David’s ‘Everyday Italian Wine’ – 45
Each Friday, David Brenner of Villasfor2 in Abruzzo selects a delicious, top-value 'Everyday Italian Wine' for you to enjoy at home – or on your Abruzzo vacation.
Montepulciano D'Abruzzo. 'Tenuta di Testarossa'. Pasetti. 2004
An absolutely superb wine to take us into the Christmas and New Year festivities. Because more special meals are cooked at this time of year than any other, your efforts in the kitchen deserve a really special wine to accompany them – and that's a good enough reason to go over our usual €10/bottle 'Everyday Italian Wine' limit.
You might need to hunt around a little, but this 2004 'Tenuto di Testarossa' is certainly available to buy right now in the UK and USA in the £/$25-35 range (which is fantastic value) and I've seen it on a number of restaurant wine-lists too. Though at the usual rapacious mark-ups.
Before we taste, a little background, which is necessary really when we're talking about a wine of this quality. The Pasetti winery is based in the Abruzzo coastal town of Francavilla, a little to the south of Pescara. But the Montepulciano D'Abruzzo grapes that make 'Tenuta di Testarossa' are grown some distance inland in vineyards over 500m up between the Majella and Gran Sasso mountains.
These grapes aren't generally harvested before November each year – about the same time as the September-gathered vino novello is being released – almost suicidally late when you think how autumn frosts and rains could so easily wipe out the crop.
But the trade-off for this display of vinous brinkmanship is an incredible concentration of flavour within those grapes. If you can get away with it, the rewards are stunning. Then follows a couple of years in wood, before the final release in a flamboyantly-labelled, absurdly sexy, tall, thin bottle.
Open this an hour or so before you want to drink it. Better yet, decant it. Take a sniff and enjoy the huge rush of black cherry, liquorice and cloves. In the glass, 'Tenuta di Testarossa' is a dark and deep wine. Have a taste. That spicy cherriness now joined by a little overlay of vanilla from the time in wood. The finish is long and dry. There's a softness here too, tempered with just a little tannin, that rounds everything off to perfection.
Don't try and match this wine with food equally as rich and deep. You'll set-off a clash of competing tastes and flavours. Keep it simple. 'Tenuta di Testarossa' really will drink beautifully with a traditional roast turkey Christmas lunch. Perhaps even more so with roast goose. The last food-and-Testarossa combination I tried was with gently-braised rabbit at the wonderful Ai Vecchi Sapori restaurant in Lanciano. Hardly seasonal – but just perfect.
At A Glance…
- This week's featured wine: Tenuta di Testarossa
- Vintage: 2004. (Others to look out for – 2002 and 2006. The highly-encouraging 2007 will be released sometime in 2010)
- Producer: Pasetti
- Designation: DOC
- Grape: 100% Montepulciano D'Abruzzo
- Strength: 14%
- This bottle cost €16.50
Pasetti
Though Pasetti produce one or two other pricier wines, 'Tenuta di Testarossa' is their flagship and the one that's dearest to their hearts, made from a select family plot of 40-year old vines. You'll find much more about the wine – and the rest of the catalogue on the Pasetti website – (choose the HTML option, or you'll go mad waiting for the Flash version to load) – but the real Christmas clincher is the story of how 'Testarossa' came to be named and its heritage. It's a delightful and romantic way to end the wine-drinking year.
That's it for this year – the next 'Everyday Italian Wine' blog will be on Friday 2 January, when we'll be reviewing one of Italy's most famous white wines. A reputation that some reckon is entirely undeserved. Does 'famous' equal 'good' ? And more importantly, is it a wine you'll enjoy drinking at home and on your Villasfor2 Abruzzo vacation ?
May all your Christmasses be white. Or red. Or possibly pink. And a Happy New Year !
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