Goes Well With Fish, NY Times

This Wine Goes Well With Fish

BRILLIANT ideas sometimes arise out of pure necessity. Consider Piero Lugano, 63, the suntanned artist-turned-wine-merchant who opened a shop called Bisson in this town on the Italian Riviera in 1978.

Not content merely to sell wine, he soon began making it. Ten years ago he decided to try producing sparkling wine from indigenous varieties grown in vineyards overlooking the Golfo Paradiso on the Mediterranean.

But he immediately encountered a problem: there was simply no space in his already cramped shop and winery to carry out the aging required to make a bottle-fermented sparkling wine in the classic method of Champagne. Then, as he recalled recently, “a light bulb went on in my head: I thought, why not put the wine under the sea?”

This might seem logical to someone like Mr. Lugano who has long struggled to reconcile his twin passions for vine and sea. To most everyone else, the idea of making wine underwater might seem a bit unusual.

But Mr. Lugano makes an interesting argument: “It’s better than even the best underground cellar, especially for sparkling wine. The temperature is perfect, there’s no light, the water prevents even the slightest bit of air from getting in, and the constant counterpressure keeps the bubbles bubbly. Moreover, the underwater currents act like a crib, gently rocking the bottles and keeping the lees moving through the wine.” (The lees refer to yeast particles.)

It’s quite a creative solution to a space problem. But Italy is infamous for its labyrinthine bureaucracy. And the place he wanted to put the wine happened to be in the tightly controlled waters of a national marine preserve, the Area Marina Protetta di Portofino. So the odds would seem overwhelmingly against such a project.

Undaunted, Mr. Lugano ran the idea by a friend-with-a-friend at the Agriculture Ministry in Rome. Much to his surprise, his friend called back a week later; not only was it possible, the ministry thought it was a very cool idea. The next and most crucial step was to approach the local authorities.

In the winter of 2008, Mr. Lugano pitched his idea to a group at the Area Marina Protetta di Portofino that included the director, Giorgio Fanciulli, and a number of scientific advisers from the University of Genoa. “My first reaction,” Dr. Fanciulli said recently, “was: ‘No way! Our job is to prevent people from putting things in these waters, not help them.’

“But when we discussed it in private, the young scientists were very excited. It would have zero impact on the fragile ecosystem and demonstrate our philosophy of a positive synergy between man and nature. We also thought it might promote our park and raise awareness of the need to protect our marine resources. I was convinced.”

The scientists did research to ensure no environmental impact and determine the ideal site to place the wine. On May 20, 2009, 6,500 bottles of wine from the 2008 vintage of Bianchetta and Vermentino grapes, made without adding sugar, in the traditional method known as pas dosè, were put in noncorrosive stainless-steel cages and lowered about 200 feet below the sea at a spot called Cala degli Inglesi.

That the project had come this far was an amazing accomplishment, but would it be successful? “It was a big risk,” Mr. Lugano said. “No one had done this before, so we really didn’t know what would happen.”

When they went to retrieve the wine 13 months later, they found the bottles intact but transformed. Far from having a negative impact on the underwater environment, it was the sea that had had an impact on the bottles.

“When we began tolift the cages,” Mr. Lugano said, “all kinds of sea creatures came rushing out. Some remained.” The bottles were covered with algae, seaweed and barnacles, all of it carefully cleaned, dried and preserved on the bottle in a plastic sheath. (Some even had oysters, shrimp and starfish attached to them.)

More important, when the first bottle of the wine (christened Abissi, meaning depths in Italian) was opened for a celebratory toast, Mr. Lugano was, as he put it, “quite pleased.”

It’s easy to see why. When first poured, the bubbles come rushing up to the surface of the glass like sea foam at high tide, but then quickly relax into a fine perlage. The color is pale golden-yellow with greenish reflections, while the aroma suggests caramelized lemon peel and dried flower petals with hints of baked apple and allspice. On the palate it is surprisingly soft, leading into ripe, almost sweet, white peach followed by bracing acidity and a dry mineral finish.

This winter, the second edition of Abissi, made from the 2009 vintage and brought up from the sea on July 2, 2011, will be available in America for the first time through Bisson’s importer, Neil Rosenthal. (It has not been determined how many bottles will come to the United States or what the price will be.)

Though bottle-fermented in the classic manner, Abissi should not be compared to Champagne. This is a typical Ligurian wine — lean, crisply acidic, minerally, almost salty — made of local varieties from vineyards conditioned by their proximity to the sea.

In fact, the earth where the vines grow was once under the sea. That this wine undergoes its crucial maturation under water brings the process full circle, giving the concept of terroir an even deeper, aqueous dimension.