Oct. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Ceri Smith likes to fantasize about a world without the big three -- chardonnay, merlot, cabernet sauvignon.

“Maybe you would walk into a restaurant and order a lagrein or ruche or pelaverga,” said Smith, the owner of wine shop Biondivino, in San Francisco.

I sought her out to learn more about a hard-to-find yet wonderful Italian red wine I’ve had several times in the past year, Lacrima di Morro d’Alba. While most shops in the San Francisco Bay area didn’t have a single bottle, Smith had several from two producers.

“It’s one of those wines people absolutely love or absolutely hate,” Smith said. “It evokes a strong reaction from people. It’s a conversation starter.”

That had been my experience as well. The grape, grown in central Italy’s Marche region, between the Adriatic and the Apennines, is an old local variety whose production has increased steadily since it received a Denominazione di Origine Controllata, or DOC, rating in 1985. It was up to 13,174.7 hectoliters (348,039 gallons) in 2004-05 from 4,192 hectoliters in 1999-2000, according to the most recent figures available from the Istituto Marchigiano di Tutela Vini, or Marches Wine Consortium Institute. The region as a whole produces about 1.8 million hectoliters annually.

What makes the wine so special is its amazing aromatics -- think rose petal, lavender and tangerine -- unusual for a red wine.

Italy has hundreds of indigenous grape varieties and a winemaking culture that stretches back millennia, though the country focused on planting so-called international varieties such as merlot and cabernet sauvignon during the last century.

High Scores

Wines made from a blend of these and native grapes such as Sangiovese scored high with critics in the 1990s and prompted some producers to disregard or even pull up older vines. Now, a countermovement is under way.

“A lot of people saw embracing indigenous varietals as a way of combating the Italian trend toward Bordeaux varieties and California winemaking techniques,” said Jeremy Parzen, 42, an Austin, Texas-based marketing consultant who specializes in Italian wines. “There’s a type of nostalgia in Italy for drinking your grandfather’s wine.”

Improvements in winemaking techniques have also allowed these wines to shine, said Emily Wines, master sommelier for Kimpton Hotel and Restaurant Group.

“Instead of fermenting their wines in a concrete vat in the ground, they have temperature-controlled, stainless-steel tanks, and are making these wines that, as opposed to backward and funky and rustic, they demand notice,” said Wines.

New York Interest

As Italian winemakers began working to resurrect these vintage vines, they started seeing interest from New York sommeliers with a taste for the different, said Jan D’Amore, a Brooklyn, New York-based importer.

“I have better luck with obscure grapes than mainstream ones,” said D’Amore, 45, who rides his Vespa around Manhattan to visit clients. “The stranger the grape, the harder to come by, the more they’re interested.”

D’Amore’s portfolio includes wines made from native grapes such as vespaiolo from Veneto and vernaccia nera in Marche, among others.

“I think it takes a lunatic wine buyer like myself to get jazzed about vespaiolo,” said Stephen Mancini, 28, wine director for Danny Meyers’s Union Square Cafe. “What’s happening right now in New York City, and I would say across the country, is people are really exploring Italian wines for what I believe Italian wines are, and that’s local indigenous varietals.”

Watching Prices

The key is keeping bottles affordable, Mancini said. Drinkers are apt to try something they’ve never heard of if it’s less than $100. Union Square Cafe diners will find an $80 bottle of timorasso, a vespaiolo for $55, and a $90 sagrantino on the 39-page wine list.

“You can get many very good examples of these wines, and in some cases, even some of the best examples, for under $20 retail,” said Oliver McCrum, an Oakland, California-based importer.

McCrum, whose portfolio includes wines from native grapes such as lagrein and pelaverga, has seen sales increase 25 percent this year. He said the revival of the white arneis grape from the Roero area of Piedmont by producer Vietti is one of the first examples of the trend.

Vietti winemaker Alfredo Currado started experimenting with arneis in 1967 and succeeded in turning it from a grape that had been largely unknown outside of Italy into an internationally sold and respected white wine that’s now being planted in California.

‘Folk Memory’

“That variety in the ‘70s was like a folk memory,” McCrum said. Now, “it’s the flagship of that area, and very, very successful.”

Mauro Cirilli, 33-year-old wine director at San Francisco’s Perbacco restaurant, moved to the U.S. from Italy five years ago. He has built a list of more-obscure wines by the glass to entice customers to try something new. Of the two pages of white Italian wines, only five bottles cost more than $100.

A tart 2007 Prie Blanc he poured had striking acidity and a citrus tinge, while a 2007 pelaverga had aromas of fresh cracked black pepper and flavors of cranberries, cherries and a cool mint finish.

“It’s really fun to talk about these wines,” Cirilli said. “I’m on the floor talking about these wines, about the producer, the history.”

Back at Biondivino in San Francisco, Smith opened up a 2007 Derthona Timorasso produced by Vigneti Massa from Colli Tortonesi in Piedmont. Priced at $28, the highly aromatic wine displayed aromas of brown sugar, honeysuckle and lemon citrus, while tasting buttery and tart, with an orange-peel finish.

“Every time I try to stop talking about timorasso I start talking about it again,” Smith said. “You can see where it has a lot of life in it.”

(Ryan Flinn is a reporter for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the reporter on this story: Ryan Flinn in San Francisco at rflinn@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 20, 2009 00:01 EDT