more important it is to use real corks that will allow it to breath. Synthetic corks are fine for ready to drink wines. There are many types with different levels of porosity that can be used depending on the need for the wine to have oxygen.
With white wines it is totally a different story because their aromas suffer greatly from too much oxygen and need more efficient methods of closing the bottle, like screw-on caps.
DW: Is it possible to draw up a list of useful winemaking products and their organoleptic effects?
LM: A fundamental distinction needs to be made, one that is too often not dine, between additives and coadjuvants. Additives are, for example, sulfuric dioxide, citric acid and ascorbic acid. The list could be a long one but many of these products are not used, even if they are authorized after a long and in-depth scientific studies. Coadjuvants are, for example, clarifying agents, those what do not remain in the wine once they have served their purpose and thus they cannot be considered an ingredient.
DW: And yeasts?
LM: yeasts do not significantly modify a wine. I cannot make a Greco out of Moscato nor vice versa. Other factors influence a wine much more than yeasts do, like the density of the must, the temperature during fermentation, the level of oxygen, the availability of nitrogen nutrients, the health of the grape itself and so on. The balance between the esters and the high alcohol content within the volatile organic compounds from the fermentation of white wines made with almost neutral grapes, which are the majority, on the other hand, change a wine quite a bit. In red wines, yeasts have an irrelevant influence on the aroma. In this case the maceration and integrity of the skins are much more important and it is necessary to just avoid any sensorial deviations.
DW: There has been some talk about substituting sulfites with ozone.
LM: This proposal raises a lot of confusion. Why should we need to find an alternative to sulfites? Wine is an alcoholic product and so it does not need much. Sulfites are above all useful to preserve certain foods and are found in many food products (cookies, crackers, dried fruit, cold cuts, fruit juice, syrups, baked potato chips, jams, fish, shell fish, hot dogs and so on). They are very economical and are a powerful anti-septic and a very efficient antioxidant.
DW: And in wine?
LM: The antiseptic role it plays in wine is secondary because that alcohol has already done most of the job. Pasteur, rightly so, loved to say that wine was the healthiest and hygienic beverage. It is very difficult, almost impossible, for an organic substance detrimental to a human’s health to survive in wine. This is also the reason why our beloved drink has been consumed for millenniums, it was always safer than water!
The problem is essentially protecting certain wines from too much oxygen. This is why so little sulfites are needed. In red wines, if made with healthy grapes, the use of SO2 is totally useless. In white wines, on the other hand, it is necessary to have correct antioxidant protection, to preserve the aromatic characteristics of the grape and, as the case may be, even those from the terroir. Without this protection the wines would all be aromatically similar and it would be useless and illogical to refer to a particular characteristic of a territory, above all for wines made with neutral grapes. A Greco or a Verdicchio without sufficient antioxidant protection would be impossible to distinguish because they would be virtually the same. With aromatic grapes it is a different story because they are rich in volatile compounds, which explains why even without sulfites they continues to have their aromatic differences. This is one of the reasons why bio-dynamic farming, as well as organic and natural approaches, became popular in Alsace. Ozone has the opposite effect of sulfur, it is a violent oxidant!
DW: So why is it that it is obligatory to state on the label ‘contains sulfites’?
LM: Because, above all in high doses, it can cause allergic reaction, sneezing, itchy eyes and the rest. It is a warning for people who have these problems.

Don’t miss tomorrow’s second part of the interview and the vertical tasting of Exutet.