The Heritage Club - March 2020
An Irishman like myself is never too picky when it comes to libations, but when St. Pat declares Irish Red Ales and Jamo throughout all the land …sometimes I just need a good glass of vino. Et tu, Brute? We’re turning the tides on our March’s wines, featuring two lesser known Italian varietals.
Agricola San Felice “Perolla” Vermentino
Region: Italy, Toscano
Grape Varietal(s): 100% Vermentino
Viticulture: Lyre trained vines on the rolling Tuscan hills with soils of clay and sandstone rock
Method: 24 hour maceration before full fermentation. One month sur lie aging before resting two months in the bottle
Age: Drink now through 2022
Tasting notes: Yellow apple and pear, with grapefruit zest, white flowers, and a hint of grass. Tart citrus and apple on the palate with a lively finish.
About Agricola San Felice
Agricola San Felice, located at the southern end of Chianti Classico, is recognized as an estate of innovation. Citing close ties to the uniqueness and typical character of the Tuscan region, Agricola San Felice remains an intense research and experimentation estate, focusing on uncovering forgotten indigneous grape varietals and growing plantings in their experimental vineyards. While Agricola San Felice advances the new, the estate pays tribute to Italian heritage through its classic representations of Tuscan wines.
About “Perolla” Vermentino
Vermentino, a traditional grape in the Maremma, is known for its citrusy and apple notes. With its medium-plus acidity, and slightly green aroma, it produces a wine often compared to the likes of Sauvignon Blanc. More modern producers in Tuscany have recently begun blending the two grapes together, creating more robust and complex styles of wines. At the “Perolla” block of the San Felice estate, the rolling hills and moderating influence of the Mediterranean Sea create fruit with intense ripeness, yet retained acidity.
Why I’m excited about this wine
At the slightest hint of warm weather, just about everything feels exhausting. I’ll find any reason to necessitate the thirst quenching power of clean, crisp, chilled white. Vermentino has just enough heft to barr me from drinking it through a crazy straw, but to each their own. While wines from Tuscany were once famed for their Italian restaurant chain wicker basket status, now it’s hard to find a wine from Toscano that isn’t devine and delish. Impress your Sauv. Blanc drinking friends with the latest from Italy’s heartland. They won’t be disappointed, and neither will you.
Tenuta Sant’Antonio “Scaia” Corvina
Region: Italy, Veneto
Grape Varietal(s): 100% Corvina
Viticulture: 3-10 guyot and pergola trained vines with some fruit from gravelly vineyards and other in sandy, silty fossiliferous limestone.
Method: 24 hour maceration before full ferment and aging in stainless steel
Age: Drink now through 2022
Tasting Notes: Aromas of tart cherry and red plum, with redcurrant and ripe raspberry on the palette. Medium bodied, with fresh acidity, and fine minerality.
About Tenuta Sant’Antonio
In 1989, Armando, Tiziano, Paolo, and Massimo Castagnedi had a vision to turn their father’s vineyard in northeast Italy into the premier location at the heart of Italian natural wine production. With plantings of Chardonnay and Trebbiano, the Castagnedi family also has additional plantings of the more traditional Soave, Corvina, and Rondinella that are so renowned in the region for Amarone and Valpolicella.
About “Scaia” Corvina
“Scaia” is Tenuta Sant’Antonio’s wine label focusing on styles that highlight “attention, imagination and grapes typical of the territory: the contemporary meaning of an ancient tradition”. These wines grown in Veneto, near Verona in the Northeastern corner of Italy, are made to Italian Indicazione Geografica Tipica laws. The theory of IGT wines is to allow winemakers to make high quality wines that nest above table wine, Vino de Tavola, while circumnavigating traditional DOC or DOCG laws. In the region of Veneto, “scaia” means a chip of stone, chalk, or limestone: a reference to the highly coveted soils that produce the unique wines showing typicity to the terroir of the vineyard sights. “Scaia” wines, contrary to their Amarone and Valpolicella counterparts, are made to be consumed in their youth when still vibrant and fresh. Corvina, a traditional blending grape in Amarone and Valpolicella, retains this fleshy vivacity, and therefore is a zippy, lighter red as the weather warms, or a fun wine to pair with dinner.
Why I’m excited about this wine
Not many producers opt to produce Corvina as a single varietal wine, and March’s offering is a unique way to sample the traditional grape on its own. Corvina is mostly dominant with tart red fruits, and has a traditional Italian kick of sweet herbs, making it an ideal choice if you’re a fan of cooler climate Cabernet or lighter Pinot Noirs. Enjoy this serious wine at a not so serious price!