SommSelect Editorial Director David Lynch is back in Basilicata, Italy, where the impeccable Musto Carmelitano estate has created a new paradigm with their top-level Aglianico del Vulture bottling.
When we offered this wine’s “little brother” a few months ago, I asserted that southern Italy’s Aglianico grape belongs in the company of “noble” Italian reds such as Sangiovese and Nebbiolo. At least one passionate Italophile took issue with that, saying that Aglianico had “no business” being mentioned in the same sentence as those others. To him (and any less-vocal others) I’ll repeat today what I said then: This is one of Italy’s greatest native red grapes, hindered only by less bottled evidence in comparison to better-known, better-capitalized wine zones like Barolo (Nebbiolo) and Montalcino (Sangiovese). This wine is 100% Aglianico from Monte Vulture, a spent volcano in northern Basilicata, one of the two traditional regions in southern Italy—Campania’s Taurasi is the other—where Aglianico shines brightest. But, up until very recently, no one paid much attention to these places. I’m not sure Aglianico has even made it into the canon of “testable” grape varieties on the Master Sommelier exam. This, in my opinion, is a travesty—but okay, fine, let’s take advantage of it by drinking this structured, perfumed, ageworthy 2012 Aglianico del Vulture “Pian del Moro” from Musto Carmelitano for less than $30. This wine hints at great Northern Rhône Syrah in its balance of power and finesse, and I have visions of it finding an audience with a new generation of wine collectors. There’s no doubt that this wine is cellar-worthy; the question is whether people are willing to break out of their comfort zones to acknowledge it.
In my experience, the only Aglianico-based wines I’ve ever seen in an auction catalog, or someone’s cellar, are older vintages of Mastroberardino Taurasi (whose ’68 is a legendary vintage) and the cult wines Terra di Lavoro (made from Aglianico and Piedirosso by the Galardi family in northernmost Campania) and Montevetrano (made near Salerno and blending Aglianico with Cabernet and Merlot). During my many years in restaurants, particularly in the early 2000s, some modern interpretations of Aglianico del Vulture found fans on wine lists, but these tended to wow people with brute force—the fashion of the day—rather than beguile them with complexity. In many cases, these wines also had a healthy dollop of new oak on them as well.
As I’ve noted before, it’s tempting to view the whole of southern Italy, reaching down as it does toward the tip of North Africa, as a uniformly hot climate. Basilicata, however, is mostly mountainous, with the highest-elevation regional capital (Potenza) in Italy. Monte Vulture is an extinct volcano in the northern reaches of this tiny region, with vineyards the climb as high as 700 meters in some places, and as such this is a relatively cool climate—providing the already late-ripening Aglianico with an extremely long growing season. It’s not uncommon for Aglianico del Vulture to be harvested in mid- or even late November (even later than Piedmont’s Nebbiolo in some instances).
From a grower/winemaker perspective, the magic of Aglianico is that it is both hardy—thick-skinned and resistant to disease—and capable of improving with age. Some similarly resilient varieties (Carignan comes to mind) never manage to shed their “workhorse” image and remain relegated to blends. Aglianico has proved its mettle as a solo act—thanks in large part to its aromatic profile. In comparison to both Sangiovese and Nebbiolo, Aglianico is a more full-throttle variety—loaded with color, extract, acid, and tannin. Traditionally (and this continues to be true in most cases), I’ve compared Aglianico del Vulture to the Malbec-based wines of southwest France; there’s a similar, often fiercely tannic structure and dark fruit profile, if perhaps less of the ‘animal’ element in the Aglianico. “Pian del Moro” has a level of polish and elegance that suggests a new paradigm—an Aglianico red with a more noble bearing.
The Musto Carmelitano property has been in the same family for generations, and boasts some incredibly old vines on Monte Vulture. For generations, the family sold their grapes to others, but in 2007, Elisabetta Musto Carmelitano and her brother, Luigi, started bottling their own wines. This is a small-scale labor of love: they organically farm about 32 acres of vines in and around the village of Maschito, and “Pian del Moro” is their top-of-the-line bottling, sourced from 80- to 100-year-old, bush-trained Aglianico vines grown at some of the highest altitudes in the zone. These are heirloom vines that were planted by Elisabetta and Luigi’s grandfather, and they do them proud with this focused, brooding wine: It was fermented on indigenous yeasts in stainless steel and aged in tank for one year, followed by another year of aging in 500-liter oak tonneaux and yet another year in bottle before release.
In the glass, the 2012 “Pian del Moro” Aglianico del Vulture is a deep, nearly opaque ruby with black and purple highlights, with aromas of wild blackberries, black currants, cassis, damp violets, tobacco, tar, licorice, and crushed black rocks. It’s a wine that greets you with a low, wolf-like growl, decidedly black-fruited and smoky and plenty tannic, although those tannins are nowhere near as ferocious as is typical—they’re silty and fine-grained, with a ferrous quality to them that gives the wine a pronounced mineral grip. It is full-bodied but not syrupy, structured overall like a wine from Côte-Rôtie while hinting at everything from Left Bank Bordeaux to Cahors in its aromas and flavors. If you’re having a bottle now, decant it a good hour before serving at 60-65 degrees in Bordeaux stems, preferably with some well-marbled, medium-rare beef with a good char on it. And if I can convince you to cellar an unfamiliar, $27 bottle of Italian red wine, I assure you it’s got 10 years in it at a minimum. To me, it belongs on a short list of new-generation Italian collectibles. Join the club!
— D.L.
