MAY/JUNE 1999

VOL.4 NO.2

Birra Italia - Will That Be Red Beer or Red Wine?

To begin with, I knew damn well that I wasn't visiting Italy for the beer. Even a poor, misguided and beer-obsessed soul like myself knows that you visit cities like Venice and Florence for their beauty, their history and their cuisine, but not their beer. So my expectations were, to say the least, kept low.

And for the most part, those expectations were fulfilled. I tried the light, unassuming Birra Moretti, the marginally more characterful Splügen, the slightly grainy Von Wunster and the very pale, borderline bland Wuhrer. In general, it was a collection of lagers that made me thankful for the ready availability of robust Tuscan wines.

Still, there was one bright light in the Italian beerscape: Moretti La Rossa. Known in Italian beer parlance as a doppio malto, or double malt beer, La Rossa is in style a doppelbock. More deep rust-coloured than red---rossa being Italian for red---it offers a sweet, heavily malty nose with perhaps a whiff of strawberry and a full, mouth-filling body accented by notes of roastiness and faint fruit. My first thought when sampling it on draught around the corner from my Venetian hotel was that it was a very nice doppel. My second was that while it tasted great in Italy, I wondered how it would fare in Germany alongside a Salvator or Optimator. Context, I believe in retrospect, was doing La Rossa a great favour.

I understand from the work of other correspondents that there do exist several other fine Italian beers, and I do not wish to mislead World of Beer readers into believing that my visit was in any way an exhaustive survey of the Italian beer scene. But on this one snapshot of a two-city trip, at least, the dominant colour in my glass was red; either the luscious, deep crimson of sangiovese grape or the malty, satisfying "red" of La Rossa.

Italian Beer Book Note: A couple of weeks prior to my trip, an Italian beer book by Antonio Massa happened across my desk. Titled L'Indispensabile Libro Delle Birre, it offers what appears to be a brand-by-brand breakdown of the domestic and imported beers available in Italy. (My grasp of the Italian language is somewhat tenuous, so I am speculating a bit as to the book's range and depth.) While I would hardly consider it "Indispensabile," it does offer the most encompassing look at Italian beers I have ever seen and so should be useful to anyone with a keen interest in that market.

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