My curiosity hatched in 1990. The Banco d’Assaggio dei Vini d’Italia, organised by Perugia-based Giorgio Lungarotti and his family, was the first wine competition I was ever invited to. It proved frustrating, with an inflexible, box-ticking scoring system and no chance to find out what we’d tasted afterwards. What was the point?
What impressed me was the tasteful serenity of the hotel we stayed in (Le Tre Vaselle in Torgiano), with its tall earthenware vases and white curtain drapes, gently stirring in the breeze. Still more striking was a local red wine made from a grape variety called Sagrantino, pioneered by a producer called Arnaldo Caprai. Caprai’s resource came from textiles; his evening tasting was combined, surreally, with a show of modelled lingerie. Strange, almost terrifying: the Sagrantino that the largely undressed models strode past was black, fierce and dense, to the point of brutality. I felt I’d hit the north face of wine. How could you scale this thing, let alone drink it? I had to know more.
It took me 30 years. Montefalco lies in the Umbria region, badged Italy’s green heart; indeed Montefalco serves as Umbria’s central point, the heart of the heart, pumping its black blood fiercely out around the world. This blood is Sagrantino: ancient, local, low-yielding, loose bunched. And, once vinified, forbidding.
Or it was. Lucky, actually, that I waited three decades before returning. There are now 85 wineries, and everyone has been able to spend those decades working out how best to bring Montefalco’s dark secret into the light of resolution. So?
The region’s best-known producer, the impish Giampaolo Tabarrini, claims he has a new ‘Tabarrini method’ for vinifying Sagrantino, entirely accomplished in stainless steel, and echoing his grandfather’s motto of ‘the less you do, the better it is’. His 2020 Il Bisbetico Domato (its name a masculine version of The Taming of the Shrew, used for a celebrated 1980 Italian comedy film) is startlingly light and graceful: Sagrantino with an undreamt-of lyricism. A heavy hand and lavish oak rarely works well for this variety: you end up with something rasping and piratical at best, and raisiny, cindery, stewy and stern at worst. I also tasted three magnificent 2018 Tabarrini wines, built in more generous style than the ’20 Bisbetico: the umami-packed Colle alle Macchie, the tender Campo alla Cerqua and the masterful Colle Grimaldesco. I hope the new method still leaves place for their luscious amplitude.
Nearby Bocale, run by Valentino Valentini, is another winery that contrives to combine the innate prodigality of Sagrantino with enticing succulence and accessibility, evident (as an aged wine) in his mushroomy, melting 2009 Sagrantino, as well as in younger guise in the lush, smoky-sweet 2019. The key to having those tender tannins, says Valentini, is ‘to wait for perfect phenolic maturity, usually at the end of October, when the seeds are brown and crunchy’, and then to run long, soft 45-day cuvaisons with one pumpover during fermentation and a submerged cap.
More brilliance, too, from Antonelli (20 days’ maceration then 36 months in cask and concrete): both its 2018 and 2019 Montefalco Sagrantino had constitutional warmth, presence and drama, but with deft perspective and proportion, while the 2019 special cuvées Molino dell’Attone and Chiusa di Pannone added layers of allusion. Caprai, too, has changed: its 2020 Collepiano was indeed piano piano (no hurry, slow, gentle); and there are more excellent Montefalco Sagrantino producers, too (Goretti, Lungarotti itself, Lunelli, La Veneranda and others). Treasures galore, now.
Has Montefalco and its secret come striding past you yet? If not, give it a try. There’s nothing to fear; the north face has softened and weathered.
In my glass this month
Take a step back, and it’s hard not to see Montefalco and Barolo as distant cousins. Many of the vinification challenges are similar; both…
Source : https://www.decanter.com/wine/andrew-jefford-has-montefalco-and-its-secret-come-striding-past-you-yet-549967/