2018 Chiara Condello Sangiovese ‘Tre Vigne’ Romagna

A MUST BUY! Great Deal!

WSI94  This is really fabulous wine. Aromas of crushed stones, ripe red cherries, notes of wild herbs, musk and earth. Juicy, medium-bodied and fresh; red cherries and cranberry, refined tannins. Pairing suggestions: Salumi and aged sheep’s cheese; garlicky tomato based pasta dishes.

Chiara Condello is a young winemaker located in the town of Predappio in Emilia-Romagna, specifically Romagna. Emilia and Romagna are lumped together into a broader administrative region, but from the fall of the Roman Empire until the unification of Italy, they had always been separate in history, culture, and dialect.

Romagna is no stranger to Sangiovese; many ampelographers believe it originates here and not in Tuscany. Predappio is one of twelve villages that give their names to Sangiovese subzones authorized as of the 2011 vintage. It is located in the foothills of the Apennines, and is characterized by a sedimentary soil called spungone, which is relatively young (three million years old, from the Pliocene epoch).  It contains abundant, intact shells of marine life, often quite large, and is chunky and porous, held together by a calcareous sandstone “cement.