If you haven’t had your mind exploded by a truly world-class red wine recently, today’s offer is guaranteed to do the trick. I’m dead serious. This towering 1.5-liter magnum is a showstopper. Even if your palate typically leads you to Bordeaux, Barolo, or Rioja, rest assured this is a brilliant wine that will impress lovers of all European reds.
I’m still reeling from the experience of enjoying it with my parents and a small group of friends. Blind-tasted in a lineup of far-higher-priced Hermitage and Grand Cru Burgundies, this bottle quickly became everyone’s runaway favorite. Even as the lone magnum on the table, it was the first bottle emptied! This wine’s grape variety and geographical origin might appear obscure at first glance, but experienced collectors and sommeliers will immediately recognize Elisabetta Foradori’s “Granato” as the mountainous Trentino region’s most iconic and critically acclaimed red. This wine has been stealing headlines and hearts for many years, and what a treat it is to experience Granato with some significant bottle age—from a magnum, no less!
[PLEASE NOTE: due to our limited allocation, we can only offer a maximum of three magnums per customer.]
Elisabetta Foradori grew up in the tiny, 2,000-person village of Mezzolombardo in the Dolomites, about 45 minutes south of the Austrian border in the Italian region of Trentino. Elisabetta’s father, a cooperative grape farmer, passed away when she was in middle school, leaving her to tend the vines. In her teens, she left high school and enrolled in a university oenology program. By age 19, she was supervising all aspects of harvest and production at Foradori.
Over the next decade, Elisabetta transitioned the family farm from bulk wine and grape sales into estate-bottling their own wines. In an era when this region was rapidly becoming overrun with the industrial production of cheap Pinot Grigio and Merlot, Elisabetta defiantly persisted with the same indigenous grape variety her father and grandfather farmed: Teroldego (said to be a genetic cousin of Syrah, Pinot Noir and/or Mondeuse). By the mid-1990s, Elisabetta—still in her early 30's—had become the world-renowned, public face of winemaking in the Dolomites, earning an array of top honors from international wine writers and critics. Twenty years later, Elisabetta’s wines remain some of the most soulful and sought-after in all of Italy. Today, we are featuring “Granato,” her top-of-the-line Teroldego, so named for its intense pomegranate-red color.
If you need to rediscover your passion for Italian red wine, “Granato” is always a safe bet. Still, with six-plus years of age and poured from a perfectly cellared magnum, today’s 2011 vintage takes things to an entirely new level. This is red wine nirvana. Straight from the bottle, this wine erupts with aromas of black and red currants, palate-staining black plums, and a stout wall of Pauillac-like gravel minerality. As the wine continues to breathe, aromatics become more exotic, with maduro cigar tobacco, cured meat, black truffles and a distinctly sanguine tartness on the palate that makes this wine a dream companion for a slow-smoked porterhouse. If enjoying in the next six months, please pour straight from the bottle into large Burgundy stems and enjoy slowly over many hours. That said, this wine is bottled in magnums, which always extend a wine’s life. It is guaranteed to enjoy another 6-8 years of powerful, fruit-driven, peak drinkability before evolving into a long, savory and flattering middle age that I expect will last into the 2030s. I’m putting a four-pack in my cellar to enjoy over the next decade, or two, and I strongly encourage others to follow me. This is a brilliant wine. Enjoy!
