Over four years at SommSelect, I’ve come to believe that no red wines in the world can match what Bordeaux achieves in the $25 range. You see them regularly in our Daily Offers: Bordeaux wines that aren’t merely distinguished but have some age to boot, at fire-sale prices. And yet here I am again with a Cabernet blend from Italy’s Veneto region, where the “Bordeaux” grapes have thrived for centuries, and I’ve changed my tune.
This bottle-aged stunner ranks right up there among the best Bordeaux values we’ve ever offered, and don’t just take my admittedly biased word for it—the entire SommSelect panel found enthusiastic consensus on Giusti’s 2014 “Antonio.” This is one of those wines that came our way unsolicited, its label not telling us much beyond its Northeastern Italian origins, but once it was poured, it was like Cinderella trying on the glass slipper. The depth, the complexity that comes with a few years’ aging, and the price made for a perfect fit. To keep things interesting (and Italian), the Giusti family includes a small percentage of the local Recantina grape in the blend with the Cabernets (Sauvignon and Franc) and Merlot, but this wine would be perfectly at home on Bordeaux’s Right Bank. For those of you who care most about what’s in the bottle rather than what’s on the label, this is flat-out awesome at this price!
The Giustis are a noble family in the Conegliano area of the Veneto—Prosecco country—but they hadn’t really been in the wine business until Ermenegildo Giusti started his namesake label in 2002. He and his wife purchased a few hectares of vines that had been in her family and quickly followed that with an array of acquisitions (growing their holdings to 75 hectares) throughout the Montello and Pieve hills, not far from the Veneto’s regional border with Friuli-Venezia Giulia. One of their crown jewels is an ancient Benedictine abbey in the town of Nervesa della Battaglia, right next to which is the source vineyard for today’s wine: Tenuta Aria Valentina. The vineyards here fall within the Montello-Colli Asolani DOC zone, in the hills northwest of Treviso, in soils of iron-rich clay.
Giusti has been among the handful of producers who’ve invested in reviving the local Recantina variety, which is said to have thrived in the region prior to the Napoleonic era—the time most experts pinpoint as the arrival of the Cabernets and other French grapes in the region. It lends a dark, brambly, blackcurrant fruit component to the “Antonio” blend, along with a touch of black pepper, lending a little twist to a wine that is otherwise a dead ringer for top-tier Right Bank Bordeaux (they do make a varietal Recantina, called “Augusto”).
The hills north of Treviso are a relatively cool growing zone for Cabernet Sauvignon, extending the harvest into October and producing fruit of impeccable balance. The 2014 “Antonio” was fermented in stainless steel and aged in used French oak barriques for a little over a year, after which it spent a short period aging in bottle before its initial release. Now with several years of evolution behind it, the wine is in its ideal drinking window, showing a level of refinement and complexity rarely encountered at this price point. In the glass, it shines a deep garnet red moving to a pink/orange rim, with aromas of blackcurrant, cassis, red plum, cedar, camphor, tobacco, and graphite. These sensations carry over to the silky, medium-bodied palate, which has knit together beautifully—the wine is ready to enjoy now and should be enjoyed with gusto after a 15-minute decant in Bordeaux stems. Pair it with burgers, steaks, lamb chops, or, in the spirit of the Treviso region from which the wine hails, a wintry
pasta e fagioli. A noble wine with a “peasant” dish? Always works!
