Just one day after tasting (and being blown away by) today’s wine, a post from a winemaker I deeply respect appeared on my Instagram feed: It showed a bottle of 1968 Taurasi from Mastroberardino and the winemaker’s breathless commentary on its impressive showing at 50 years of age. This winemaker is one of the shrewdest Italian wine collectors I know and Mastroberardino ’68 is a mythical wine among Italian wine enthusiasts (I’m actually surprised bottles still exist), but also one of only a few mythical bottlings to emerge from Taurasi, which by any measure should have more such wines to its credit.
I chalk this up to economics: Mastroberardino was for a long time one of the only commercially viable producers in the appellation, which, being in the relatively poor Italian south, had to play catch-up with faster-evolving regions such as Barolo, in Piedmont, to which Taurasi is often compared. Today’s 2012 from Cantine Lonardo reinforced something I’ve believed for a while now: This is Taurasi’s time. A critical mass of world-class, collectible reds now exists here. If you’ve yet to have any Taurasi in your cellar, I strongly urge you to start with this ’12: Reminiscent of both Barolo and the Northern Rhône in its melding of dark fruits and profound, savory/smoky minerality, this wine is not only immensely enjoyable now but is very clearly destined for greatness a decade (or two) down the line. It is hugely undervalued. Seriously: Jump on this!
One of the reasons I’m so excited about this wine is its sensible proportions: In this regard, it’s a revolutionary—or, should I say, evolutionary—Taurasi. The grape in Taurasi is the dark, tannic, wholly uncompromising Aglianico (ah-lee-AH-nee-co), which, if allowed, can produce some seriously massive wines. Particularly in the ’90s and early aughts, I noticed a lot of Taurasi-makers exacerbating this tendency towards massiveness by not only seeking lots of (critic-friendly) extraction but by aging the wines in smaller, newer barrels—which added to the wine’s already high tannin levels. Cantine Lonardo, founded by Sandro Lonardo and his daughters, Enza and Antonella, in 1998 (after many years of selling grapes to others), has consistently dialed back its oak usage over the years and today favors used, 500-liter puncheons (and larger) for aging. Today’s 2012 spent upwards of 18 months in wood, then a year-plus in stainless steel and bottle before it was released—the end result being one of the most balanced and elegant examples of Taurasi I’ve ever tasted.
But let’s back up a second, in case this is your first Taurasi experience: Taurasi is the namesake village of a relatively small cluster of hills in the Irpinia region of central Campania—about 50 kilometers east of Naples but, terroir-wise, a world away. Irpinia is the start of the climb into the Campanian Apennines, with vineyard altitudes typically averaging around 400 meters in thickly forested hillside sites (chestnut groves are another key feature of the region). The soils are a mix of calcareous (i.e. limestone) marls and volcanic deposits, and it’s the latter that the great Aglianico-based reds of the south really speak to: There’s a brooding, smoky, deeply mineral structure to Aglianico that can be downright ferocious, more forbidding in some cases than young Barolo wines from Piedmont. One of Aglianico’s distinguishing features is its nearly unrivaled concentration of anthocyanins—the phenolic compounds that intensify color pigmentation and tannin.
The Lonardos organically farm just four hectares of vineyards at very high elevations within Taurasi, with the late-ripening Aglianico not reaching full physiological maturity until early to mid-November in most instances. Their Taurasi undergoes a lengthy (about three weeks) maceration on its skins during the initial fermentation, so, while this wine is far less monolithic than most ‘young’ Taurasi, it’s no lightweight, either: In the glass, it’s an medium ruby-black with hints of purple at the rim, with heady aromas of crushed blackberry, black plum, espresso grounds, lavender, iron shavings, black pepper, and underbrush. Medium-plus in body, with firm, dusty tannins reminiscent of the Malbec-based reds of Cahors, this is a brooding and deeply mineral red but also a complex and floral wine showing great balance of fruit and earth components. For the longest time, everyone was convinced that the “biggest” wines were the ones that would age the longest. Not true. It’s the balanced wines that win in the end, and this one has balance going for it in the best way. If enjoying a bottle now, decant it an hour before service at 60-65 degrees in large Bordeaux stems and pair it with something fatty and braised to showcase it best. As the years go by, this will evolve into an aromatic tour de force to rival your best Barolos, while also retaining color and fruit like a fine Bordeaux. Put this wine in a blind-tasting lineup of world-class reds a decade from now: You’ll be hailed as a visionary. It’s Taurasi’s time, so let’s get onboard!
