SOUTHERN ITALY!

This week we're going to talk about the often confusing wines of
Southern Italy. In contrast to the wines of France and Northern Italy
where many of the grapes, (Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah,
Nebbiolo, Sangiovese to name a few) have become household names, the
wines of Southern Italy are often times only found in their small
region appellations, leading to a dizzying variety of grape varieties
very few people have heard of, let alone tried.

This is a shame because these wines are uniquely suited to their
terroirs, instead of many of the international varieties that have
crept in and that often make high alcohol, big wines due to their
history of being grown in colder Northern climates (try a Chardonnay
from Sicily for instance, and see if it can compare to the light, high
acid wines of Chablis).

I Pastini 'Faraone' Verdeca 2020
The first wine exemplifies all this perfectly. Verdeca is a grape
grown in Istria, the boot of Italy, and virtually unknown outside the
region. Started in 1996 I Pastini is a small winery dedicated to the
indigenous varieties of the area, which is remarkable given the
barriers to explaining Verdeca or Susumaniello (their single red
variety) to people outside the immediate area. But as is the case with
almost any indigenous varieties the benefits in the winemaking
outweigh the cons. The difficulty in making wines in hot weather like
you find in Southern Italy is finding a balance between the alcohol
and ripeness from the sun, and finding acidity to cut through that
ripeness. This is a razor fine balance, pick too early and you get
teeth stripping acidity, and pick too late and you'll get overripe
often tropical flavors. This wine strides that line perfectly.

https://kermitlynch.com/our-wines/i-pastini/

Casa Setaro Munazei Bianco and Campanelle
The next two wines are grown almost directly west of Istria, on the
west coast of Italy near Italy. Since opening Tell Me these wines have
perhaps been our most exciting discovery in buying. The story of Casa
Setaro starts with the vines themselves. Grown on volcanic soils from
Mount Vesuvius, this is one of the few areas where ungrafted vines can
be grown (long explanation coming). In 1963 French vignerons started
noticing something troubling, mainly that their vines were rapidly
dying out. The culprit was soon identified as Phylloxera, a tiny bug
brought from the United States by British botanists. Phylloxera is a
bug that seems almost designed to destroy grapevines. It attacks
roots, causes a fungal infection, and later in it's lifecycle nests
underneath the leaves, eventually killing them. The bug soon spread to
the rest of the Europe and by the early 20th century had killed almost
90% of the vines in Europe. The solution, like the problem itself,
came from the United States, where botanists started making hybrids of
European and American grape varieties, which had evolved to resist the
bug, and more importantly for the survival of the European wine
industry, they discovered that grafting cuttings from Europe onto
American rootstock did the trick. The result was the almost total
devastation of "true" varieties of well known grapes, so that almost
no one in the world has tasted a wine from say, Cabernet Sauvignon,
grown from seed to maturity. So what does this have to do with Naples?
It was discovered as the bug ravaged the continent that some areas
were completely unaffected, owing to soil types that were hostile to
the bug, which were very sandy soil and volcanic soils. So in Naples
and a few other special spots you have a direct connection to a way of
winemaking that was lost to necessity. Casa Setaro has 100% ungrafted
indigenous vines and like above they have a perfect balance of acidity
and texture. Flanaghina is an ancient wine widely grown in the region
but almost nowhere else, whereas Caprettone is generally known as a
blending grape, and to find one that is 100% that variety, especially
of this high caliber is an absolute treat. Falanghina is so old in the
region that there are records of it being drunk during the Roman
times, where it was often blended with seawater, a practice I've
always been curious about but never tried myself.

https://www.madrose.com/producers/italy/calabria-sicily/casa-setaro/

Cos Frapatto 2020
I talked about COS last week in the orange wine email, but I'd like to
circle back and talk about their Frappato, which is one of our
absolute favorite wines in the world. I first discovered Frappato
drinking a bottle of Giusto Occhipinti's niece Ariana Occhipinti, a
rockstar winemaker in her own right, version (Giusto is the main
winemaker at COS. It immediately reminded me of drinking Gamay from
some of the best winemakers in Beaujolais and the Loire, but
distinctly Italian. It's light on it's feet, full of red fruit, fun
but serious at the same time. Sicily is another place full of volcanic
soils and ungrafted vines.

Porto del Vento 'Maque' Rosso Terre Siciliane Perricone 2019
Lastly we have another native Sicilian. variety, Perricone. When I
started working with Uznea I was unfamiliar with this producer but
it's fast become a favorite of mine. If Frappato is seldom seen
outside of Sicilly, Perricone is virtually invisible. Owing to its
dark color and strong tannins, this is a wine that is rarely grown,
and if it is is is typically blended with the island's main variety
Nero d'Avola in small quantities, to give it structure. In the right
hands with a soft touch this can can be magical, and this wine is a
great example of this. Marco Sferlazzo, the winemaker has a classic
story, when he first started out making wine he purchased a plot of
land from a large winemaker who had been tearing out all the local
varieties to plant international varieties for cheap export. Instead
of taking this path he has lovingly preserved the older vines and
converted all of them to biodynamic practice.

https://www.stevengraf.wine/italy-sicily/porta-dal-vento

Until next week