3542 Vino cotto

From my experience, the term commonly refers to wine made by cooking the must (crushed grapes and juice) to about 25% volume, filltering, diluting with grape juice, fermenting, then placing in keg for year or so. This produces a sweet desert wine not unlike Marsala and Vino Santo (which are produced in entirely different manners).
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[quote=Relaxed]This is an ingredient, rather than a dish, and it is apparently unique to Le Marche.

"Vino cotto is made as follows. Press the juice from several bunches of either red or white grapes, strain into a flameproof earthenware or glass pan, and simmer very gently until thick, about four hours."

It is used (according to my book) in a casserole where it takes the place of both the 1/2 cup of white wine and the tomatoes.

Sounds worth an experiment - anyone tried it?[/quote]

It is a fortified wine and it tastes a little bit like Vin Santo. The Capitale of Vino Cotto is Loro Piceno in the Provincia of Macerata.

Pic of Farmers making Vino Cotto near Offida.

Vino cotto started showing up around here at the start of the winter, our landlord shared some he had made and it had a stronger grape taste than vin santo or vino passito. There was some locally produced on store shelves for a couple months but has since disappeared. We really enjoyed vino cotto.

I use it when baking figs, 50/50 with white wine, makes a delicious syrupy sauce, then just add mascapone, very good, and strangely, this freezes very well, we had it for pudding Christmas Day, we have a 10yr old bottle made by our neighbour, but you can buy it close by in Loro Piceno.
Angie

More tidbits on vino cotto:
It was made by the ancient Greeks and Romans as both as a way to preserve grapes for a long time, and to make a sweetener.
Today vino cotto is made in the traditional fashion (ie; grape must boiled in copper pots then aged in wood barrels for a year) not only in Le Marche, but in Puglia, Campania, and Sicilia. I’m not sure about other regions.
Vino cotto can be boiled down to make a sweet syrup, aged for about a year, which is what the ancients did. Many recipes from 2000 years ago were sweet, meats and cheeses sweetened, therefore a sweetener was a prized commodity. Ah, I guess a sweet tooth has a long history!

Elizabetta
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[QUOTE=elizabeth;53234]Today vino cotto is made in the traditional fashion (ie; grape must boiled in copper pots then aged in wood barrels for a year) not only in Le Marche, but in Puglia, Campania, and Sicilia. I’m not sure about other regions.[/QUOTE]
You can include Abruzzo on that list since I've seen a house here with a huge copper vat with fireplace below which was used to produce vino cotto; apparently on an almost industrial scale.

Along the lines of stefanaccio's comments, I recall reading in a book on Italian wine production that it was once common in areas where the local grapes didn't have a very high sugar content to boil a portion of the must in order to increase the sugar concentration and then return the syrupy result to the bulk of the must before fermentation. The increased percentage of sugar resulted in wine with a higher alcohol content. The writer also said it produced wine with what sophisticated modern palates would consider an unusual "cooked" flavour.

Al

I'm getting really a bit embarrassed about this, as the originator of this thread! I cannot retrieve my source on vino cotto, and quite probably I did not catch on to the fact that my "recipe" needed to be bottled (or put in a cask) and seasoned for a year or more etc. etc.
Nevertheless, the straightforward reduction of a robust red wine (irrespective of whether it has already made contact with whatever it was intended to marinate, or whether it has biblically known an oak barrel) is - according to my stove - a good idea. Call it what you like, attribute it to your favourite region - I think we all agree, it works!

Angie,
What a wonderful idea….
Are you baking dried or fresh figs? I'd love to try it, will you share the recipe please?

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I will try and remember!

As many fresh green or black figs that will fit snugly into a shallow oven proof dish, score a cross in the tops of these, pour over enough white wine to a third of the hight in the dish, sprinkle over a small amount of sugar.Then pour about a teaspoon of vino cotto into each fig.

Cover with foil and bake in an oven about 170c for about 20mins, then remove foil for last 10mins, my oven is a bit fierce so you will need to check to make sure it is not undercooked or burnt!, it is ready when the figs are really tender but retain their shape and the sauce is reduced to a lovely syrupy consistency, lovely with mascapone, and as I previously said freezes really well,
We have 4 fig trees so if anyone is close enough to me they are welcome to come and collect some and give this really easy recipe a try.

Angie

Hi Angie
Can't wait to try this dish - sounds fabulous! It's Sunday morning in the UK with grey skies (to be fair it was sunny yesterday!) and the sounds of baked figs, syrupy liquid, marscapone, yum yum ....

R x

[QUOTE=Bruno;53231]Vino cotto started showing up around here at the start of the winter, our landlord shared some he had made and it had a stronger grape taste than vin santo or vino passito. There was some locally produced on store shelves for a couple months but has since disappeared. We really enjoyed vino cotto.[/QUOTE]
On Friday, I had one of the best Vino Cotto's that I have ever tasted. It was 12 years old and could not compare with many that I had tried previously. We were working on a project in Loro Piceno, when a local neighbour to the site came to see what was going on. He must have been in his 70's, and after trying to explain why we were laying 1 Km of pipes in the ground to heat a house, asked if we liked Cotto. 20 mins later he was back with a glass and a bottle that he had made, which he insisted we finished (3 contractors and myself ) that is!!

An Italian friend of mine told me that the best medication for a nasty cold was to have a glass of warm vino cotto (don't allow it to boil) and 2 aspirins or paracetamols just as you go to bed. Apparently, next morning you wake up feeling great. Worth a try!!!! :yes:

we have an entrance to our house which we call the dog entrance... because in the winter its where we dry them if its raining ...but anyway that has little to do with vino cotto but the picture does...its a firplace solely dedicated to the making of cooked wine... basically the firplace is down below where the dip in the floor is ... and where the bricks acroos the whole width of the room is the cauldron...it takes aprox 500 litres of wines at a go... and is near enough 1.5 meteres in depth...

The best vino cotto I ever had was whilst looking at some houses for sale, it was 40 years old and I slept all the way home in the car, god knows how strong it was.

We use our local farmers vino cotto for making a hunters chicken recipe. Would receommend it.

[quote=villa sibillini;73553]The best vino cotto I ever had was whilst looking at some houses for sale, it was 40 years old and I slept all the way home in the car, god knows how strong it was.

We use our local farmers vino cotto for making a hunters chicken recipe. Would receommend it.[/quote]

Have you tried mistra made from vi cotto rather than wine- it avoids the need for geothermal heating-You can even make it yourself if you purchase one of the stills on sale at the pots and pan shop in Caldarola

I suddenly feel very hungry and thirsty!

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Our geometra offers us a glass off vin cotto or mistra every time we go on site - 9.30 in themorning is a bit early for me but I have managed a very small glass of the vin cotto to be polite. Apparently when he was a baby his nonna mistook a bottle of mistra for water & made up his formula with it - needless to say he was admitted to hospital!