Artichokes and the poetry in names

Spring, purple globe, white globe,

Brindisi, paestum, chianti, 

Carciofo romanesco, friesole

Baby anzio,

Imperial star, lyon, omaha

Sangria, tempo, siena, violetta

Castel, purple globe, white globe

I think there's poetry in names; each name a thread to somewhere else, to another time and place. I feel this particularly strongly in relation to plant varieties, as a century of increasing centralisation of supplies and selection for yield over flavour has left our shelves bereft of diversity. The once wonderfully fractured family of artichokes may as well have been consolidated to a couple of modern cultivars; big, green and fleshy, like a John Deere with purple accents. 

If we go back a hundred odd years (before the first world war, say) there was very little travel between agricultural areas. If you farmed your valley, the chances were that your children would too. You saved your seeds from previous years and, if you were a good farmer, you did a bit of your own selection. I’m wary of painting past agricultural life as a halcyon period of organic plenty as it was almost certainly a very hard way of life, but it did at least gift us a dazzling array of old plant varieties. 

One of my cherished food memories is that we’d often have artichokes for lunch on holiday.  Globe artichokes, simply boiled and served with vinaigrette. We’d pull the leaves off, dipping their fleshy ends into the dressing before greedily biting them off. We’d start slowly before reaching a crescendo of excitement as you reached the thinner, inner leaves, pulling them off in clumps and just biting the whole ends off. Then they’d be handed to our Mum who’d take the tops off and cut out the choke so we could gleefully finish the heart. 

Many years later I’d gone to St John Bread and Wine for a lazy solo lunch. As I was looking at the menu, Fergus sat at a table a couple away from mine. I cheerily requested whatever Fergus was having; and after assuring the waitress that her concerned eyebrow-raise was unnecessary, I was brought a glass of the house Macon and a whole globe artichoke with vinaigrette. Obviously I was overjoyed. Several courses, some wood pigeon, a bottle of the house Bordeaux and I think a Vieille Prune (it gets hazy) later, I was overjoyed and really quite pissed. 

I think Fergus pretty much nailed the choice of a simplish Macon blanc; there’s a definite peasant cooking vibe to boiled artichoke that calls for the simpler end of the wine list. Perhaps if I was really being picky I’d look a bit further south - a Sablet blanc or Lazio Trebbiano in a nod to the Roman’s love of carchiofi alla Giuda. The oily citrus and evening florals are a lovely balm to the bitterness and deep fried crunch of the baby artichokes.

Globe artichokes are the (semi) domesticated children of the cardoon, as well as the choke that terrified me as a child (I was certain that ingesting any would make me choke and die) many of the varieties retain the thistles’ wilful ability to stab and hurt (ask any chef who’s prepared spiky asparagus). They’re also pretty unique amongst the common European vegetables in that their flavour is more woody and floral than green and vegetal. I find they’re quite a grown up vegetable, particularly when you get them young and grilled to swipe through some bagna cauda. 

If the whites of Lazio are the wines I think to pair with artichoke, it’s the reds of the Piedmonte that I think of when I imagine their flavour. Occasionally bitter, hard to get to grips with, spiky, woody and occasionally floral. I could as easily be talking about Nebbiolo as I could the artichoke. 

Nebbiolo has a reputation for being difficult - even more so than Pinot Noir, it has resolutely refused to be transplanted anywhere else with much success (an exception here for the work being done in Victoria by Luke Lambert and his contemporaries). It can be pale and tannic when young, (try tasting old school cru Barolo on release) the skins majoring on tannin content as opposed to anthocyanins (which give colour), and yet, despite all this, it’s a wine that gets under your skin. 

Just as with food, one of the joys of wine is appreciating the layers of regional complexity; Nebbiolo might be one of the more penetrating lenses through which to see how wine can distill a sense of place into a glass. Differences of aspect towards the sun and exposure to wind drastically change the weight of the wine, tannins ripening from rasp-like to regal across a single hillside. 

More interesting to me than the slightly academic study of plot by plot differences between individual growers’ wines is the cultural differences we see when we travel out of the most famous regions. The North of the Piedmonte has always been quite isolated, indeed even the best known wine regions of Barolo and Barbaresco were pretty unknown until Fiat and Nutella brought industry and better roads to the region, and it was this isolation that bred uniqueness. 

Nebbiolo, Chiavannasca, Picoutener, Picotener, Picoténer, Prunent, Prünent and Spanna.

Names that wend their way through the thistly Alpine languages of Europe, each one carrying a cultural weight, each name signifying something special about the earth it has come from. 

We can start with Nebbiolo in the marls of Barolo and Barbaresco and its muscular expressions, then drive North into Caremma, Ghemme and Gatinnara. Nebbiolo is now Spanna and often co-planted with Uva Rara, Croatina or Vespolino. The wines are lighter and more rustic, their roughness betraying the extra miles from the marble counters of Turin. 

Next we travel to Lombardy and the majestic mountain pass of the Valtellina; steep slopes accessible only by cable car grow Chiavannesca, the wines are bright and clear, softer somehow, but still possessed of a clarity that calls to mind the alpine air, the summer sun scalpel like through the sky. 

Finally in the foothills of the Alps we have the Valle d’Aosta and the Val d’Ossola. Here seemingly every Alpine valley has their own expression of this ancient grape. It’s here that I really find poetry. The thrill of diversity where every glass speaks in a different dialect, every farmer has different coloured mud on their shoes and every label takes me somewhere different.