I love this wine. This is all Italian, an homage to the old country. Pietro’s love affair with Italian varieties is never more clear than in the Sangiovese. As he says, “Sangio is all about the notes that aren’t there, the negative space around the core and the layers that decompress and float in three dimensions on the mid- and back-palate.”
This wine opens with piles of fruit like black cherry, light strawberry and pretty flowers backed up by herbs and spices. Great acid, perfect tense texture and layer upon complex layer show up, especially if you allow this to open for an hour or so.
All 4 clones for this wine were harvested and fermented separately. Wood basket pressed after fermentaiton. Aged in neutral French and Hungarian oak for 22 months. No sulfur added for the first year in barrel, no racking until bottling. Unfined and unfiltered (vegan).
240 cases produced.
2019 Prima Materia Sangiovese
$32.00
From Pietro:
“Sangiovese is such a chameleon. I will swear up and down that it shows at least as much vintage variation as Pinot, if not more, since you can’t use new oak with Sangiovese like the standard 30-50% approach with luxury Pinots. As with the last two vintages, this one is 100% Sangiovese, and made from five different vineyard blocks and 4 different clones (clones are cuttings from a family of grapes that show particular traits or characteristics) in an attempt to paint a complete picture. There is quite a bit of variation across the four types, and in 2019 we harvested them over the case of 18 days, despite being planted close to each other. This is the power and fascination of working with different clones. The more tannic and deeper colored Brunello clones are harvested last since they need more maturity for textural ripeness, while the Emilia Romagna type is picked first, full of plump and juicy red fruit with blue tones and an almost cinnamon + pepper character, but much less tannin. The Prugnolo Gentile type, grown in the Montepulciano area of Tuscany (yet somehow totally unrelated to the Montepulciano grape) is the weird one. It is quite thin-skinned, pale in color, and very floral, which seems like early harvest traits, but it has quite a bit of very shrill tannin, very large bunches of grapes, and very low vigor. It has only half the leaves and canopy of the other Sangiovese types, which are known for exuberant growth, and this lack photosynthesizing area delays ripeness by quite a bit. In these recent drought years I have had to cut off ever second bunch from each cane just to get it to ripen. The Prugnolo is the mysterious 4thelement that I am most fascinated with. It speaks very softly, and I have even questioned adding it at all in some years, but I am attached to the evidence-free belief that over time it releases floral compounds and a sense of fragility that is key to moving beyond the basics.”