In 2015, the Beer Judge Certification Program guidelines were updated to include a brand-new category: Italian Grape Ale.
With its relatively young beer movement, Italy had long stood apart from Germany, Belgium, the Czech Republic, and other European neighbors, in that it was not widely recognized for having a native beer style. But here was a distinct candidate. Defined by the guidelines as “a communion between beer and wine,” Italian Grape Ale had come about thanks to “the large local availability of different varieties of grapes across the country,” as the BJCP write-up noted. It was listed in Appendix B, a section including descriptions that were “submitted by local chapters of the BJCP for styles that are not yet established, but are more important for homebrewers within a single country.”
Though not included in the main guidelines and flagged as “not validated by the BJCP,” the new style still signified a major step forward for many Italian beer lovers, denoting its newfound recognition among established beer countries. Today, brewers around the world make what they now call Italian Grape Ales, despite the fact that their beers are not from Italy and do not contain Italian grapes.
Of course, Italy isn’t unique in adding wine grapes to beer. There is plenty of evidence that other countries have worked with beer and grapes before, both in the United States and in Europe; in Asia, some of the earliest archeological evidence of what we might call beers are actually wine-beer hybrids. You can find a more modern example at Cantillon in Brussels, where Jean-Pierre Van Roy started experimenting with his “Grape Ale” in 1973, using white grapes for what later became known as Cantillon Vigneronne.
And yet there is something particular about Italian Grape Ale—something particularly Italian, in fact—when you consider how it developed: in full harmony with the lands and regions where it was invented, and with a nod to local tradition.
The questions are: Who really discovered Grape Ales, and why are they widely known as Italian? One answer might be that the Italians had a new Christopher Columbus—not in the sense of someone who discovered something, but rather someone who got credit for announcing a “discovery” to the rest of the world.
Gianriccardo Corbo, a 39-year-old pharmaceutical worker from Monza, had embraced a passion for homebrewing before studying to become the first Italian BJCP judge in 2011. Two years later, as the Italian representative to the BJCP, he found himself attending a meeting with the organization’s then-president, Gordon Strong, in Dublin.
“That meeting, among American and European judges, was a step toward a new edition of the beer style guidelines, and there was a great interest in what was changing on the European scene,” says Corbo. “I took the opportunity to suggest the Italian Grape Ale category before anybody else. I knew there were some Grape Ales made before the Italians did it, but, you know, I was tempted to put a flag on the style.”
Before flying to Dublin, Corbo bought around a dozen bottles, which he believed were “probably at the time all the Grape Ales that were made in Italy.” His efforts persuaded the board of judges and, in the end, the Italian Grape Ale style was officially born—at least as a provisional style for homebrewing competitions within Italy.
The inclusion of the style in the guidelines provided fuel for the nascent beer movement in Italy. Soon Grape Ales started to multiply, from Piedmont to Sicily. For Corbo, it is currently not clear how many there really are.
“It’s always difficult to say the precise number, but at least nowadays we can count on 120 to 130 different labels that say ‘Italian Grape Ale,’” he says.
The local success of this hybrid between beer and wine is easy to explain, even if it is important to clarify that only grapes or grape must (freshly crushed grape juice) are allowed in beer by Italian law, while wine itself is not permitted to be blended or mixed into beer.
To start: Italy is a vineyard. When Charles de Gaulle asked, “How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?” most Italians probably smiled, wondering how you could govern a country with 545 wine grape varietals. The majority of Italian microbreweries—and there are currently more than 800 in the country—probably have a vineyard somewhere in their vicinity. For the Italian craft brewers who wanted to differentiate themselves from the big companies that produced Lagers—and who thus explored by brewing with fruits, flowers, tobacco leaves, spices, and vegetables—grapes and grape must were very easy to acquire.
Among the first Italian craft beer pioneers was Matterino “Teo” Musso, who founded his brewery, Birrificio Baladin, in Piozzo, a small village lost in the Langhe area of the Piedmont region. Langhe is the homeland of some of the most prestigious and expensive Italian wines, including Barolo and Barbaresco, as well as Dolcetto, Barbera, and Arneis. Large tracts of its countryside comprise hills covered with rows of vines. Even if they are not a grower or winemaker themselves, likely every person in this region has a relationship with wine. It’s in their tradition, in their way of life, and probably also in their blood.
Given the region’s viticultural heritage, brewing beer struck many locals as an odd idea when Teo Musso was getting started, but he was undeterred. After having fallen in love with a Chimay Blue in the ’80s, he decided to open a pub in Piozzo. 10 years in, and following some experience in Belgium with Jean-Louis Dits at Brasserie à Vapeur, he started to brew himself. His first beer, named Super, was a Belgian Strong Amber Ale that, at a time when most Italian beers were Lagers, was a real revolution in terms of taste. For many Italians, it changed the concept of what a beer could be.
A restless, sprite-like figure, Musso later followed that up with a Blanche and a Saison within a few years. Around the turn of the millennium, he produced a beer called Perbacco, an Ale made with Dolcetto must. The beer was never formally labeled and sold, and the limited batch was shared among friends of the brewery. Though its immediate impact was small, Perbacco lives on in history as the very first modern Italian Grape Ale.
“Perbacco was an experiment that I ran between 1999 and 2001,” Musso says. “I also used Nebbiolo must and I also made a blend of them. They were my father’s grapes, so the idea came quickly in my mind and the result was appreciated.”
Musso’s contemporaries didn’t have much context for the experimental beers he was producing, and he decided that pitching beer as part of a meal might heighten its appeal. If his beer could be presented like wine, maybe locals would be more inclined to try it. “At that time anyway, I was visiting restaurants trying to introduce my beer as a drink that could go with Italian food and in different places than pubs,” he says. “My bet was to ennoble beer using better ingredients, experimenting with new ones, presenting it in a proper bottle with an attractive label.”
Still, while Perbacco was well received, Musso eventually turned away from his experiments with Grape Ale. “In many ways I was presenting my beer as a bottle of wine, indeed, but what I realized was that the only thing I didn’t want to do was to use grape must or grapes in my beer,” he says. “I felt it was like betraying my father and making a rude joke at the world of wine that was looking at us with sympathy. In other words, I wanted to imitate the way Italian wine had beer resurrected after the methanol scandal, but remaining faithful to beer.”
“The only thing I didn’t want to do was to use grape must or grapes in my beer. I felt it was like betraying my father.”
(That scandal took place in 1986, when more than 20 people died after having drunk wine that had been adulterated with methanol, which had been illegally used by a Piedmont winemaker to increase his wine’s alcohol content. The consequences of the scandal included a global collapse of Italian wine exports and severe damage to the image of Italian wines internationally, which took several years for the country’s industry to overcome.)
Baladin fans might still bemoan Musso’s choice, but while working on Perbacco he was also pursuing other innovative projects, including conducting experiments on beer and oxidation. One result was the remarkable beer that we now know as Xyauyù: an original take on a Strong Ale with 14% ABV, no carbonation, a silky texture, and an astonishing aroma (think caramel, dates, figs, and raisins, as well as hints of nougat and soy sauce). The beer was yet another “revolution” from the village of Piozzo, one that was slightly too complicated to fit neatly into any prior style or category.
While Musso soon left behind his Grape Ale experiments, his baton was picked up by a former engineer in Sardinia, Italy’s second-largest island after Sicily.
“You have to understand that Sardinia itself has more grape varieties than all of France.”
Nicola Perra founded his microbrewery, Birrificio Barley, at Maracalagonis, just 20 minutes by car from the island’s capital of Cagliari, in 2006. His family, like Teo Musso’s, had a small vineyard, though that wasn’t why Perra started brewing with grapes. Since he was a child he had enjoyed a traditional Sardinian dessert known as sapa. Made by slow-cooking grape must for more than 20 hours, sapa (or saba) is incredibly thick and sweet. You can eat it on its own, but it is commonly used as an ingredient in cakes and other pastries, including the classic pan di sapa.
Since first starting as a homebrewer, Perra had experimented with the ingredient, so it was no surprise that Birrificio Barley’s first commercial beer was “something brewed with an addition of sapa.” Called BB10, the sapa beer was an immediate hit among local craft beer aficionados. Strong at 10% ABV, aromatic, but still very well-balanced, BB10 put Perra in the spotlight.
“BB10 was my first official Italian Grape Ale, as we now call them,” he remembers. “But at that time I had no idea of the term. The beer was the final step of many experiments. For a while I used a sapa made from a blend of white grape must, but once I tried a sapa only from Cannonau red grapes, I saw the light.”
After the success of BB10, Perra knew he had to carry on with his research. Eleven of the 20 beers he now produces are Italian Grape Ales, all of them made with an addition of sapa that is itself made from a single, indigenous grape variety.
“You have to understand that Sardinia itself has more grape varieties than all of France,” he says, smiling. “After BB10, I wanted to explore more on this side.” Soon came BB9, made with Malvasia di Bosa sapa; BBEvò, made with Nasco sapa; BB Boom, made with Vermentino sapa; BB5, a Saison made with Nuragus sapa and fresh grape must; and BB6, made with fresh must from Malvasia grapes.
Yes: fresh must. After using slow-cooked sapa in a number of different beers, Perra began experimenting with a lighter side of Grape Ale production.
“If you work fast and preserve the right temperature, you can have wonderful results using fresh grape must—different aromatic profiles,” Perra says. “That’s why, for example, I prefer to use one kind of Malvasia as sapa for a beer and another kind as a fresh must. Not just for the difference between the sapa and the fresh must, but also because one kind of Malvasia—the variety from Bosa, to be precise—has more structure and is more suitable for aging than, for example, the Malvasia that is cultivated near Cagliari.” With the research, time, and effort that Perra put into his sapa beers, he became, and remains, one of the most authoritative interpreters of the style.
“My interpretation of Italian Grape Ale includes the use of both Ale yeast and wine yeast,” he says, adding that he wants his Grape Ales to express the character of the grapes he uses. “I do not use wood barrels: Conditioning is in [stainless] steel. It’s longer for the beers with sapa, and shorter for the ones made with fresh must.”
“If you work fast and preserve the right temperature, you can have wonderful results using fresh grape must.”
When I ask Perra how I’m meant to identify the individual grape varietals in his beers if I have never before tasted wines made from them, he says he doesn’t expect this from his customers. “It’s not so important if you can or cannot detect the aroma of Malvasia di Bosa or Carignano del Sulcis, like in my new beer, Arrevescia. In the end what is important is that the beer has a personality that I hope everybody enjoys, but I reach that target personality through the way I make that beer.”
After Perra’s success, brewers throughout Italy started to make Grape Ales. As with any new trend, many jumped on board simply because of its incipient popularity. But for all the questionable results, there were also many new brewers who worked to consolidate Grape Ale into a concrete, Italian style. Unlike other novel styles, like Chestnut Ale, which appeared during the early years of the Italian craft beer revolution, Grape Ale seems poised to last.
Within the latest generation of brewers are three brothers from the city of Padua in Veneto, in Italy’s northeast. Unlike many of their peers, Marco, Daniele, and Andrea Filippini had no connection at all with wine and vineyards. Their father is a retired university teacher, and their mother managed the household. Marco, the eldest, used to work as a courier, Daniele as an engineer, and Andrea as a business consultant. Their life appeared to be linear and stable.
“We have always been a close family, capable of discussing every problem and solving it together,” Andrea Filippini says. “So one night I was having dinner at a restaurant with my two brothers and, while talking, we all confessed that we were not too happy with our jobs. We were, the three of us, all searching for something else. Marco and Daniele had a passion for wine, both with wine sommelier diplomas, while I was more attracted by beer and was brewing at home in my spare time. That night we decided to find something connected with nature and agriculture, and, possibly, wine.”
Their first idea was to find a small plot of land, just to try making wine on weekends. But in the hills near Padua, everything was either too expensive or too big. A better opportunity was found near Vicenza, about 40 minutes west of Padua.
“What we found was five hectares of an abandoned vineyard,” Filippini says. “Too big for a part-time hobby, but the place was amazing. There was the old farmhouse and a forest all around it. We bought it with a bank loan. Marco started to work there full-time, me and Daniele helping on Saturdays and Sundays, saving just half a hectare of the old vineyard and preparing the rest of the ground for the new vines.”
Under the name Siemàn, a term in the local dialect meaning “six hands,” they began producing wine in 2016, using local grape varieties such as Garganega, Tai Rosso, Corbinona, Tai Bianco, and others. Last year, production was around 20,000 bottles.
“Our philosophy was above all to respect nature, so no use of chemical products, only indigenous yeasts for a spontaneous fermentation, and no handlings in the various stages of winemaking,” Filippini says. “All our wines, apart from Tai Rosso, are blends of different grapes, and we do not use barriques, but rather tonneaux,” he says, referring to the barrels that usually hold 500 liters (132 gallons) or more, roughly twice as large as a barrique.
Wine was their initial challenge, but a few months later, the three brothers decided to clean a shed on their property. After a brainstorming session, they decided it would be used to house a small brewery.
“Traditional brewing in the end is technology and a daily routine. And this is what we wanted to avoid.”
“A microbrewery, but a brewery specialized in spontaneously fermented beers—‘wild,’ in other words,” remembers Filippini, who, as the homebrewer of the family, was asked to take the lead on the new project. “We only buy one yeast, a Saison yeast, but everything else comes from the air or from the yeasts that are already on the grape skins. The results are always beers with a distinctive sourness that develops naturally. We don’t add any Lactobacilli or Brettanomyces. Beer ferments with what we have in nature or in the barrels, and we are happy that changes every year, depending on how the season has gone. This is fine for us, because we brew only during autumn and winter. Spring and summertime are dedicated totally to the work in the vineyard.”
I mention that this is a traditional Lambic approach, to which Filippini smiles. “We only wanted to change our lives. Traditional brewing in the end is technology and a daily routine. And this is what we wanted to avoid.”
Can we call Siemàn’s beers Italian Grape Ales? There’s an ongoing discussion on that very question. The way the Filippini brothers make beer is different from the idea of Grape Ale as developed by Nicola Perra, though grapes and must are certainly an important aspect.
According to Corbo, many of the most recent Italian Grape Ales do have a sour drift, due to wild yeasts and bacteria. Even if this is not the case with Siemàn, it’s true that there’s a growing trend of “sour” Grape Ales in Italy. In future, this might develop into a specific subcategory, particularly because the style is no longer just “Italian.”
In the meantime, Grape Ales have started appearing all over the place: I tasted some good examples in Portugal a couple of years ago, and in the future, other areas of the planet where grapevines are planted widely—Australia, Chile, New Zealand, France, Argentina, or California—may well begin or increase their own experiments in this area, just as Italy has.
What distinguishes Italian brewers, in my mind, is the deep, often parental relationship they have with grapes, winemakers, and wine. In Italy, there is a near-pervasive, intimate knowledge of the many differences among grapes, and even of nuances in the same varietal when it is cultivated on different lands. Local brewers have the rare chance to play with the hundreds of varietals that have been grown here since Roman times.
That distinctly local knowledge, as well as the diversity of Italian viticulture, together give the country’s brewers an almost limitless ability to further develop their Grape Ale style. Ultimately, those factors might even justify keeping the word “Italian” appended to the style, well into the future.
Words, Maurizio MaestrelliIllustrations, Ben Chlapek
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