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It’s no secret that Cassis is one of the oldest and most gorgeous vineyard areas in France. Located along the turquoise Mediterranean coast, 15 miles southeast of Marseille, this ancient port village harbors limestone-rich vineyards above its rocky, coastal inlets (or calanques).
And it’s not a surprise that Vermentino would find a home in this quintessentially Mediterranean place known for white wines.
“For me, it’s the white cépage of the Mediterranean—like Chardonnay is for Burgundy,” says Jonathan Sack, the fourth-generation winemaker at Clos Ste. Magdeleine, which occupies some of the Cassis coast’s prime vineyard real estate. “It’s also a great reader of the terroir.”
Fact is, the South of France has had a Vermentino boom in the last 20 years, thanks partly to the once-Italian, now-French island of Corsica. It now rivals Italy as the world’s largest producer of Vermentino, with more than 15,000 acres planted, which is sometimes released under the less-catchy French synonym Rolle.
In Italy, Vermentino is most famously planted on Sardinia, along the Ligurian Coast (where it’s also known as Pigato) and in Piedmont (where it’s traditionally called Favorita). Vermentino has caught on along the Tuscan coast and with niche producers from Australia to California.
But Vermentino—a semi-aromatic grape with citrus notes and minerally, slightly bitter edges—is as complicated a subject as its many names. For Sack, the idea of producing Vermentino in Cassis hasn’t been as welcomed as he once thought.
First there was local resistance. About six years ago, when he was president of the tiny, dozen-strong Cassis producers union, Sack unsuccessfully lobbied his fellow vignerons to accept Vermentino as part of the Cassis blend.
For its signature whites, the Cassis appellation (among the first in France when it was created in 1936) is dominated by the Northern Rhône variety Marsanne—which must make up 30 to 80 percent of the blend—along with Clairette. Other grapes permitted in the blend, to a lesser degree, include Bourboulenc, Pascal Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc, Ugni Blanc and Terret Blanc.
Sack’s argument was forward-looking. With climate change pushing ripeness higher, he said, the Cassis blend would have to change. Vermentino—which is known for retaining acidity in hot, dry climes—was an ideal candidate.
“If we don’t change the blend from Marsanne,” he says today, “the wine will become heavier with higher alcohol levels.”
His fellow Cassidain producers refused.
So, says Sack, “I completely changed my mind and decided to make my own wine with just Vermentino.”
In 2014, at the suggestion of Magdeleine’s U.S. wine importer, Kermit Lynch, Sack planted a little more than two acres of Vermentino, sourced from Corsica’s Clos Canarelli, on a westward-facing plateau of broken limestone.
In 2018, he produced his first vintage of single-vineyard Sainte Magdeleine Bouches-du-Rhône “Baume-Noire” Vermentino, fermenting it in sandstone amphorae and releasing it within the year. The wine wasn’t classified as Cassis, but Sack and his customers were happy with the results.
All seemed to be going fine until the just-bottled 2022 vintage, when an Italy-instigated, European Union rule took full force; it banned the use of the name Vermentino on wines from outside of Italy (except for three countries that negotiated exceptions: Australia, the U.S. and Croatia).
This, by some twisted logic, is supposed to protect the names of Sardinian appellations with the “Vermentino” embedded in them: Vermentino di Gallura and Vermentino di Sardegna.
So, Sack and other French producers are taking “Vermentino” off their labels. His 2022 Baume-Noire Vermentino becomes simply Baume-Noire.
Talk about arbitrary and short-sighted. Vermentino deserves to be more widely planted and enjoyed. Sardinian versions of the wine are different from Corsican, Ligurian and those of Napa or Continental France. The more good Vermentino that’s out there, the more its international profile will be raised. And Magdeleine makes good Vermentino.
This can of worms is open. The same EU regulations that restrict “Vermentino” labeling also restrict other varietal names like Primitivo, Nebbiolo and Sangiovese to the same four countries.
Italy is not the only country playing this game, but it is the one playing the most aggressively. France appears to have taken a passive approach. Imagine the fallout if it, too, decided to weaponize EU rules to decide who gets to use “Chardonnay.”
Vermentino appears to be creating controversy because it is booming at a time when Sardinian versions are having to share the market with easy-drinking, less-full-bodied versions from elsewhere in Italy and France—like those from neighboring Corsica, where Vermentino (sometimes called Vermentinu) is the dominant white.
For a Corsican perspective, I phoned Vermentino/Vermentinu maestro Antoine Arena in Corsica’s Patrimonio appellation, who in recent years has transitioned his wines to the labels of his sons Jean-Baptiste and Antoine-Marie.
“My father told me that, in Patrimonio, Vermentino was always called Malvasia,” quips Arena. “I wouldn’t mind calling it Malvasia.” Ha!
Anyway, Corsican geographic designations like Patrimonio don’t allow variety names on the front label, only on the back. However, Corsica’s broad Ile de Beauté classification does allow labelling by variety. And this summer I’ve seen bottles of 2022 Corsican Vermentinu on wine shelves in France, along with lower-priced Vermentino from other parts of southern France that did not get the memo on this (or chose to ignore it).
Talk about confusion. Better to stop the absurdities now—before Vermentino becomes synonymous with a particular type of madness.
Also: More from “Italy’s Great Little Pizza Wine”
In November, I wrote about the plight of Southern Italy’s historic Asprinio di Aversa, a sparkling wine that is great with pizza but is in danger of disappearing due to its painstaking, dangerous cultivation. The grapes grow on “monster vines” that climb high into treetops rather than on easy-to-harvest trelling systems.
Though Asprinio is very, very difficult to find just about anywhere outside the Naples area, I received a note this week from David Gansler, founder of the Boston-area importer/distributor La Rosa Selections, who said he’d taken my Asprinio challenge and imported and distributed 13 cases of I Borboni Spumante Asprinio Brut.
He writes: “It’s finding a home in quality Massachusetts wine retailers, Italian food and wine markets, and cheese shops. With time, it will find its way to restaurants, no doubt to pizzerias in particular!”
That sounds particularly appealing right now. With this summer’s heat wave, here at casa Camuto, our go-to wines have been all manner of Italian and French sparklers.
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