TERROIR
THE FEATURE
The Aperitivo Question: Why The Pre-Dinner Pour Is Suddenly Everywhere
At six in Turin, the cafés under the porticoes fill, and what lands on the marble is bitter and low, built to be sipped: vermouth over ice, a twist of orange. The ritual the world treats as a discovery is among the oldest ideas in Italian wine—the first vermouth was poured here in 1786, from a sweet Moscato base.
NielsenIQ now ranks the aperitivo the second most important on-premise occasion in Italy and fourth in France, yet most wine lists treat the opening pour as an afterthought. Campari sells the Aperol Spritz premixed at nine percent, the most vinous hour of the day compressed into a barcode. The fix asks only that a list treat its first line the way it treats its last.
THE DISPATCH
Latest from this week
A 100% threat to French wine
On the eve of the G7 summit at Évian-les-Bains, President Trump told the New York Post he would have 'no choice' but to impose a 100 percent tariff on French wine and champagne unless France scraps its 3 percent digital-services tax. Macron answered on TF1 that he would not back down, and French wine and spirits exports to the US have already fallen 21 percent in a year under the existing 15 percent tariff.
The doyenne of American sparkling
Eileen Crane, whom Karen MacNeil called the doyenne of American sparkling wine, has died at 77. Recruited in 1984 to build Gloria Ferrer and chosen by Claude Taittinger in 1987 to found Domaine Carneros, she was one of very few American winemakers to establish two landmark California sparkling houses—and much of the reason the country's sparkling wine stopped being read as a curiosity.
THE PICK
BERLUCCHI FRANCIACORTA ’61 EXTRA BRUT
In 1961, the Lombardy estate owner Guido Berlucchi and a newly graduated oenologist, Franco Ziliani, sealed three thousand bottles of metodo classico in a region that had only ever made still wine. The '61 on the label marks that year: the first Franciacorta sparkling, and the bet that became an appellation. The Extra Brut is the house's calling card—Chardonnay with a measure of Pinot Nero, dry enough to read as citrus, white blossom, and a fine bready snap.
It is also the bottle the aperitivo question points to: a traditional-method sparkler near twelve percent, built to wake the palate rather than fill it. Pour it cold before dinner, or on its own as the first yes of the evening. At $32.99, it is the rare origin story you can actually drink.
Until next Thursday,
Adrian, TERROIR