2018 Chiara Condello Sangiovese ‘Tre Vigne’ Romagna

WSI94  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. 
100% Sangiovese from three vineyards parcels between 150m and 350m above sea level, with a north/northeast exposure.  One is clay-limestone, one is red clay with high spungone content, and the last is clay-limestone with veins of spungone. Vines are approximately 40 years old. The grapes were destemmed but not crushed, leaving whole berries intact. Fermentation was spontaneous in small stainless steel tanks (with temperture control), and open-top tronconic wood vats and tonneaux. Macerations lasted 15-25 days. Aging was for one year in used 3500L Slavonian oak botti. 14% alc.

This is really fabulous wine, lively, bright, a perfect accompaniment to a variety of savory dishes with superb balance between fruit (cola, cherry) and an elegant yet prominent structure that carries a long savory, bright finish, delicately enhanced by notes of dried herbs and earth. A MUST BUY! Great Deal!

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.

Chiara owns seven hectares of land, 4.8 of which are planted to Sangiovese, and the rest are split between woods and olive trees.  Her family also makes wine in Predappio under their own label called Condè, but Chiara works in her own way, with her own vineyards and own cellar.  Her first vintage was 2015, and in short time she’s combined her bright-eyed enthusiasm with a clear vision of what her Sangiovese should be.

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.