Here’s the snapshot: Before today’s wine could be bottled, Altura’s one-man-army, Francesco Carfagna, had to first revive a centuries-old, Roman-era vineyard, then build a few miles of stone terraces by hand, all while clinging to steep cliffs above the ocean. Over three decades and with virtually no help or financial resources, Francesco accomplished this on the Isola del Giglio, an island off the coast of Tuscany inhabited by only a few hundred full-time residents. Now get this: After all that, Francesco was sentenced to jail for working his own vineyard! Still, when all was said and done, I imagine he feels like it was worth it. After all, this is the kind of story that makes people fall in love with wine, and today’s bottle is a shining example of why there’s never been a more exhilarating time to be a sommelier or collector. The ancient history, the small scale and hand craftsmanship, and the awe-inspiring tenacity necessary to make this living, fire-breathing red—you can feel it in every sip!

Part of the seven-island “Tuscan archipelago,” Isola del Giglio’s dramatic peak juts out of the Mediterranean like a dagger. For centuries, this tiny, 2.5-mile-wide island (which you may recall as the site of 2012’s treacherous Costa Concordia disaster) was a prized source of not only wine, but also high-quality granite used for sculptures and the stone pillars of some of ancient Rome’s architectural treasures. More recently, it has become a luxury summer vacation destination. Still, when summer’s over and the Lamborghinis have returned to the mainland, Giglio transforms back into a virtually deserted and decidedly working-class island. With only intermittent wintertime access by boat, it is one of the more isolated wine zones in Italy. I have a close friend who travelled there in 2011 in search of Altura’s wines and ended up stuck on the island for three days, marooned by a ferry captain who refused to brave a 40-foot storm swell!

Forty years ago, Francesco Carfagna was a young school teacher in Florence. He had visited Giglio with his family during childhood vacations and, as he fell further in love with the island, he continued visiting with increasing frequency. By the early 1980s, Francesco was spending all his vacations and holidays on Giglio, and in 1986, he quit teaching altogether and moved to the island permanently. With little year-round work available and no schools on the island, Francesco logged many hard hours as a laborer and stone mason. He gradually saved enough to buy an abandoned windmill (which he converted into his own tiny house) and 3.5 hectares of abandoned vineyards on the remote, uninhabited southern end of Giglio. He spent the next five years clearing the overgrown cliffside property with only his hands and a hoe, and an additional seven years hand-building stone terraces. Keep in mind, this was before even one bottle of wine could be produced! In 1996, Italy designated all land surrounding Francesco’s vineyard as part of the Tuscan Archipelago National Park, essentially freezing any expansion and leaving Francesco as the only wine producer in the area (in 2017 Francesco was handed an 11-day prison sentence and hefty fine for clearing a small, 100-foot dirt foot path between his two vineyards and unwittingly damaging protected parkland).

For two decades, Francesco continued planting new vines, rehabilitating old ones, and strengthening his stone terraces, and in the 2000s he produced his first wines—a skin-fermented “orange” wine from the Ansonica grape; a pale rose’ from Sangiovese; and most rare of all, today’s rosso “Saverio,” a red blend produced from Sangiovese, Grenache and a mosaic of obscure ancient varieties including Aleatico, Grecanico, Mammolo, Ciliegiolo, Canaiolo Nero, and so on. All told, the wine incorporates 13 red and white varieties. All fruit is harvested by hand, then fermented in steel tanks in the claustrophobic, six-foot-wide cellar beneath Francesco’s windmill house. There are only a few hundred cases of wine, total, produced each year and Francesco takes them by ferry to the mainland and distributes them to top restaurants in his old Toyota hatchback. So, while the wines have earned a devoted cult following across the globe over the last decade, you can understand why they are virtually impossible to acquire in the volume necessary to offer on this site. We are honored (and a little surprised) to share this wine with you today!

“Alive” is the word that enters my mind whenever sipping a glass of Altura and today’s exquisite red is no exception. There’s a brimming, explosive quality that is hard to describe but impossible to miss. There is a healthy dose of Sangiovese spice and dark red fruit here, but it’s not Chianti or Brunello—rather, it’s more akin to the chewy, fleshy rusticity of top Corsican reds and even a little dash of Mount Etna. Ditto with the ample percentage of Grenache: There is a suggestion of great Châteauneuf or Sardinian Cannonau, but all beamed through a prism of wild, Mediterranean freshness. The blend is filled out with a dizzying diversity of obscure varieties, all of which add further depth, complexity and intrigue to the equation. The end result is a red that defies classification. All I can say is: It’s Altura and you must try it!  Please decant for one hour and serve in large Bordeaux stems. This wine is a dream accompaniment to lamb scottadito, but I discovered it also absolutely sings with a whole, garlic/lemon/herb-stuffed striped bass. It’s rare that a powerful red can dance so gracefully with charred meats, roasted fish, and tomato, but this is no typical wine. Enjoy it!