Hello! Welcome & Welcome Back!

It means so much to me that you took the time to subscribe to this wine club and, more importantly, chose to spend your hard earned money with us. This month's club release is designed to get you through the holidays. Though Turkey is traditional in some parts, December's holidays tend to take a beefier, lamb-ier turn. Combine that with the official onset of winter and we find ourselves in need of a red wine with some heft to it, not to mention some gravitas. Enter Valpolicella Ripasso from Tenuta Santa Maria, pioneers of dry winemaking in Italy's Veneto. Then, of course, we had to procure the best bubbles the club can afford to ring in the New Year!

The Gist on the Wines

The first wine is a Champagne method vintage sparkling wine from Sussex. Made by Rathfinny, the 2019 Classic Cuvée is a blend of 44% Pinot Noir, 41% Chardonnay, and 15% Pinot Meunier that spends 36+ months on the lees en tirage. Wine? From England? Why, yes! When you combine its marginal climate (that has gotten slightly more hospitable lately...) with the same billowing chalk hills of Champagne that duck briefly under the Channel and reappear in southern England, you have the recipe for world class sparkling wine. Right now, I think "English fizz" is the one category of wine that can give Champagne a run for its money.

The second wine is a Valpolicella Ripasso from Tenuta Santa Maria. The Ripasso method has been the source of much controversy, but Italian law has finally codified the methods and safeguarded this important tradition of Veneto winemaking that the Bertani family has used since the 1850s. 75% Corvina, 10% Rondinella and 15% Corvinone grapes, harvested from the Villa Mosconi estate in Arbizzano di Negrar, are crushed, cold-pressed and left to ferment for 25-30 days at a controlled temperature. When fermentation is complete, the wine is held in steel tanks awaiting to be poured over the unpressed skins of the estate’s Amarone, which occurs in late January or mid-February. The Valpolicella then undergoes a second maceration and fermentation with the marc of the Amarone to acquire complexity, structure and elegance.

The Details on the Wines

Rathfinny Wine Estate, Pinot Noir / Chardonnay / Pinot Meunier, "Classic Cuvée," Sussex, England (2019)

Rathfinny’s vines are set out on an ideal south-facing slope, just three miles from the English Channel where its unique micro-climate and the free-draining chalky soils create superb grape-growing conditions. Rathfinny lies on the same band of chalk that forms the Paris Basin, running from Northern France into Southern England and then out beneath the Atlantic. This Cretaceous geological phenomenon is the result of aeons of the chalky deposits left by marine organisms over 100 million years ago, which were then heaved upwards, tectonically, at the same time as the Alps, to become part of the land forming the famous South Downs. This provides the vines with shallow but fertile, well-drained chalky soil ideal for growing sparkling wine grapes. The chalk works like a sponge adsorbing water throughout the year, providing a ready source of water for the vines during the warm dry summer months.

The 2019 growing season had a flying start with average daily temperatures of 16°C within the seven-day bud-burst period, resulting in the earliest completion date ever recorded at Rathfinny. Propelled by continued warmth in June, flowering was completed in just a few days. Temperatures remained above average throughout the rest of the summer months, including record-breaking heat during late July.

Aside from the warmth, rainfall was higher than normal during harvest, but disease pressure was low due to effective vineyard management throughout the year. Chardonnay performed particularly well and served to complement the Pinot varieties that usually dominate in the Classic Cuvée. 

All grapes were hand harvested and whole-bunched pressed. The base wines went through malolactic fermentation in stainless steel and spent more than 36 months in contact with the yeast lees after the second fermentation in bottle. The wines were then finished with a modest dosage of 4.5 grams per liter, bringing all of that hallmark English acidity into balance. The wine is razor-sharp and crystalline, with fantastic depth of red fruit. Aperitif-leaning yet not without charm and presence, it finishes with a mouth-watering lift. 

Tenuta Santa Maria, Corvina / Rondinella / Corvinone, Valpolicella Ripasso Classico Superiore, Veneto, Italy (2021)

Buckle up! This wine is a history lesson in a bottle. Tenuta Santa Maria is run by the famous Bertani family. Gaetano Bertani's great grandfather and great uncle, Gaetano e Giovanni Bertani, set out to establish a new benchmark for excellence in winemaking in the Veneto in the latter half of the 1800s. But, they were not starting from zero; historical documents attest to the Bertani family’s history in the area as far back as the 1400s and more specifically trace the family’s activity in the wine business to the 1630s.

During his years of political exile in France for his role in the movement to unify Italy, Gaetano Bertani met and studied with Jules Guyot, the famed agronomist, eventually bringing home his revolutionary viticultural ideas to Italian agriculture. Planting of the vines in low-standing, high-density rows, single branch pruning in spring, and subsequent green pruning during the growing season were ideas that, along with the brothers’ business savvy, brought the family rapid and noteworthy commercial success. The brothers Bertani built an enterprise unique to the Veneto of their time and became the first in the region to bottle and sell Veronese wines such as Valpolicella Ripasso, Recioto, and Soave on a large scale.

The heart and soul of the Bertani enterprise as we know it today, Villa Mosconi-Bertani, was purchased by the family in 1947. It’s a 22-hectare walled-in clos of high-density planted indigenous grapes that was, since its origins in the 1500s, a self-sustaining farming community, replete with a chapel and its own saint day celebration. Much Italian history both cultural and agricultural was written here! The vineyards were some of the first to be converted to the Guyot method in the 1800s and are widely considered to be some of the finest in the Veneto region.  The term “Amarone” was also coined in 1936 within Villa Mosconi’s very walls for a wine very similar to one the Bertani Brothers had been producing since the 1920s as “recioto secco.”

In 2011, Gaetano decided to split from the commercial company that Bertani had become. He negotiated a buy-out in which he and his sons maintained three of the family’s most prized vineyard sites while selling the name Bertani to a pharmaceutical company. The transition, which started in 2013, became complete in 2018.  Finally, Gaetano Bertani, great-grandson of founding brother Gaetano, and his sons, Giovanni and Guglielmo, are back to their core business: making great wines from the unique terroirs of the Veneto.

Darkly floral, the 2021 Valpolicella Ripasso Classico Superiore opens with a beguiling blend of spiced blood orange, sour cherries and cloves. It is silken in feel with a tinge of citrus that adds gravitas as a saturation of ripe wild berry fruits settles in. Gently tannic and long, the 2021 leaves a pleasantly chewy sensation and slight bitter twang that calls the taster back to the glass for more.