This month’s club selection are all about purity and place. The energy and connectedness here is an inspiration to me – and I think it will be for you. An inspiration to hunt for more wines like these, to drink more wines like these. No easy task, to be sure. Real Italian wine is obscured by super-modern Chianti, Frankenstein IGT bottlings and homogenized, super-expensive Nebbiolo. But after tasting this trio I’m sure you’ll agree that finding that connection to the primordial Italy that existed before shelf-talkers and e-commerce is a noble pursuit.

Poderi Sanguineto 1&2

Flowery prose would be antithetical to Dora Forsoni – to her gnarly, work-stained hands and to the deep weathering of her face. More importantly, it would be antithetical to her wine. There is nothing modern and shiny to be found here. Sanguineto 1&2 wines are made in the vineyard. Dora uses indigenous yeast, ferments in concrete, and matures the wine in old Slovenian oak barrels. This is a wine tethered to Tuscany. Before you read my description of the wine, take a few minutes to watch this fantastic interview conducted by our friend Kevin McKenna and shot by Alex Finberg. Pay attention to Dora – not just to what she’s saying, but to those hands. You know, just by looking at them, that this women does not make wine from behind a desk or under the cover of a lab coat.

The nose on this Ross di Montepulicano just sucked me right in. Juicy, pure – mint, strawberry, sour cherry and basil aromatics, bits of humidor on the finish. It’s just a little grippy. You will drain this bottle within minutes of opening it. The wine is a blend of prugnolo gentile, canaiolo nero, and mammolo. What should you take away from that blend? There’s so much more to Tuscany than sangiovese.

Rosso di Montepulciano 2009, Poderi Sanguineto 1&2 $22.50/Bottle

Foradori

Elisabetta Foradori was born in her vineyard. That is not an embellishment. While it may be a metaphor for Elisabetta’s connection to the land she works, she was quite literally born in the house that sits in the vineyards that her grandfather passed down to her father, and that she now owns and farms. She took over the estate at the age of 20, after the untimely death of her father. For years, she worked it just as he had – using industrial practices to produce passable table wines that the locals drank when they bellied up to the bar. A little over a decade ago Elisabetta, unhappy with the estate’s wines, disconnected from them, decided to go a different route. Her vineyards are now certified as organic and biodynamic. To quote her, “The most important thing is to be a good farmer”. Her wines are serious, complex, and exciting, and her winemaking philosophy is driven by the ideas of stewardship and experimentation. Elisabetta does not chase notoriety. She’s not making wine for me or you; she’s making it for herself. That’s just fine with me. Check out this video of Elisabetta talking about teroldego.

The nose is vaporous, sexy and serious all at once. Blackberry, plum, black cherry pie, tar. This is a sleek, integrated wine. So well integrated, in fact , that it’s hard to unpack all the details. I get more of that black cherry, bits of mint and asphalt, blueberry and red vines.

Vigneti delle Dolomiti Teroldego 2009, Foradori $18.75/Bottle

Silvio Giamello

Just as I was sitting down to write this, I received an e-mail from Bruce Neyers. I’m not sure how it is that Bruce seems to tune in to what we’re working on here at Dedalus, but he does. It’s a phenomenon that we’re quite happy about. Bruce’s e-mail was about Silvia Giamello. Here’s a bit of what he had to say: “There is an open honesty to his small cellars, a degree of integrity to his wines, and a clear sense of reality to his every move as he hops around from cask to cask drawing out samples. I adore his wines, as there is a sense of purity to the Nebbiolo here that seems missing throughout much of the Piemonte.” Coming from one of the more influential wine personalities in the world, that is serious praise indeed. All of the Giamello’s bottlings are the products of natural fermentation. The guy is old-school – no malolactic fermentation to soften the wines. This is pure, unadulterated Nebbiolo. The soul of Barbaresco, bottled.

The nose on the Vicenziana grabs you from a distance. Literally, I think my nose was about 5 inches away from the glass when the first tendrils hit me. Nutmeg, eucalyptus, rich black cherry, fig, freshly polished leather, flecks of red licorice. The tart, grippy wine really does fly in the face of modernism’s conventional take on good wine. There are no rounded edges here – nothing softened for the sake of accessibility. Yet the wine sings, and does so clearly, with exuberance. The wine is pure, brambly blackberry up front. The mid-palette is a deeper black fruit – like plum with a dash of nutmeg. Bits of cigar smoke, candied orange and clove weave together to make up the considerable finish.
Barbaresco ‘Vicenziana’ 2007, Silvio Giamello $31.75/Bottle