Sagrantino

Planning an itinerary for a week along Montefalco’s Strada del Sagrantino should be a breeze. With a cantina around every bend in the road, there are certainly enough choices. That’s the problem – so many wineries, so little time. Booking visits at well known places is a sound strategy, but there’s the chance of missing some hidden gems. So, what cosmic force led me to Azienda Francesco Botti? A website that featured a quote from Virgil: “Praise a large estate but cultivate a small one.” A winemaker with an appreciation of the classics was someone I had to meet.

Francesco Botti isn’t a poet or philosopher, just content to be sole operator of Colle del Saraceno. He cultivates only a portion of nine hectares (22 acres) on the western slope of the valley that bisects Umbria, land that has been in the family for over a century. As we sat on a shaded veranda overlooking vines and olive trees, Francesco poured his four wines as his assistant Monica translated. He makes about 2800 cases a year and has no desire to expand, or compete with neighbors who routinely have busloads of wine tourists at their door. “Staying a small producer I can respect nature and its cycles, I can maintain the traditional essence using modern techniques.”

Had he ever thought about hiring a consultant? “My wines have to be the expression of my character, of my ideas, but I can only interpret what every season offers me. I prefer to make my wines by myself. Every year is a challenge, and what the market wants is important but it cannot decide in place of me. An enologist would only suggest the best wine for selling!” He went on to say he wanted his wines to represent his little corner of Montefalco, that consultants sometimes have an identifiable style that can be repeated anywhere.

Giving our glasses of an aromatic Sagrantino time to open, I wanted to get his thoughts on what is important in making wine, and his connection to the land. “I was born among olive trees and vineyards and I felt that nature had to accompany me in my life. So I think the most important thing in making wine is the passion and seriousness which guided me in the difficulties I found along my human and professional paths.”

The discussion turned to Sagrantino being a hard grape to understand and warm up to. Francesco agreed, adding that “…it has a thick skin and bold tannins. Our wines have to withstand strong climatic stress all year from long winter to hot, dry summer. They need to have character, the same character you will find in their fragrance, body and structure. To know Sagrantino you must learn where it is born, lives and grows and the vegetation all around. Only after this you can say you know it.”

The 2012 we were drinking had character to spare, and Francesco’s low key thumbprint was evident. Unfiltered and unrefined, it wasn’t a punch in the mouth or a kiss on the cheek, more a balancing act of power and finesse, of density and structure. A good middle-of-the-road introduction for newbies to a grape that can be ornery. It would be interesting to see what it will be with five to ten years of cellaring.

Author’s note: When you reach a certain age, time may be the wine’s friend, but not yours. I plan to open the bottle that Francesco gave me this autumn!  

The artisanal wines of Colle del Saraceno make a personal statement. They are as serious, direct and unassuming as their creator. Grechetto 2015 was lively and savory, far better than many I had on the trip that were basically forgettable house wines that come in a quarto. It was a literal and figurative eye opener at 10:30 in the morning. Galdino is a proprietary blend of mostly Sagrantino with Sangiovese, Cabernet and Merlot. Francesco doesn’t adjust the percentages from year to year, in contrast to what seems a common practice used to maintain product consistency. As he pointed out, “The wine will change anyway because each season is different.” The proof was in front of me, successive vintages that couldn’t have been more unalike. A duo of smooth, darkly fruity and rich Sagrantino Passito topped off the morning. The older one had the elegance and depth of a vintage Port, the other more like a Tawny that needs time to grow up and fill out. Francesco hopes that his wines “…tell about the land they come from, wonderful and welcoming but hard and reserved at the same time.” On that score he has nothing to worry about.

On the way back , I pictured Virgil sharing a bottle with him, praising his small estate and contemplating the winemaker’s words: “If you learn to listen to nature, every day it teaches you something about life.”

all photos via http://www.cantinabotti.com/

I recently published a short piece in Wine Enthusiast (Feb 2015) on Sagrantino Passito, Montefalco’s wonderful dessert wine. With only 300 words in a front-of-book story, however, I was somewhat limited in what I could cover, which was especially hard considering the great conversations I had with several area winemakers. In fact, my original draft was more than double the allotted length.

As such, I figured I would use this space to cover some of the broader topics I was not able to fit into the WE piece.

It’s well-documented how Sagrantino was not vinified as a dry wine until the 1970s, but it is rarely discussed what this shift in focus to Sagrantino Secco actually did to the style of the passito wine. Perticaia’s Alessandro Meniconi posited that it must have been drier than it is today, if only for the reason that it was primarily imbibed with savory meals. Meniconi told me that, despite the common story that passito was reserved for sacraments and special events and celebrations, it was also typically brought out when company came to visit, or even for important family meals, where it was paired with lamb or beef. (The alternate beverage of the time, vino della casa, was an everyday wine that wasn’t of particular note.)

All that said, it’s a reasonable assumption that passito was vinified to a drier taste than it is currently, where it is typically imbibed after dinner, with (or as) dessert. After all, Amarone, the classic passito wine of Veneto − though sweeter than many − is considered a dry table wine.

This is, of course, merely speculation.

(I should also note that my phone connection with Meniconi was not particularly good, so I hope I correctly conveyed his opinions/sentiments. If not, mi dispiace Alessandro!)

Speaking of Amarone, Filippo Antonelli, winemaker of Antonelli San Marco, shared some fascinating insight about the winemaking process of passito − in particular some comparisons to Amarone.

“For the most complex flavor development, it’s important to keep the temperature cool, which maximizes drying time,” he told me. “Compared to the Corvina grapes in Valpolicella [used for Amarone], for example, Sagrantino berries are much smaller, and have higher potential alcohol levels, so it might take us only 4-6 weeks to get to the right concentration of sugar, as opposed to several months there.”

Though many wineries are still drying grapes on old-fashioned graticci (trellises, or racks), in special open-air rooms made for passito, others have developed facilities to better control the environment. When in Montefalco, I visited Terre de la Custodia’s special fruit chamber, a temperature and humidity-controlled room that perfectly replicates the ideal-late harvest conditions for making passito wine, every year, regardless of Mother Nature’s plans. In addition, this room keeps out pests and bacteria that can sometimes cause havoc.

“Normally passito can have off smells when the drying is not perfect,” TdlC sommelier Daniele Sevoli said. “This is true for any passito wine: Vin Santo, Passito di Pantelleria, they all can have this off smell. But we never have to deal with that, because we always have a perfect, controlled drying of the grape.”

Is this “fruit chamber” a brilliant modern winemaking technique, or does it take away some of the romance of winemaking? The differences in vintages? The variety of terroir? Perhaps a bit of both, really, although it’s hard to blame a winery, when considering the cost of vinifying passito year after year.

I was a little concerned to see Merlot – headed for some dry blend − basking in the fruit chamber at TdlC. Amarone is what it is, and has its devotees, but I’m not sure I love the idea of Montefalco going down that same path for wines other than passito. Then again, as with everything else, surely the market will decide whether they like or dislike this technique, and perhaps there’s room for this new idea alongside the traditional styles.