Marisa Cuomo Furore Bianco 2010 & Wine Tour

The tour began with a walk through the cellar.

Hello everybody! This is the final wine tour I went on this Summer- the Marisa Cuomo winery. The winery is found along the gorgeous Amalfi Coast. You've got to take a long, curvy, and tight road along the water to get there. While the winery itself is located in Furore, the vines are found throughout a 10km radius of the central office. Since the Amalfi Coast itself is a mountainside, the vines are found at different altitudes ranging from 200 to 600 meters above sea level. Being on the Amalfi Coast is beautiful in itself, but being amongst vineyards on the Amalfi Coast is even more magical.

After the hour long tour, we were invited to the winery's own restaurant, the world renowned Bacco, where we enjoyed a four hour meal including a tasting of the winery's current vintage selection: the Furore Bianco, Ravello Bianco, Costa D'Amalfi Rosato, and the Furore Rosso. Each glass came with its own specialized dish for a perfect pairing, which led me to buy a bottle of each wine directly from the restaurant- I couldn't resist. I'm aware that my store sells these wines, but I just HAD to give these to some family in Italy because they're absolutely gorgeous wines that would make great gifts.

Afterwards, we walked along the street and enjoyed the scenery.

The wine I'll be talking in depth about will be the Furore Bianco 2010. Yeah, you heard me right. This is my very first white wine review. It was that interesting and refreshingly pleasant a wine that I just had to write about it. Let me just explain a little bit about Marisa Cuomo's wines first though. 

The wines are named after the towns that the grapes are predominantly collected from, be it Furore or Ravello. The white wines are blends of the Falanghina grape and the Biancolella grape (60% and 40%.) The Furore Rosso and the rosato are both a blend of the Piedirosso grape and the Aglianico grape (50% and 50%.) All of these grapes are found in Southern Italy, absolutely no foreign grapes are grown in the Marisa Cuomo winery. The Cuomo family, which runs the entire operation (Marisa's daughter was our tour guide,) believes strongly in staying true to themselves and the region in which they grow their wines, so only native varietals will be found and used here. The rest of Italy could try to do more of the same. 

We even got to walk through some of the aglianico vines. 

Okay, so now let me talk about the Furore Bianco. It was one of the most food friendly wines I've ever tasted. It was medium bodied yet insanely refreshing. Crisp, yet savory. The mouthfeel was out of this world, and when paired with the food served at Bacco, it tasted even better. I'm sorry to say it, but I didn't really pay attention to the individual flavors in the wine, the overall meal was just too much to take in. I enjoyed this wine a lot, and get this- I enjoyed the rosato even more. I don't even typically like rosato. That's how phenomenal these wines were. 

This post was a little all over the place, so let me just summarize everything for you here. If you ever get a chance to visit Amalfi, go online and make a reservation to VISIT THE MARISA CUOMO WINERY. You will NOT regret it. The weather is perfect, the air is pure, the scenery is magical, the cuisine is one of a kind, and the wines are truly superb. Check it out, fellas. 

Picture taken at San Pietro Wine & Spirits

I Sodi di San Niccolo` 2007 & Wine Tour

The Chianti Classico barrique.

Hi everyone! I appreciate all the feedback on the last post, it looks like you guys really enjoyed it! I'll try to keep it up with this one where I'll talk about the Castellare di Castellina winery in Chianti Classico and their top wine- I Sodi di San Niccolo`.

The Castellare di Castellina winery is a gorgeous winery found along the long rolling hills of Chianti, near Sienna. Throughout the tour my cousin and I were shown the cave-like cellars that were filled with barrique. They showed us two of the cellars, one where the Chianti Classico Riserva is kept, and one that we had to drive out to- a thirteenth century church where the Sodi di San Niccolo` is kept. The entire area was beautiful- the hills were filled with vines, freckled with lavender bushes that were surrounded by hundreds of butterflies.

Something I'd like to note about the Chianti barrique is how they keep the humidity within the cellar. Obviously being in a cave-like cellar, the temperature is kept relatively constant throughout the seasons, but the humidity has to be kept constant in a different way. What Castellare di Castellina does is dig out a ditch under the barrique and fill it with moistened gravel, which acts as a natural humidifier. Let me tell you, the temperature and humidity was perfect in there, not even my own bed room is that comfortable.

I Sodi di S. Niccolo` with some cold cuts.

Eventually, we were taken out to the office building (which looked more like a welcoming rustic household) to try a few wines. As we entered we were able to see the products that the winery produced, including the Chianti, the Chianti Classico, the Sodi di San Niccolo`, the vinsanto, the grappa, and even the world-famous Castellare vinegar. It was a nice reminder to us, who had just been out around a sunbaked paradise, that Castellare di Castellina is a prestigious and serious wine producer.

We tried three wines, the Castellare di Castellina Chianti Classico 2010, the Castellare di Castellina Chianti Classico Riserva 2009, and I Sodi di San Niccolo` 2007, the winery's "Cru," so to speak. We loved all of the wines, especially the Riserva, but I'll only review the Cru just because its something my father and I normally drink together at home.

The Castellare di Castellina entrance. 

The wine in glass is nice and medium colored. The legs formed beautifully, and you can tell by the swirl and aroma that the wine and barrique joined superbly to create a complex and pleasing wine. Elegant notes of violets and plums came through, all delicately coated in that rich oak I so very much enjoyed. The dish that accompanied the wine went perfectly together- I finished that entire dish of food since it tasted so good. It's definitely a wine I'd recommend to anybody who enjoys Italian food, and I have to say I'm glad that the Bruno Brothers carry this wine at their restaurants.

Anyways fellas, thanks for reading as usual. The next post will conclude my winery tour posts with the last one I visited- the Marisa Cuomo winery located in Furore, along the Amalfi Coast. I can't wait to write about it!

Castel Giocondo Brunello 2007 & Wine Tour

Hello everybody! Been a while hasn't it? Well I'm back to blogging now that I've finished my summer classes and Chrono Trigger (which is an amazing SNES game with a gorgeous soundtrack, you should definitely check it out if you're into that sort of stuff.)

440 meters above sea level, the highest vines
of the Castel Giocondo winery are found.

Now get this, for the past week I've been wine tasting with my cousin in Italy. We saw three wineries in total, two in Tuscany and one in Campania on the Amalfi Coast. I'll be reviewing the wineries one by one for the next couple of posts, and I have a ton of pictures to go along with them! I'm going to start with the first one I went to, the Castel Giocondo winery in Montalcino where I had the extreme pleasure to try the not yet released 2007 vintage of the Castel Giocondo Brunello and the groundbreaking first Super Tuscan produced in Montalcino, Luce 2008 (production began in 1993, but you know what I mean.)

Here's where the barrique are stored, and as
you can tell, this is the fancy part of the cellar.

So the winery is situated in Montalcino, which about three hours by car outside of Florence. Montalcino is essentially a tiny town in southern Tuscany that is found on top of a mountain that is covered in sangiovese grosso vines. As you can see, it's damn beautiful up there.

At the winery I got to see the original cellar and the newly added cellar that the winery opened for the purposes of tours (opened in 2005, if I remember correctly.) You can see the sharp contrast in the appearance of where the production started as a large square room with tons of equipment and where the winery becomes a bit of a souped-up, fancy cellar.

After seeing the cellar and the vines, we were taken to an actual castle at the highest part of the winery to taste a few wines and have some classy Italian finger foods to go along with them. We were given, as I stated before, the Castel Giocondo Brunello 2007 and the Luce 2008. Both pretty phenomenal and luxurious wines.

Excuse the photo quality here, I'm still getting
used to my new iPhone...

The Brunello is set to be released internationally in January, so it technically isn't entirely ready to be drunk yet. Typically a Brunello, being of the DOCG denomination of Italian winemaking rules, requires at least four years before being released commercially. However, being a Brunello (and a great one at that,) the wine was still very drinkable this young. Too many people reserve Brunello for the future, claiming that they need at least eight years after being vintaged to be drunk properly. While I respect the aging potential of the sangiovese grosso grape, I also respect the awesome fruit that a young Brunello packs.

The entrance to the winery after about a mile
drive through the winery's vineyards.

The Brunello was fruity and featured a deeply creamy vanilla aroma. It also represented itself beautifully in the glass, then again when you're tasting wine in a castle I think just about everything around you is beautiful. The flavor and nose were a bit closed, and I attribute that to the wine not being fully developed in the bottle yet. I would order a case of the stuff but I wouldn't open any of it until 2013 at the very earliest. I shouldn't knock it too much though, because this wine still exhibited some complex aromas (including what appeared to be chalk and wild berries) that I couldn't fully appreciate due to the entire experience of the wine tour. In my defense, it was my first wine tour and I made it a point to focus more on the wine I was tasting than my surroundings for the next ones.

I would include the Luce 2008 in this post as well, but I appeared to have rambled on for quite a bit and I don't want to make this any lengthier than it is already. Next time, I'll write about the Castellare di Castellina winery in Chianti Classico, found right outside Sienna. If you'd like for me to write about the Luce as well, please don't hesitate to email me at mfilippobruno at gmail.com. At any rate fellas, thanks for reading, and you'll hear from me soon!