Casimiro Maule

I had dinner last week with Casimiro Maule, who must, by all accounts be considered one of the great winemakers of the world. The man has just completed 37 vintages at Nino Negri, and received a mind boggling 10 consecutive Tre Bicchieri from the Gambero Rosso. For those of you who do not know the Gambero Rosso, they provide the most consistent and object wine criticism in the business. Born of the Slow Food Movement, these people appreciate good wine and are able to understand it within it's historical, regional context. Not like that advertising slut of Shanken's, who will open her pages for just any old body, but I digress.
Casimiro is the wine maker at Nino Negri in the Valtalina in Lombardy Italy, just inland from Piedmonte. The entire Valtalina produces a whopping 3,000,000 bottles or just 250,000 cases. To get an idea of how low the yields are and how land intensive the wine is, the Sfursat 5 Stella requires the fruit of three vines to produce one bottle. Or put another way, each vine yields only one third of a bottle worth of fruit.The talk of yields always gets me a little excited, its like the foreplay to the consummating act.
The wines had all of the concentration you would expect from such low yields, and all the depth you would expect reflected from such harsh terroir. What makes Casimiro a great winemaker however, is his seemingly paradoxical ability to produce wine so supple and approachable in it's youth, yet possessed of an agelessness. To produce a wine so pleasurable when young yet capable of great maturation, puts you on a short list of winemakers. Angelo Gaja is on that list, Michele Rolland is not.
Of course the man didn't speak a word of English. He sat there in humble dignity, slightly embarrassed, I think, to be the center of so much attention.These whirlwind tours of the states, with a cadre of handlers, must be tough for a man used to the quiet life in the country. Still, he weathered the 20 drunken Americans with the air of a Diplomat ,and seemed genuinely touched when people, myself included, asked to have our photos taken with him.