When I first started getting into Italian wine, Cirò was the only wine appellation of note in the Calabria region. Decades later, Cirò is still the first (and often last) stop for wine explorers, with one significant difference: In the past, a single producer, Librandi, was the only one with any significant international presence. Today, this remote growing zone along Calabria’s Ionian coast is teeming with exciting wines from an ever-expanding cast of characters.
Today’s wine from Fattoria San Francesco, in fact, has quietly but assuredly ascended to the top rank of not just Cirò but southern Italy in general. To me, it’s a modern benchmark in a region which remains one of Italy’s poorest and least-traveled. Today’s 2017 is my most recent encounter with “Ronco dei Quattroventi,” and in addition to being the most impressive edition of this wine I’ve ever had (and I’ve had my share), it was the sleeper hit of a wide-ranging tasting that contained some serious competition from France, Spain, and the US. This isn’t simply about the distinctiveness of a native Calabrian grape variety—Gaglioppo—that many haven’t heard of. This is about the start-to-finish quality of a red wine that left an array of more-expensive bottles in the dust. Oh, and it happens to be from a region celebrated for wine since the days of the ancient Greeks. Not bad for $29, right?
Many Americans (myself included) have familial links to Calabria, the “toe” of the Italian boot, via the massive number of immigrants who came from there at the turn of the last century. Calabria was (and still is) one of the country’s poorest regions: physically, it’s about 90% mountains and is badly underserved in terms of infrastructure (railways, highways, etc.). Its economy is still predominantly agricultural, and most of its young people move away in search of work not just in northern Italy but elsewhere in Europe. Although the region was one of the first landing points for the ancient Greeks and the heart of what was once known as Enotria (‘land of wine’), Calabria produces very little wine relative to other Italian regions. Olive and bergamot citrus groves are more prevalent than vines.
Cirò is still Calabria’s principal wine town, situated about halfway up the Calabrian coast overlooking the Ionian Sea. It was one of the original Greek settlements on the southern Italian peninsula and the site of the earliest Olympic games—where an ancient version of Cirò wine was given to the winners as a prize. The Fattoria San Francesco property is the site of a former convent founded in the 15th century, when vineyards and olive groves were first planted, and was acquired in an auction by the Siciliani family in 1777. Amazingly, the estate is still in Siciliani family hands, and since the late 1990s, they’ve built it into perhaps the most modern, state-of-the-art facility in the appellation.
“Ronco dei Quattroventi” is a selection of 100% Gaglioppo grapes from a prized vineyard in Cirò, although the wine no longer carries the Cirò DOC designation. Grown in clay/limestone soils in low, rolling hills very close to the coast, this is identifiably “southern” in style—warm and plush, with lots of ripeness and soft tannins—but not to the point of feeling “cooked” or “stewed” in any way. I often find myself evaluating Cirò wines much as I do Châteauneuf-du-Pape and other warm-climate reds from southern France (i.e. is there balance, or too much syrupy ripeness?), with one important caveat: Gaglioppo is lighter than the likes of Grenache, Syrah, and Carignane. Recent studies have shown Gaglioppo to be a cross of Sangiovese and a local variety, Mantonico, and author Ian D’Agata, whose massive book, Native Wine Grapes of Italy, has become a lodestar for me, notes that Gaglioppo may thus be related to the popular Frappato grape of Sicily as well.
In my experience, Gaglioppo is characterized by a few things: (a) it’s a grape with low color pigmentation (like Piedmont’s Nebbiolo), so the wines look brickish/orangey even in their youth; (b) although it’s a hot-climate grape, it’s more Pinot Noir/Sangiovese in terms of the scale/weight of its wines; and (c) it has great natural acidity, keeping it from devolving into something sweet or raisiny. The 2017 “Ronco dei Quattroventi” adds another important component to the equation—a beautifully polished quality very few Cirò reds possess. In the glass, it’s a deep, healthy garnet-red with only a slight hint of bricking at the rim, with heady aromas of cherry pie, blood orange, raspberries, warm spices, leather, toast, and an herby ‘Mediterranean-ness’ I absolutely love. Aged about a year in French oak barriques, it has a luscious, luxurious feel to its tannins but also a wildness—what the French would call a sauvage quality—that places it in proper context. It’s ready to drink now and over the next few years in Bordeaux stems at 60 degrees, with some kindred qualities to Zinfandel as well (except for the alcohol). A lot of Calabrian food is spicy, which I tend to avoid with red wines, but try the attached baked pasta recipe, with its “Big Night” array of ingredients. Pure Southern Italian love! Enjoy!
