Wednesday, April 04, 2012

Garantito IGP: Serra della Contessa 1999 Etna Rosso DOC


This time Luciano Pignataro takes the stand:

The Blend: Nerello Mascalese and Nerello Cappuccio
Price: 25-30 Euros in wine shops
Fermentation and aging: In wood

There are wines one drinks for work, and others that give reason to the work. In the latter one seeks personality, though they shouldn't be eccentric, they should be true-to-type but not hide-bound, and clean but recognizable on nose and palate. And they must put the face and voice of those who made them into the glass, voyaging through space and time, and allowing one to find them.

Benanti is lucky to work in Sicily, but Sicily is just as lucky to have him. For what would Sicilian chocolate have been in the 1990s without this bitter, fine, faded, elegant, extraordinary corrective given by the puffs of Mount Etna?

The Greek individualism that provides the anthropologic foundation of most Italians leads to insurmountable problems in the organization of daily life, but also provides unsurpassable peaks in the Arts and in Beauty.

Like drinking Serra della Contessa 1999, freshness with fumè accents and echoes of wild cherries, savory, not the slightest sweetness, so far from the good volcano, from the Trout the Serva Brothers, who have already been noted by the Giovani IGP for their new dish, caramelized eel with honey, catch in the springs of Santa Susanna in Rivodutri.

Then you take a sip, and another. And you finish it. Thanks also to its freshness, which has always been the key to wine. The vintage is superb, bringing out the best in whites and reds from the Val D'Aosta to Etna. And what a wine.

From which I awaken in this body, after a long, long journey

Luciano Pignataro

Viagrande (CT) - Via Garibaldi, 475 - Tel. 095/7893438 - Fax 095/7893677 - benanti [at] vinicolabenanti.it - www.vinicolabenanti.it - Bottles produced: 165.000 - Hectares under vine: 55 - Varietals: Nerello Mascalese, Nerello Cappuccio, Nero d'Avola.

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