In 2019 winter presented a good amount of rain. There was some light snow too, in 3 occasions. I started the pruning very late as usual, in the first week of March. April showed the incredible diurnal excursion one can find in this corner of Irpinia: day temperatures touched 23-24 degrees and night 2-3 degrees. Bud break was one week later than usual, around the third week of April, and then came a cold and rainy May, with nights at 6 degrees and 100 mm of rain (average is here around 650-700 mm per year). June was perfectly dry, allowing a regular blossoming and good shaping grapes. The summer was very hot, with some nice and providential showers. Veraison showed early (considering Aglianico’s vegetative cycle here, for me comparable only to some areas of Riesling - analytical data in wine included), around the 10th of August, but then it stopped due to the strong heat and then started completely around the 20th of August to end one month later. Temperature dropped a bit in September that was beautiful, with again some good and necessary rain. The same amount of rain showed in October, with a stunning sunlight: warm days and cold nights. I harvested nearly 20 days after other producers finished their harvest. This happened after some rainy days. The grapes though showed incredibly healthy.
Grapes came from 3 vineyards with old wines: two of them today are 50 and 45 years old, one of them was planted before Phylloxera came here in 1931. The vineyards are at an altitude of around 530 meters above the sea level, facing south to south-west, in an area which benefits from a considerable ventilation and never misses rain; geologically speaking they are 5 million years old and present remains of molluscs and deposits that document the fact that it was once a submerged beach.
The soil is very complex: rich in stones but also in volcanic components that came from ancient eruptions. The soil is clayey and silty, sometimes marly or sandy - interspersed with litharenite. Sometimes more calcareous, at others more tuffaceous.
The vineyards are cultivated without digging or ploughing into the soil that is left grassy (no till), and without cutting the tops of the vines, that are manually roll along the cables, to favour the maximum phenolic ripeness. I avoid fertilisation and do not use any systemic products.
To further preserve the health of the plants, I use copper and sulphur (mostly in liquid form) together with seaweed extract and herbs, propolis and fungi.
The vines were harvested on November 18th – 2019.
The crop was about 18 quintals per hectare, nearly 11 hl/ha in wine with an average of 13,5% alcohol.
The grapes were destemmed and then inspected berry by berry over the sorting table by 6 people. After that, I put them whole berry in untoasted wooden vat and in ceramic amphoras where they had a spontaneous fermentation, not adding any sulphide or pied de cuve.
Several pumping over and punching down were made, each day, being not afraid of “air”. Alcoholic fermentation lasted about 3 weeks. Maceration lasted from 70 to 120 days, depending on the vat.
Racked whole berries went through a sort of late crushing on a vertical hydraulic press with zero pressure, I called it a “pigiatura tardiva”, since actually I do not want pressed wine.
Malolactic spontaneous fermentation occurred in the end of Summer 2020, when the upper part of the underground cellar reached 20 degrees Celsius. This happened from the third week of August to the first week of September.
Then I moved the wine with gravity in the lower part of the underground cellar, which is at around 15 meters below ground meters: where the air temperature goes from 1 degree in the winter to 14 degrees in the summer, allowing the wine to have a natural clarification. There I have large untoasted wooden barrels where the wine was left to mature until September 2023, when it was bottled without any filtration. There are 3151 bottles.
The Aglianico, as demonstrated by recent (2021) genetic studies of ten of the best Universities and Research Centers in Italy, has a unique genetic identity, distant from any other varietal or family of grapes in the wordl. The Aglianico is one of very few varieties at the genetic root of the extraordinary ampelographic diversity in Italy, that without doubt has the richest variety of vines in the world: one sixth Italian vines are from the Campania region. Therefore the Aglianico is a vine rooted in the history of viticulture.
Taurasi Aglianico requires a very late harvest, kind of unique for a dry wine. No-sweet, no-overripe grapes: in Irpinia it can occur in November and without Botrytis, making Taurasi DOCG the lastest variety to be harvested in Italy (in terms of dry wine).
(in latin Hirpinia, from “hirpus”= “wolf” a word coming in the pre-estruscan population language)
Is a sub region of Campania. Irpinia is a territory that occupies around 2,800 Km², two thirds of which are covered by mountains and the other third by hills. The DOCG Taurasi belongs only to Irpinia, with only 447 ha - 70% of which are in a specific area called Alta Valle del Calore, where altitude is from 400 to 700 meters above sea level. Here, where I made my estate, the Aglianico has the longest vegetative cycle among all the wine varietals, from bud break of mid-April to the harvest up to mid-November.
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