Red Selection from our tasting at Sartoria

Erotica is a feather, pornography is using the whole chicken – Isabel Allende

2004 Sacrisassi Rosso, Le Due Terre - Friuli
Silvana Forte and Flavio Basilicata established the estate in 1984 with the idea of producing wines with both tradition and sense of terroir. This red blend from barrel is made entirely from regional grapes - 60 percent Schioppettino and the rest Refosco fermented together. Dark ruby in colour, it’s a sappy and herbaceous, but pleasantly so, full and ripe with a high-aromatic ripe-cherry flavour that Silvana rightly likens to kirsch. This red is onomatopoeic – it has a sacral purity combined with a sassy jauntiness as the cool graphite-edged fruit flavours sashay effortlessly over your tongue.

2004 Granato, IGT Vigneti Dolomiti, Elisabetta Foradori – Trentino (biodynamic)
This is a stunning red from start to finish. The wine bursts onto the palate with a neverending kaleidoscope of dried roses, spices, pomegranate and raspberries. This medium to full-bodied Teroldego (100%) possesses stunning balance and finesse and tannins that caress the palate with notable elegance and a minerality that could have been etched out of the Dolomitic massifs that surround the vineyards. You sense the oak in a positive way, adding sheen to the firm-fleshed fruits. The Granato is the classic example of the iron fist in the velvet glove and is thus a wine that appeals to traditionalists and point squirrelers alike.

2000 Brunello di Montalcino, AA Pian dell Orino – Tuscany (biodynamic)
“Our goal is to fully understand the diverse characteristics of the vineyards that we cultivate. To this end we separate the grapes picked from each vineyard during the vinification in order to make separate wines. The work we do in the vineyards is an important way of getting to know the vines themselves at close hand.  “Our shared mother is the land that nourishes us, and together we grow with what she offers” (Béla Hamvas).
Our expectation of wine conditions our palate and nowhere more so than wines that we are generally familiar with and have a reference for. This natural, biodynamic wine does not ask any favours. The nose is restrained with hints of earl grey tea and aromatic grass, some dried fruits and herbs and mulch. The palate is bright but equally backwards and quite linear in progression. A whisper of prunes, some nascent tarriness there, dominant tannins and shell-like minerality; this Brunello is remarkably vivacious and improves in the glass.

Better red than… dead boring
No one ever said that tasting Italian red wines was a doddle. Obduracy is a caricature of Italian reds and although we shouldn’t brush all reds with the same tar, so to speak, their very identity nevertheless rests on a familiar sour bite, that peculiar astringency that makes perfect sense with food. Flattering wines rarely possess the edge and drive to challenge hearty food, therefore what’s tough for the palate –in this case – is definitely sauce for the goose. Even the grape names romantically suggest the style of the wine: Sangiovese (the blood of Jove) or Negroamaro (bitter-black). A bloody bitter wine with edges is a wine that challenges the palate; there are enough denatured beauties and vacant models in the world of wine. Italy’s contrasts are manifold: the classic and the modern; the north and the south; the raw and the cooked; the bitter and the sweet. There’s a charm in contrariness, in being capatosta.

2003 Massa Vecchia Maremma Rosso “Querciola” - Tuscany (biodynamic)
Cloudy, volatile, sweet-sour – it’s not just that nowt is taken out, but it seems that a whole lot has been shovelled back in. The colour – hazy ruby red. The nose – what a nose, more of a full blown conk, wafting morello cherries on aromatic gusts of balsamic vineyard. Fresh in the mouth, earthy and smoky, with marked yeastiness this Sangiovese is truly a walk on the wild side.

2003 Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, Villa Gemma, Gianni Masciarelli – Abruzzo
Villa Gemma is no stranger to the Gambero Rosso, regularly garnering the three glasses. The wine spends almost two years in French oak before resting another year in bottle prior to release. This fills the senses with soaring notes of coffee, cigar box, thick black fruits, minerals, spice, currants… the whole sensory caboodle. Powerful on the palate yet somehow civilized (probably due to the bottle aging at the cellar) the Gemma is opaque with a rich, elegant and complex nose. The first impact gives both power and refinement, then the fruit appears followed by flavours of tar, cocoa beans, balsam and the classic liquorice. If Montepulciano were opera this version would be Libiamo ne’lieti calici from La Traviata.

2006 Marcillac Cuvee Lairis, Jean Luc Matha – South West France
Many a king would enjoy drinking this bluid-red wine. Jean-Luc Matha trained to be a clown and priest (although not necessarily at the same time) before finding his true vocation. The Cuvée Lairis undergoes 28 days of maceration in closed fermenters. The wine exhibits a supple texture full of red and black fruits. This mouthful of forest fruit, minerals and spices teases, provokes and delights in equal measure. Delightful red fruit flavours abound amidst the sturdiness of the wine; raspberries and cherries seasoned with white pepper, paprika and myrtle on top of a layer of cool stones and pungent medicinality. You can also taste the iron in the wines (the soil locally is a red soil known as rougier, full of iron). “I love the things that the earth gives,” says Matha. “I love working with the vine up on the hill. And just before I come down, I like to watch the sunset and see how the colours change… I breathe and listen to the sounds around me… I am in the midst of nature and feel completely content.” Thoreau revisited or winemaker? Both, really. “So far I have made thirteen wines at this property. And in a way, they are like my thirteen children. Each one is a little bit different, yet each one has a common bond that gives them their ultimate identity; the earth, the vine, the frost, the rain and the sun. That, for me, is the beauty of winemaking.”

2004 La Pech Abuse VDT, Domaine du Pech - South West France (biodynamic)
Domaine du Pech, Buzet. Didn’t get the appellation credit in 2004, hence La Pech Abuse… Since 2004 the drive towards biodynamic methods of cultivation has included the use of medicinal plants as well as minerals, thereby necessitating minimal treatments with copper or use of sulphur. Only natural yeasts are used and the wines are bottled without filtration. A blend of Merlot, Cab Franc and Cab Sauv the Pech is intensely savoury with flavoursome notes of woodsmoke, leather and prune.

2007 Minervois vieilles vignes, Domaine du Cros (organic)
Situated in Badens, a few kilometres from Carcassonne, the vineyards of Domaine Cros sit on the poorest of poor shallow stony argilo-calcaire soils so stark and inhospitable in certain places that only the vine and the olive tree can scratch an existence. The vignes vignes in question are Carignan; the wine is massive with bruised black fruits, aromas of hot stones, bitter chocolate, coffee and a surprising freshness on the finish.

2002 Cahors, Le Cèdre, Chateau du Cèdre – South West France
Fabulous colour, almost impenetrably dark with glossy purple tints, thick cassis aromas, also intense wild raspberry, massively extracted fruit on the palate with a finish of some twenty seconds. The tannic structure is balanced by beautiful sweet fruit character and fine acidity. This vintage illustrates the benefits of a long growing season.

2006 Saumur Champigny La Marginale, Domaine des Roches Neuves - Loire
Cuvée Marginale is a selection of the best grapes (tiny yields of 25hl/ha) put into barriques neuves, a felicitous amalgam of Bordeaux and Loire styles. The vines for the Marginale are situated on the superb clayey-limestone soil of Fosse de Chaintres. This cuvée is only made in the best years when the grapes achieve a minimum of 13 degrees alcohol. Each year Thierry Germain aims for less oak exposure and to allow the terroir to do the talking. Intense colour, powerful nose of blackberries, lovely attack in the mouth with notes of savoury vanilla, cinnamon, blackcurrant, fine tannins, great persistence with suggestions of paprika and mineral.