Castor Membership August 2024: Stay in Your Lane and The Other Montepulciano
I
“Stay in Your Lane”
Sartarelli Verdicchio “Tralivio”
Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi Classico Superiore DOC, Italy 2021
In the early 2010s there was a to-remain-nameless distributor working in DC who specialized in rose. As in, the gentleman in question sold ONLY rose. And yes, while the seasonality of rose was beginning to fade at the time, with more and more sommeliers (including myself) serving one by the glass year-round, most restaurants would have just that-one single rose by the glass, which seemed to make this particular distributor’s job a little challenging. “Don’t worry”, you say, “I’m sure the gentleman had a wide variety of rose from across the globe, thereby increasing his chances of having a presence in more places?” Well, no, actually, his portfolio consisted of 10 or 12 roses…all from Provence. “Alright, that’s an aggressive stance to take”, you would most assuredly counter, “but Provence is a large region and a homeland for rose, so certainly the portfolio consisted of many different price points and ambition levels, so as not to be choking itself in the two-handed grasp of self-competition?” Ahem… interestingly enough, all 10+roses that I was presented, albeit from different areas of Provence, were priced WITHIN $10 BLEEPING DOLLARS OF EACH OTHER?!?!?!?!
Forgive me, the PTSD of the gentleman’s doggedly determined yet wholly unsustainable business model still comes back in waves. My point in this amusingly horrifying anecdote is that, while I am a firm proponent of the “do one thing and do it well” strategy (which is why my business isn’t called Gemini Wine, Beer, Artisanal Cheese, and Tabletop Knick-Knacks Company), some in our business take that notion to the extreme, to the point where you have to question their thought process (and sanity). In reality, however, that is an age-old dilemma in the wine and hospitality industry: should you branch out from the successful-yet-razor-thin profit margins of your first restaurant to open a second, and can you maintain the quality that gave you the opportunity to dream of more income in the first place? Can a winery that is artisanal scale itself and still be unrelenting in its pursuits, or is compromise inevitable? Can a laser-focused vision be sufficient to support a winery through multiple generations of not only single-family ownership, but drill down even further to its production of only one-you read that right, ONE-grape varietal? In the case of an expanse of land proximal to the Adriatic Sea in Central Italy’s Le Marche region, we’re about to find out.
"In Verdicchio there is Truth": the single-minded Sartarelli family (from left, Patrizio, Caterina, Donatella, and Tommaso).
We’ve all experienced, I believe, a moment when something we held dear to our hearts became, for lack of a better term, commoditized. A moment where a favorite food, sport, or even entire place is over-produced, over-saturated, over-developed. For Ferruccio Sartarelli, that talismanic item was the white wine grape Verdicchio, the main variety of his hometown, Poggio San Marcello, on the west bank of the Esino River. The Esino is the traditional marking point of the Classico region of the appellation Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi, in the eastern Le Marche (more on that in a bit). In the 1950s and 1960s, Ferruccio watched as the vineyards of his homeland, where he was a successful baker, began to lose their shine-like many Mediterranean wine-producing areas at that time, Castelli di Jesi turned its pursuits towards large-quantity bottlings of rather anonymous white wines, an unfortunate development that even today obscures the potential of this area to produce wines of distinction-go to a wine shop and try to find a Verdicchio that costs over $20; it’s not easy.
Giving up on plans to move to Argentina and invest in land, Ferruccio decided to remain in Poggio San Marcello, located in regional parkland 22 miles southwest of the seaside city of Ancona, Le Marche’s regional capital. Sartarelli had a rather unwieldy task in his mind, given the wine market at that time: could he produce Verdicchio of high quality, with structure and ageability that blew the door off established expectations for the varietal? To accomplish this, Sartarelli would eliminate distractions, focusing only on Verdicchio-52 years later, his family carries that mantle, striving for single-minded perfection.
The tightly clustered Verdicchio grape, showcasing its trademark slight green hue even when fully ripened.
Take a village in medieval Italy, put a wall around it, and no matter how humble you’ll have a castello, a fortified town. The proximity of a number of these fortressed villages to the commercial and cultural center of Jesi (as much as we’d all love to shout out Kanye West, it’s pronounced “Yay-zee”) is what gives the Verdicchio produced in the surrounding hills its Castelli di Jesi appellation name. The prime areas abutting the Esino river are part of the aforementioned “Classico” designation, although it should be noted that at this point 90% of the whole appellation is delimited as “Classico”, rendering the term a little feeble in its application here.
Taken from the Italian word for green (verde), the Verdicchio grape is so named for the skin’s stubborn refusal to shed its slight emerald hue, even late in the season at full ripeness. At its most-what was that word? Commoditized?-Verdicchio is oily-textured, underripe and full of herbaceous notes, and devoid of a striking fruit profile. Upon setting out on his journey to produce fine Verdicchio, Ferruccio Sartarelli began by…wait for it…producing just Verdicchio. Simplistic thought it may sound, the Castelli di Jesi appellation does allow for up to 15% of other varieties to be included in a given bottling, and Sartarelli saw that as the first of several fronts which could yield some of the watered-down elements I list above.
Sartarelli’s holdings, furthermore, are blessed with antique clones of Verdicchio, which the family made use of in addition to the standard Verdicchio cultivar. Allowing natural groundcover and pruning to allow for an accurate bud ratio (number of flowers per plants) are other fundamentals to the family’s method. When Ferruccio’s daughter Donatella joined her father in working at the estate (currently, her children Catarena and Tommaso represent the family’s third generation of involvement), she brought with her some modernized techniques, such as encouraging bud growth in order to avoid summer thinning and conducting a green harvest in the late spring to ensure optimal ripeness on the buds that remain and provide the vines with proper aeration and spacing leading into the warmer months, crucial to a grape like Verdicchio which retains herbal elements even when ripe-a welcome accent to great fruit or an unpleasantly domineering profile depending on whether the winegrower has harvested at an optimal time. Speaking of picking, the Sartarelli family’s differnt cuvees of Verdicchio (sparkling, still, late harvest, and passito) are all harvested at different times according to the style being made. The “Tralivio” our August Castor selection, is typically picked over three separate passes through the vineyards beginning the 3rd or 4th week of September.
With yields approximately two tons per hectare lower than where the Classico Superiore DOC regulations begin, the quality of “Tralivio” is evident at first sip, imbuing the characteristic nose of aquamarine and fresh thyme with additional complexity: more aromatic herbs like tarragon and sage make appearances, and the palate straddles refreshment and refinement with ease, giving the 2022 vintage aging potential seldom seen from this grape and place. The winery’s other cuvees, from sparkling to dessert style wines, give the Verdicchio grape a versatility that my friend with the suspect Provence rose portfolio lacked.
As a business owner, the singular devotion of Sartarelli to produce their Verdicchio and leave the rest to others is appealing in its focus and clarity. As a wine drinker, I’m not sure I’d attend a Sartarelli wine dinner and drink Verdicchio with every course, but with the beautifully scented pear and quince notes rising from my glass, I am grateful to this 3rd-generation family winery for staying in their lane-D.
Sartarelli Verdicchio “Tralivio”
Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi Classico Superiore DOC, Italy 2022
Country of Origin: Italy.
Places and People: Ferruiccio Sartarelli left his career as a successful baker and dreams of an Argentina real estate empire to pursue another vision: producing high-quality, artisanal Verdicchio in a time when it was largely an industrial-sized commodity. Founded in 1972, Sartarelli has for over 50 years become synonymous with the the Verdicchio grape, which the estate produces exclusively in a variety of styles. The Castelli di Jesi appellation, centered around the town of Jesi (inland from the Adriatic city of Ancona in Italy’s Le Marche region), is recognized as the spiritual homeland for Verdicchio cultivation. The “Tralivio” is a nod to Sartarelli’s traditional methods: produced from the family’s oldest vines (an average of 30 years), the 15 hectares that go into the 7,500 case production of “Tralivio” are all southern facing (some SE and SW) and have good elevation at 300-350 meters above sea level.
Soil: Medium-textured calcareous rock.
Grape Varieties: 100% Verdicchio.
Winemaking: Although modern techniques have made it possible for Sartarelli to avoid a pass-through in the vineyards during the growing season to thin out the crop, for the “Tralivio” this intentional reduction of yields is carried out as before. Harvested in small crates before a soft pressing, the “Tralivio” is fermented with indigenous yeasts under temperature control.
Aging: The “Tralivio” is vinified to near bone-dryness (less than 2 grams per liter of residual sugar) and aged for several months in tank prior to bottling.
Flavors and Foods: The customary color (vibrant gold with flecks of green at the rim) is tell-tale Verdicchio, but comparisons with insipid big-box retail fodder end there for the “Tralivio” 2022; the nose is complex with lemon curd, amaretto almond, asian pear, and quince paste. The palate, even when the wine is served at proper temperature (more on that below), is a tantalizing mix of refreshment and refinement; the spritz textural note from Verdicchio’s elevated acidity melds seamlessly with the roundness of the fruits and almond. The Verdicchio grape’s penchant for “herbaceous-ness” is present but firmly in the background, and the herbs on the palate in “Tralivio” (fresh terragon, fresh sage) have such an inviting secondary flavor about them (as opposed to inexpensive Verdicchio, where the green note often resembles the plastic jar of dried marjoram leaves you’ve discovered in the back of your spice cabinet after a decade). Harsh? Maybe so, but there’s no doubt that the Sartarelli is a compelling upgrade for those that have tried Castelli de Jesi Verdicchio, and a fitting introduction if the wine is new to you.
Service and Cellar: Enjoy the “Tralivio” at white wine cellar temperature (48-50 degrees F). The wine is refreshing enough that excessive chill is not warranted, and although the 2022 is delicious to drink now, don’t sleep on stashing away a bottle-this wine will evolve and has the structure to reach its 10th anniversary-a different wine by then, to be sure, but a healthy one just the same.
Warning-the following locale is not ugly: The blue Adriatic and rolling hillside vineyards in close proximity, Rosso Conero DOC, Le Marche, Italy.
“The Other Montepulciano”
Umani Ronchi Montepulciano “San Lorenzo”, Rosso Conero, Italy 2021
As goofy as we in America can sometimes be, we just don’t have the sense of idiosyncrasy (or the historical timeline) to be as confusing as Europeans when it comes to our wine culture. Imagine the outcry if the Willamette Valley had, as France’s Burgundy region does, umpteen vineyards all named “The Quarry” or some iteration of same (the French translation, “Perrieres”, is a go-to sobriquet for several Burgundy single vineyards). Or, how about this marketing conundrum: what if we took the name of one of the USA’s most famous wine towns and had a grape varietal with the exact same alias that hailed from a part of the country much less known for wine? “I’m really enjoying this glass of Napa!” “Oh, you mean from Napa, California? What is it, Cabernet?” “No, I meant the Napa grape-it’s actually grown in Indiana!” (apologies, Indiana wine community).
And yet this is exactly the enigma facing fans of Italian red wines, as one of the most noteworthy villages in Tuscany (Montepulciano, home of the famed Vino Nobile di Montepulciano that is based on Sangiovese) and the principal red grape of Italy’s eastern coast (Dio Mio, it’s also called Montepulciano) share a name…and that’s about it. Cracking the case on this bit of confusion that is the focus of staff trainings in Italian restaurants the world over (even in Italy…probably) requires a trip across the Italian countryside from the Mediterranean coast to the Adriatic; luckily, our tour guide is one of the most venerated producers in the Le Marche and Abruzzo regions, a family just awarded the iconic Vin d’Italia “Winery of the Year” award from prestigious food and wine publisher Gambero Rosso for this 2024: Umani Ronchi.
A shared vision: bound by a commitment to both entrepreneurship and quality, Umani Ronchi has flourished under founder Massimo Bernetti and his son Michele.
The second-most widely planted red grape in Italy after Sangiovese, the Montepulciano variety is often confused with its big brother; indeed, sharing a name with the Tuscan hilltop town of Montepulciano has created assumptions that Montepulciano (the town) wines are made from Montepulciano (the grape), or even that Montepulciano IS Sangiovese (DNA research has confirmed that this is not the case). Originating in central Italy, Montepulciano boasts some characteristics that set it apart from its Tuscan counterpart: both its acidity and tannin levels are lower than Sangiovese, and the Montepulciano varietal has that rare combination of being full-bodied but with medium tannins, leading to a juicier, more open and forward wine in the bottle than many Sangiovese-based wines. The chief red wine of the region of Abruzzo, Montepulciano can, in the sun-drenched heat of the south, have a slightly rustic profile. For my palate, the grape’s zenith comes in vineyards north of Abruzzo, in the only appellation of the Le Marche region that requires a majority of Montepulciano in the blend: Rosso Conero.
Encircled by the much larger Rosso Piceno appellation (where the red wines can be, and often are, made principally of Sangiovese instead of Montepulciano), Rosso Conero is a small DOC that extends south of Le Marche’s principal city, Ancona, which sits on the Adriatic Sea. The area’s combination of limestone-laden chalk and clay soils are a boon for the easy-ripening Montepulciano, providing needed balance and keeping acidity levels up. The textural weight of Montepulciano’s large berries comes across in Rosso Conero’s dark inky fruit and relative plushness of texture, further denoting this are when it comes to the production of Montepulciano. Indeed, some producers endeavor to place their top cuvees in fine oak barrels for maturation, with some (including, for my money, this month’s “Cumaro” reserve from Umani Ronchi) achieving a lush blend of purple and dark red fruit that can rival some entries from Italy’s Super Tuscans made in the Bolgheri appellation on the opposite coast.
The Bernetti family and their winery Umani Ronchi have proven to be adept stewards of the Rosso Conero appellation; the family’s journey in wine began over 60 years ago in the nearby Verdicchio vineyards of the Castelli di Jesi DOC, where founder Massimo Bernetti got his start. Always with a mind to scale but do so gracefully, today Bernetti works with his son Michele managing a winery that has parcels in both Le Marche and Abruzzo, over 200 hectares of land in all. Luckily, this growth has been steady across the decades, and the winery doesn’t produce large amounts of any one cuvee, with over 22 different wines produced across their various terroir. The Bernettis are committed to showcasing Montepulciano in a way that best sets the grape up for success, and that means aging in high-quality oak barrels, even if much of that is neutral in most of the Conero wines. Speaking of Montepulciano, the family also celebrates the varietal all on its own, with no Sangiovese blended in, of which 15% is permitted by appellation law.
Another aerial view showcases the proximity of the vineyard areas in Rosso Conero to the Adriatic; the Montepulciano grape has been shown to thrive in this dry, maritime climate.
At the southern end of the Rosso Conero DOC is the town of Osimo, where Umani Ronchi’s caves are located. The commune represents the limits of the DOC as only part of Osimo is located within its boundaries. Osimo is one of two vineyard sites that go into the winery’s “San Lorenzo” cuvee; the other vineyard is located closer to Ancona. The greatness of Montepulciano is on full display, even in this value-driven red wine: the naturally fleshy feel of Montepulciano, here moderated by the balanced acidity, comes through in waves of dark red fruit (apple skins, macerated cherries, bright plums). A strong Grenadine element persists on the mid-palate, and the “San Lorenzo” has a nobility that belies its price point, a testament to Umani Ronchi’s experience and resources; like a Burgundy winery that has holdings across 20 vineyards but makes small quantities of each, Umani Ronchi has scaled their business without sacrificing the finished product-sustainability measures including solar panels that cover about 50% of the winery’s total needs and organic corks for all bottlings produced from sugar cane (which both limits tree usage and also makes “corked” wines nonexistent) are an additional plus.
It is fascinating, for me, to contemplate the choices made by the two Castor Member wineries this month; one staying steadfast in their simplicity, and the other equally vigilant in their growth. Always on the lookout for limited production wines, the Umani Ronchi bottlings are firmly in the middle of the pack (their “Cumaro” Riserva featured in Pollux is still a 3,833-case offering), but my principle of “Keeping an Open Wine” stretches beyond numbers to each respective glass, where I find two wines made correctly and deliciously, representing Le Marche with aplomb. In the case of “San Lorenzo”, I love that the DMV market has this type of wine, an example of The Other Montepulciano that was difficult to find in this area even 10 years ago. Now, I’m off to Indiana to see if I can convince them to rename one of their native Midwestern hybrid grapes “Napa”-D.
Umani Ronchi Montepulciano “San Lorenzo”, Rosso Conero, Italy 2021
Country of Origin: Italy.
Places and People: Umani Ronchi has entered their seventh decade as a winery, growing from a small farm in the eastern Italian region of Le Marche to an estate of over 200 hectares spread over multiple regions. Despite their size, their quality is excellent and they remain committed to sustainability, with organic practices, projects devoted to conservation of water, and partnering with universities to study and maintain soil health. The Montepulciano varietal is the calling card of the region of Abruzzo, but the “San Lorenzo” is produced in Rosso Conero DOC, the only appellation for the grape in Le Marche that requires Montepulciano varietal status (minimum 85%).
Soil: Limestone-rich chalk, with some clay. The chalk in particular has proven ideal for Montepulciano, which thrives in this soil and the dry, maritime climate of the coastal Le Marche region.
Grape Varieties: 100% Montepulciano.
Winemaking: The “San Lorenzo” is harvested by hand; grapes are destemmed and lightly pressed prior to a 10-12 day alcoholic fermentation in stainlesss steel vats. The wines carry out their malolactic secondary fermentation in these same vessels prior to aging.
Aging: The “San Lorenzo” is split equally between neutral French barriques and larger oak casks (5000-8000 liters) for a period of 12 months before the final assemblage takes place and the wine is bottled. The wine spends six months in bottle as well prior to release.
Flavors and Foods: The Montepulciano grape variety is known as a high-yielding, late ripening variety that is resistant to many diseases, and this ripeness and concentration of fruit are evident in the Umani Ronchi. Dark cherries, red and black plums, with non-fruit notes of iron/meat, rosemary, and even a small chocolate character (more cocoa powder/dark than milk) appear. The limestone terroir of the San Lorenzo vineyard (one of the two plots used in the wine) means acidity is present to balance the fruit, particularly as the wine warms in the glass, so keep the serving temperature on the lower side (see below). Montepulciano’s trademark voluptuous texture is present as well, making the “San Lorenzo” an ideal accompaniment to richer meats (bone-in pork chops, marinated skirt steak, pork sausages).
Service and Cellar: Make sure the “San Lorenzo” is served at red wine cellar temperature (56-62 degrees F); warming will cause the acidity present in the wine to feel unbalanced and unpleasant. The 2021 vintage, a good one in the Adriatic and the rest of Italy, can see out the decade, should you have the ability to keep this delicious wine out of your glass.