Read about Uncorked and Cultivated’s annual bespoke wine and food tours for small groups in the Italian autumn to drinkable destinations.
We are regular hosts to Italian tours; with two in 2013, Tuscany–Piemonte and afterwards Sicily. Guests get to know their coach drivers, see starred chefs serve their plates, have winery owners and guides make them welcome and discover quality views from their hotel suites.
On entering the cantina at Frank Cornelissen in Solicchiata (CT) there is a big feeling of anticipation. I have drunk the wines for years but never visited the place of their conception.
Now is the moment. Frank is very easy on the explanation. First point to understand that Etna is a sloping vineyard expanse shaped by its eruptions, so the soil type is basalt, or weathered lava rock, immensely deep and free draining.
Spotless ageing area for amphorae
At this property, all the carefully hand-selected grapes from vineyards higher up the mountain are processed in one tonne fermenters, with individual management. After pressing they are matured in ampho
rae-in a beautifully-prepared amphorae room where one spies a spotless storage facility.
Now let’s be real. These odd-shaped wine containers, usually about 400 litre capacity, are difficult to manage, clean, fill etc. So Frank has set his up in an easily-established mezzanine floor to view, taste, sample and work around. It’s the sort of place which feels good, and one expects some pretty clean looking wines as result. This place ticks.
What will the style be? Unwooded red wines from the ancient vineyards up the Etna slopes, there for decades, and made from the inhabitants-nerello mascalese and to a lesser extent, nerello capuccio (Cornelissen uses very little capuccio). Pale coloured yet voluminous, apparently light in the mouth yet they build as you swallow and de-bunk that thought. They are just plain serious Etna DOC, naturally-made, wines of origin reflecting a unique terroir.
Frank offered a selection of his 2011 harvest sampled from the amphorae. A very good year on Etna, late though, finishing at the end of October.
Check out the limpid colour-amphorae tasting
Munjebel Rosso 8 Classico 2011 (8th edition of this wine); is a blend of 2010 and 2011 (16% of the older year passed over the younger, and pressed); AUD 45 ; 16%; 100% mascalese; a wine of mild density but volumes of black fruit aroma, fresh and heady, fruit passion generated while aging in such a pristine environ; palate restrained then mouth sweet from fruit+alcohol, not hot; long savoury tannins which are bitters-sweet as in morello cherry; yummy with mature salumi. Vineyards supplying: Porcaria, Marchesa Soprana, Verzella, Chiusa Spagola and Monte Colla.
I retasted this wine again five months late, again in Sicily, in a mascalese brand assessment tasting, finding the wine even more ethereal. The wine simply smells heavenly, then there is the long, slow building palate of black fruits and dancing flavours from the elegance.
Munjebel Rosso 8
The Cornelissen reds get more exciting as we go up the brand chain-into single vineyard wines, or just plain special places.
I was very stoked by the Munjabel Rosso 8 VA (Vigne Alta) 2011, AUD 55; 15.6%; a “high vines” blend of two high elevation contrada-Barbabecchi (910 m) and Guardiola (850m); nose intensity shows up the floral notes of mascalese from altitude, herbs, mint, spice, powdery tannins; so there is plenty to think about.
Barbabecchi vineyard-910 metres; centurion vines
Munjebel Rosso 8 MC 2011 (8th edition of this wine); AUD 55 ; 17%; 100% mascalese planted ungrafted in 1948 (780 m) single vineyard wine; comes from a non-lava rock vineyard, sandy-clay topsoils which do not mute the perfume, but give a different palate, much more tannin and brilliant reds in the colour. Also tasted a second time in Sicily, in late October.
Spring scene-Frank Cornelissen in his Barbabecchi vineyard
There was no tasting of Magma Rosso IGT ; usually a super single vineyard selection (USD 200), assuming that a wine was not made or not declared from the 2011 vintage. Yet reading afterwards, the 9th edition from this vintage has since been released from the Barbabecchi vineyard. Magma is the molten volcanic material thrown out by Etna in its periodic eruptions, one is happening currently on a minor scale.
Top wine of the house-single vineyard selection
So look out for a bottle of Munjebel.
There is something simply amazing to view a winery making its top wines in a series of earthenware jars.
Is there shock-horror? Yes for a technocrat trained on the finer points of grades of stainless steel.
But no for someone on a path of discovery to understand just what the practitioners do when there is a choice to return to the roots of winemaking practice.
And the use of clay pots has been a natural winemaking event year-on-year in Georgia for as far back as 6000 years BC.
Recently a colleague advised me that a 2012 trip to this old world winemaking country included a visit to a monastery using the clay pot containers continuously for 1000 years (a lot of vintages there to build up tartrate!)
So I was recently on the path of discovery in Sicily to visit two famous properties using earthenware jars for winemaking and aging (COS in Vittoria) and Cornelissen (on Etna) who ages new wine similarly.
There is a space in between with the technology path-that of using oak barrels as storage vessels, and over the past decade used, large (3-5,000 litre) format casks have proved to be valuable aging means for high quality wines.
Casks displaced earthenware vessels as they were more practical. However keeping large casks fresh and clean is a never-ending job, and at times capable of going wrong (cask has to be burnt).
Also the cask remains practical for making larger volumes of wine, while re-introducing the clay pot makes sense for small parcel winemaking as pot management is a lot simpler than in the 15th century.
Making and aging wine in clay pots is essentially the production of wine un-oaked; so the revered barrel used in some winemaking societies, goes out the door!
However, this is a more natural process because the oak tannin taken from a barrel is replaced by natural tannins extracted by weeks, and even months of allowing the wine to macerate with skin and seed, not rushed and of course over a winter where temperatures are preserving, and anti-oxidant unwanted.
COS Rami 2010; IGT; 12% (AUD 20) is golden-yellow, orange wine; smelling of marzipan, sherry and marmalade, clearly not varietal but a product of the process; lots of lovely flavour and layers of texture/taste; full on body, not shy on dryness, though only ten days on skins, clearly high pH.
This is very plucky drink as I chewed green olives and marvelled at the after-taste of this wine. The grape blend is two-the native grapes inzolia and grecanico. Clearly no preservative added.
COS Rami 2010-400 litre amphora-made
On a return visit to COS I tasted Rami 2011; IGT, 12% (AUD 30) with a great deal of elegance in colour and nose; more elevated than 2010 but emphatically textural. Note the own-design bottle which is a copy of an ancient Sicilian wine container, commemorating the establishment of the biodynamic vineyard and business from 1980.
COS Pithos 2010; IGT; 13% (AUD 30) is not heavily coloured; just a nice cherry red hue and engaging aroma which says-have a drink; there is earth and currants, then the palate subtle, soft, long, a little chalky from six months on skins, a good result to have this tannin level for wine of such modest colour density, not too drying, just lovely. Eat with some salami and marvel at the flavour mix, chilled is better. In Roman times a Pithos was a 2-3,000 litre clay wine storage vessel. Is 60% nero d’avola, 40% frappato.
COS Pithos-engaging unwooded nero d’avola e frappato blend
The 30 hectare COS vineyard sits on the hot climate, red sand over clay soils of the Vittoria plain.
COS vineyard-south in spring
The winery uses 140 amphorae for wine making and aging, approximately 400 litres capacity, wax-lined, manufactured in Spain, set with sea sand to make a second level floor from which to undertake cellar procedures.
COS cantina-portion of amphorae room
Etna’s best-nerello mascalese grapes
Benanti is one great Etna DOC winery that everyone should visit-it’s a very old place set on a small hill (Monte Serre, 450 m) in the village of Viagrande-on Mount Etna’s eastern slopes.
For a start it is one of the originals to resurrect the Etnean vineyards which had fallen foul of development and the bulk mentality taken towards Sicilian wines in general from the 60s onwards.
Evidence of grape culture millions of years pre the settlement of Sicily was discovered on Etna in 1860 and since that time vineyard production has both expanded and contracted. Today it is expanding again.
The heart and soul of Etnean producers is their palmenti-original yet abandoned wineries that operated by gravity feed and totally by hand labour from the 1860s until the depression in the 1930s where the industry died but the vines survived.
Benanti’s palmento in Viagrande is mid-way through revitalisation but has not been restored for winemaking while other farmhouses are now the tasting cellars and reception halls.
The large wooden grape press handle counterbalanced by a huge granite boulder however gives prominance to the palmento’s doorway. These men must have been one tough race of winemakers to operate such fearsome manual equipment.
Old Palmento Press
Benanti’s seminal white wine is made from the native carricante grape-the best expression being in the Milo region a little north of the cellars, also growing at high elevation (900-950 m).
This wine rides on its fineness. It is pale, slow maturing, unassuming in the mouth until you strike the minerality and acidity, coming around your mouth in a thin stream.
Pietramarina-from carricante grape
It is high end seafood wine which the province of Catania exudes with-swordfish, sea bass, sea urchin, tuna, octapus, calamari and more.
Benanti’s best white is Pietramarina 2008 (96); not yet released; 12%; elegant, smells of small white apples; is lean and restrained; then 2006 (95); subtle and toasty to a small degree, is pale emerald green; then 2001 (96); green, no more colour than that, toasty but still chalky to taste from the dominant minerality.
Three gems, having also drunk the fourth one-2007 (95) when visiting last year.
Serre della Contessa; Etna Rosso DOC (designated red Etna wine) 2006 (90) 14%; contains the two great red grapes of the mountain, nerello mascalese (80%) and nerello cappucio (20%); just a lovely pair to drink here, and take with you.
It’s tobacco, sour cherry, lean and lingering, 2006 is drying, then 2004 (92), 14%; a little funky, dry also, then 2002 (97); 14%; positively great with its cherry-jam notes, extra fineness and line. Great drinks.
Why so good? Well its a mixed-age blend of vines; some pre-phylloxera, over 80 y-olds; falling all over the ground as untrellised and misshapen bushes, low cropping vines, others more recent no doubt giving the blend its vitality.
Ungrafted, 80-100 year-old nerello, pre-phylloxera
Benanti produce a single varietal red; Monovitigno Nerello Cappucio IGT Rosso di Sicilia 2005 (92) from Verzella; 13.5%; having perfume, sweet fruit and very easy to get into; somewhat uncomplicated, spicy and soft; as were 2000 (91); 14%; and 1998 (92); 13.5%; soft landing wines, nice drinks, easy to see that this variety softens the Etna Rosso DOC two grape blend.
Benanti make another super Etna Rosso DOC called Rovitello from a northern Etna site in Guardiola contrada, 750 m altitude, the same 80/20 blend of the two designated red varieties.
This was a great visit. The challenge now is to drink more of these excellent varieties native to Mount Etna.
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