A little while ago I put together my Winter of Wine, and wrote a lengthy discussion of the experience. Since then I’ve probably consumed another fifty or so bottles, totaling one hundred seventy five wines rated. One of the notable discussions from that post was that I have never rated a wine 5 stars. Not willing to identify something as perfect has plenty of deep-seated issues surrounding it but here I am, progressing as a human being – and defining what I believe is my first all-around 5-star wine. I might go as far as to say it is the perfect wine.
I’ll split this post into a couple sections. The first will be specifically about this wine, and what you need to know if you want to drink it. Next I’ll talk about what we can glean from what’s on the label. Lastly a ‘why the heck not’ deep dive about this specific wine since it is my first perfect wine. Feel free to grab a drink; 1600 words ~7 minutes reading time, ignoring links.
Section One – The Red Stuff in the Bottle Made from Grapes
What it smells like:
Plums, dark cherries, blueberry, faint sweet blackberry, little caramel or butterscotch and a bit of alcohol on the nose
What it looks like:
Beautiful dark shimmery red wine with long legs
What it tastes like:
Bright fruit early on, cherry plum blackberry with a reasonable amount of acid, wood mingles after, mainly tasting of leather. Leaves the palate dry followed by a spicy black pepper feel.
After decanting:
The best word is gentler. The nose itself is softer and sweeter – the little alcohol has faded, and all that remains is fruit with a new touch of pepper.
The flavor profile still has acid on the front, but toned down, back end tannins are much subdued, with the pepper bite less abrasive but still present (tending to still really show itself if consuming with food.)
How to drink it:
The producer recommends drinking it at 18 degrees Celsius (64.4 F) I think it performs a little better slightly cooler. Treat it like the great wine that it is. Currently still fairly big and tannic, you can do a couple things to make it softer (including cellar it for a few years which I might do with a case.) Decant it – let it sit for an hour. Serve it at the right temperature (if you’re decanting it, don’t be shy about refrigerating the bottle then using the decanter for an hour.) Rinse your glass with a little wine before you drink it to clean your probably dirty glass. If you do these things, I give you my word that this will be one of the best, reasonably priced bottles of wine you will ever drink.
Section Two – The Label
What do all these words on the bottle mean?
Tommasi Family Estates is the big family winery who own different estates in a variety of locations – those wines have various brandings. This wine is from Poggio al Tufo seen at the bottom here:
Maremma Toscana – Maremma evidently means salty swamp or salty marsh – not what we want our wine to taste like. Let’s instead refer to this as meaning Southwestern Tuscany.
Rompicollo – Translation here seems to mean something to the degree of ‘neck breaking.’ Evidently Tufo-rich soils are hard to farm, so they decided to mention how hard it was to dig the ground on the bottle, and I suppose neck breaking is the Italian cultural equivalent of back breaking. Tufo, is the same as tufa, which seems to be basically limestone. More info for all casual geologists here.
Quick Aside:
I often actually get frustrated with Italian/Spanish wines. They name them after regions – as opposed to grapes. It’s kind of like if you went to the grocery store and instead of there being blueberry jam and strawberry jam, they would call them Hammonton and Watsonville jam. You guys are making it harder for the consumer.
Stop it.
All that being said lets thank Tommasi for actually at least mentioning the grape types on the bottle. While they don’t specify the exact blend (on the front label at least,) this is a mix of 60% Sangiovese and 40% Cabernet Sauvignon.
Lastly we have the Vintage: 2012
Section Three – The Deep Dive
How they make the wine
Fermentation process happens for 10 days in stainless steel, but then they finish it in 12 months in Slavonian oak.
What happens when I google Slavonian oak?
I first learn that Slavonian oak is a sub species of quercus robur, the same species of French Oak, rather than a different tree a la American oak. Slavonia is a region in north east Croatia, a former part of Yugoslavia. The ancient romans knew it as Pannonia. Not to be confused with Slovenia, an actual nation in Europe. Supposedly these barrels are super awesome (I guess that’s why they mention them in their descriptions) – fairly popular in the Piedmont region of Italy. Banfi, another popular producer, uses similar wood. What makes the wood good? Compact fibers and tight grain. What makes the 65Hl barrel good? They’re big barrels which cut down on surface area, resulting in subtler flavors and softer tannins. Big barrels naturally hold more wine, which means bigger consistent batches but also has the downside of ‘mass production.’
Why any of this matters at all?
Mainly because Slavonian oak is cheaper than French Oak. Cheaper often doesn’t mean worse, and sometimes can be better. Akin to lobsters formerly being peasant/servant/poor man food but now selling at Whole Foods for $15 per pound. Back in the 1800s they were so abundant that four or five pound lobsters were considered too small. You can read more about that here.
It’s like how all of a sudden in the past decade it’s become cool for super nice restaurants to serve random animal innards. Think raspberries – silly spelling, good marketing, insanely priced. More expensive isn’t always better, sometimes the opposite.
The New York Times did a decent piece on why wine costs what it costs, but here are the big takeaways of where costs come from:
The grapes themselves: $1-$15 of value (unrelated, and I didn’t have time to dive into it, but Japan fruit is confusing, note these most expensive grapes ever.)
Barrel: A normal sized American Oak barrel costs $300-$500, French Oak $700-$4,000. Standard barrels hold 280 bottles, so add another $1-$15 per bottle in barrel costs. East European Oak barrels like the Slavonian oak cost around $500 for standard barrels, and naturally a lot less for shipping to the old world than American barrels simply due to geography. The bigger barrels will additionally be more economical.
Bottle: $.50 – $3
Corks $.10 – $1
Labels – $.25-$.75
So the two places you can save significant money on production are the grapes, and the wood. Tommasi is saving some money on the wood here. Cabernet and Sangiovese grapes (which make up Brunello’s) can be some of the higher priced grapes in the wine world, both of which are contained in this bottle.
Let’s talk about the grapes.
One of Italy’s best-known, highest rated, and most expensive wines are the Brunello di Montalcino – coming similarly from the South Western part of Tuscany. Despite years of denial from the region that their grapes were unique, recent scientific testing has shown that Brunello and Sangiovese are the same grape.
Here is an independent consumer guide vintage chart of that region:
The Brunello’s are certainly the most relevant, but the other two regions are close by and it is reasonable to include them here.
Here is what wine enthusiast’s vintage chart looks like:
Note from the original wine post, one of my favorite ‘expensive stuff’ bottles was this 2006 Brunello.
The 2010 vintage of that bottle sells for $240 retail (likely double that or more in most restaurants that stock it!)
How far is Poggio al Tufo from Poggio di Sotto (producer of the above wine)?
About 100 minutes by car (without traffic.) It only takes that long because of the roads in this part of Italy, in reality they are about ~76km (47 miles) apart. Even if there is an accident on Strada Provinciale della Badia di Sant’Antimo, or you stop for an espresso en route, we’re talking about pretty small geographical distances. Could I be missing something about the very different soils of the two places? Maybe. Could it be that the same Sangiovese grapes grown 50 miles away are pretty similar and Tommasi was smart enough to scoop it up? Probably.
Where does this leave us?
All it means is I consistently like these kinds of wines, which we learned before and I’ve found a much less expensive version (<$20!) that is ~100% of the way there of the super expensive (>$200) stuff, maybe better (I’m thinking lobsters again.) It’s also notable that I decided I liked this wine a LOT before ever knowing how close these two locations were, which is ultimately comfortably reassuring.
There is some more follow-up to be done here. What else does Tommasi produce from that winery? How much more does this impact the model of what I like? What years should we be looking for as they are released?
Mainly due to laziness, but partly because this says I’m hovering right around the optimal length for long form posts I will wrap it up here. Maybe in a follow-up I can do more analysis on other Tommasi wines, and what we can learn about other well priced producers.
Cheers.