SommSelect Editorial Director David Lynch returns with a few words on one of our top offerings of 2016, now back in a new vintage:
One of the most popular red wines we offered in all of 2016 was the 2014 Etna Rosso from Murgo—a wine that delivers so much authenticity and pleasure for under $20 that you end up chastising yourself for not getting more when you had the chance. Over the last few months, in fact, we’ve offered several truly transcendent wines at this price point, and honestly, nothing gets us more jazzed; whenever I can steer someone away from some mass-produced Coca-Cola wine and toward a real wine of place for the same money, I feel like I’ve done something good with my life. So I’m feeling good today: The recently released 2015 Etna Rosso from Murgo picks right up where the ’14 left off, transporting us to one of the world’s most exotic and dynamic wine zones—Sicily’s Mount Etna, Europe’s largest active volcano, where the reds from the native Nerello Mascalese deliver aromatics and energy akin to red Burgundy. There are several regional wines vying for the “Burgundy of Italy” crown, but in my experience lately, Etna has been running away with it. This is a wine not to miss.
The ever-erupting Mount Etna, whose slopes of black, sandy ash and pumice rock were among the few pockets of Europe to escape the phylloxera menace of the late-19th century, is hard to beat when it comes to dramatic wine locales. Still scattered with as many abandoned vineyards as producing ones, the classic Etna image is one of gnarled, old, bush-trained vines known as alberelli (‘little trees’). Vineyard altitudes on the volcano reach up to 1,000 meters, making it some of the highest-elevation viticulture in Europe and the only ‘cool’ region of Sicily, which otherwise has more in common with North Africa than much of mainland Italy when it comes to climate. Baron Emanuele Scammacca del Murgo, a longtime Italian diplomat, decided to re-dedicate his family’s Etna property to wine production back in 1981, a time when Etna wine was little talked-about—most of what was produced from the ancient vineyards here was sold to cooperatives for bulk wine.
To say that Etna has been a “gold rush” since then is a dramatic understatement. Big Sicilian (and non-Sicilian) wine producers have flooded into the zone; while in the late-1980s there were maybe a half-dozen serious commercial producers on Etna, that number has since ballooned to more than 100. But it’s hard to argue with the results: we’ve offered our share of newer-generation Etna wines here, many of them superb, but none that match the value-for-dollar in this wine. From their 25 hectares of high-altitude vineyards in Zafferana Etnea, on the eastern slopes of the volcano—a less populous area of wine production compared to the more densely planted north slope—the Murgo family’s diverse production includes excellent Champagne-method sparklers from Nerello Mascalese that also over-deliver at a remarkably low price.
We had an interesting experience with this 2015: We first tasted it several months ago, when it had first arrived in the US, and it felt a little sharp and disjointed. It was kind of hard to believe, given how fantastic the 2014 had been, so we decided to table the offer indefinitely and re-visit the wine sometime down the line. About a week ago, Ian Cauble brought me a glass of red to taste blind, and as I marveled at its bright cherry aromas, its lithe, mineral texture, and its overall balance, I was torn between Santenay in Burgundy and a lighter Nebbiolo from Northern Piedmont or the Valtellina region of Lombardy. He’d tripped me up again: It was this wine, a completely different animal from the bottle we tasted previously. It was a really good lesson, and it’s not the first time something like this has happened—sometimes travel takes its toll on a wine, and they need some time to knit together after they’ve landed. This one knit together beautifully, and I expect it’ll be another sensation with our subscribers.
In the glass it’s a light ruby-red with some orange/pink reflections on the rim. The nose has a touch of tomato leaf, rose petal, and savory herbs interwoven with crisp, tangy cherry/berry fruit—overall a smidge brighter and more buoyant than the 2014 we offered previously. The acid and smoky, volcanic minerality give the wine energy and grip, while the tannins remain fine-grained and soft. It’s a medium-weight wine and it’s ready to drink now: Serve it at about 60 degrees in Burgundy bowls to highlight its perfumed aromatics, and now that summer is here, I can’t resist an “eggplant parm” recommendation. It’s a feel-good pairing if there ever was one. Enjoy! — David Lynch
