Sagrantino: A Wine That Needs Freud
February 10, 2008

(this is from a story I wrote for The Underground Wine Journal in 2000 or 2001, I can't remember!)

On the cusp of spring I stood in Filippo Antonelli’s gnarly vineyard. Looking out at Umbrian hills, brilliantly green with newborn wheat, punctuated by leafy olive trees and naked rows of Sagrantino grapevines I realized that this trip to Umbria and the region of Montefalco was two years in the making. That’s when I scribbled a note under the ’96 Antonelli Sagrantino di Montefalco secco, “Great!! Find out more.” I forgot to. Later that year I visited a NYC restaurant called il Buco and homesick sommelier Roberto Paris, an Umbrian from the Montefalco region, poured a glass for me. This time I was hooked.

The thick-skinned Sagrantino has DOCG status in the five communes of Montefalco-- Bevagna, Gualdo, Cattaneo, Castel Ritaldi, and Giano dell'Umbria --all between Spoleto and Assisi. Other grapes are grown here, Sagrantino has star billing. Loaded with potent polyphenols, the grape’s resulting wine can have tastebud-ripping tannins. To picture the grape’s nature imagine these tannins in combo with the best qualities of brooding Nebbiolo, the sunny fruit of Negroamaro and acidity of a Barbera. The wine often presents with some form of tannic wrap around a plump and spicy -rich prune plum fruit, with counterpoint aromas of acacia, hay, and dried flowers. Other than the grapes’ comely characteristics, I find the whole psychology here irresistible. This wine is precariously perched between teen and adulthood—with potential for an identity crisis.

Historically the grape was vinified in a sweet style called Passito (from dried-grapes) and it stayed syrupy sweet –and purely a local treat--for centuries. Now it’s making a big splash as a dry wine, or as it is called, secco. Antonelli is one of fifteen presently producing. Though the winemakers generously share their research, most winemakers think their way with the grape is the right way. The scene is ripe for a clash of style and ego. Yet as Antonelli insists, “You have to understand that Sagrantino secco is a young concept. There is no traditional way of making the dry wine. Every year is new to us. For example, we don’t know how long the wine can age. Maybe eight years? Maybe fifteen? Who knows how long? ”

Wine has been documented in Montefalco since 1088. Pliny the Elder mentioned “Itriola” and some believe it to be Sagrantino. Most people assume that the devotees of St. Francis Assisi carried the grape from Asia Minor and its use was sacramental and celebratory. Researchers are trying to find its clonal relatives elsewhere in the world with no luck—the grape seems to be a Montefalco original.

Around 1972 a couple of winemakers got the notion to try their hand at Sagrantino in a dry form. Dr. Lodovico Mattoni, now President of Terre di Trinci a cooperative showing great commitment to the grape, says of the Trinci effort, “It was awful, but promising.” The promise that they saw was the wine’s structure and the powerful fruit. The awful part? Unyielding tannins. Antonelli reflects. “In those early days we had no idea how to deal with them. We tried extremely short macerations: in some cases as few as five days” However, this technique backfired; the wines were fiercely tannic and lacked complexity. Today macerations last between twelve and thirty-five days. In 1979 Sagrantino di Montefalco secco received DOC status and upgraded to DOCG in 1992.

Before 1992 wine books ignored Sagrantino. When talking about wine in Umbria it was either in reference to Grechetto (The white wines of the area and of Orvieto) or of Sangiovese. Sagrantino? Never heard of it. But, by 1995 some wines were winning Tres Bicchieri and Due Bicchieri awards. Prices climbed between $25 and $100 a bottle and wine writers and wine nerds started to notice.

Laws require that the wine be a 100% Sagrantino grape and must be aged for at least 30 months, 12 of which must be in an oak container, and six months in bottle. The best wineries take more time than the minimum requirement. Whether new or old oak barrique, full toast or medium toast or just neutral large oak barrels, here as in elsewhere in the world, the debate is on as to who has the right idea when it comes to wood.

Out of the area’s Sagrantino producers, eight or nine are available in America. Four producers, Arnaldo Caprai. Paulo Bea, Milziade Antano and Fillipo Antonelli, seem to encapsulate the themes in winemakeing: peacemaker, international hawk, non-interventionist, amused observer.

Where most wineries in the area are modest, Arnaldo Caprai is lit up in spotlights-- the Castello on the hill. For all his bravado, Caprai deserves respect and gets it from his peers and the world. A business man who came to wine later in life, he has contributed a great deal of research and has traveled and worked to spread the popularity of the wine internationally. Computerized, the winery is pure California. Squat fermenting tanks are impressive works of stainless. The smell of spanking new toasty oak is prominent in the winery as in the wine. Caprai, with his 60,000 case production is the areas largest the producer having overtaken older large wineries Adanti and Rocca Di Fabri. Marco Caprai, the founder Arnaldo’s son, is now mostly in charge. His fur bristles when I ask about his New-World, international style of wine. “What is Old-World?” He asks me. I tell you, if you have no money, you use big, old barrels. If you are rich you use new barrique. We are rich.”

Where Caprai is a relative newcomer, the Bea’s, on the other side of the walled city of Montefalco document their land ownership for several hundred years. The Caprai/Bea rivalry is well known, though each claims not to understand its origin. As a stranger it seemed obvious. Here are equivalent egos on different sides of the issues. One winery is huge. One is tiny. The Bea’s don’t believe in masking the flavor of their grapes with new oak. They believe in only using native yeasts. On the issue of fermentation, theirs at 35-40 days is at least fifteen days longer than Caprai’s.

The Bea’s first secco was the ’94 vintage. “We were experimenting with Sagrantino for ten years,” says Giampiero Bea, Paulo’s son says as leads me to a tiny barn where wine is still going through malolactic fermentation. I almost walk into a swinging lump in a cheesecloth dripping red wine into a bucket. He says,” I make an experiment,” making cheese soaked in Sagrantino. We sit down to taste Sagrantino in a candlelit setting. Thinking about the cheese experiment I anticipate a wild wine. But here is a most gentle and easy wine. Barely tannic, in fact, it is quite romantic. The ’95, the oldest he has to offer me, is still youthful and has developed a more complex aroma than more recent vintages. At 6 years old it’s still a youngster.

Politics don’t seem to matter to Milziade Antano. What he cares about is wine. His production is tiny, 2000 cases. . He doesn’t use new oak in his secco but he’s open to it. Not now, but who knows? Maybe in the future. He has the coarse hands of a farmer hands and the eyes and nose of a poet. He pours his ’97 Sagrantino. He cradles the wineglass bowl, inhales and is pleased. Here are aromas of acacia, a touch of honey mix of hay and plum, aromas that I have come to associate with Sagrantino’s nature. He pours a ’94 from a so-called bad year and –it lacks power but it has an elegant perfume of dried roses and honeysuckle with a firm tarry center and subtle tobacco finish. His first secco was produced in the 1982 he started producing Passito in 1972. He macerates for 20 days. Like Antonelli prefers to use natural yeast but will add a strain of selected yeasts—especially in a less than spectacular vintage.

Filippo Antonelli’s olive and vine planted land has been in the family since the mid-1800’s. He made his first Sagrantino secco in 1979. At 20,000 cases he is amid-sized producer with an artisnal approach. He sells every bottle he makes and could sell more. His baby Sagrantino vines are too young and his winery is just too tiny. He desperately needs more room.

I ask him whether he has any older vintages. “Not too many,” he says. But, he pulls a 1990 with apologies for its dreadful storage—which means enduring almost a decade of hot summers. As expected the wine has turned port-like, yet is tasty. He then opens an ’88 that was more properly stored. Here the wine has a very subdued bouquet, but the structure was still holding and the fruit on the palate is fresh. There was that hay and acacia. Like the man, all of his wines are warm, generous and complex. They reflect an open mind but strong roots in tradition. More than the others I tasted here is a more sunny quality with a touch of broiled red fruits. He uses barrique, not all new, with a medium toast and the wood is beautifully integrated leaving no vanilla or caramel on the palate. He prefers severely pruning his vines instead of dropping excessive grape bunches to the ground in a green harvest. Like the others who are planting right now, he is using cuttings not clones. “The university is working on it,” he says, “but a clone must be free of all viruses. There is a virus in all native Sagrantino plants, which I think must be a healthy thing.”

Many of the established and well -reputed, including Rocca di Fabri, Adanti, Scacciadioveli are upgrading their vineyard and winery practices. The dull cooperative, Spoleto Ducale, is lusting for a piece of the area’s success and is trying to shed its dreadful reputation by going full barrique, full toast and full technical. In 1995 a farm equipment conglomerate bought Colpetrone . Now the winery is producing a full-throttle international style wine; the areas second Tres Bicchieri winner.

Current landowners are buying up more land and olive oil growers are going into the Sagrantino secco business. The roaming wine consultant Riccardo Cotarella is making wine here. Andrea Cecchi of Tuscany and the Maremma has bought land and is planting five hectares (with a goal of 30) near Antonelli. The Lungarottis, Umbrians from the Torgiano area, rented tanks in which to make their Sagrantino secco. A flush of new producers with big technology and ideas are primed to move in. Antonelli, who is just got approval to break ground for his brand new gravity flow winery is happy about his new neighbor and the excitement in the region says, “ We hope land is closed to buying in about three years.”

The story of a revitalized or even rediscovered land in Italy is now an old one. The Maremma went through it—but it was for a new soil on which to plant an old Sangiovese. Puglia went through it, but it was for revitalizing Primitivo and Negroamaro. Here is something quite familiar yet dramatically different: an ancient grape grappling with a new identify. In the search for big wine rating scores and awards, might the true identity of Sagrantino be lost--- even before it’s discovered? In a world that currently romances smooth, rich and homogenized wines, Sagrantino is an antidote. Yet, as more hillside property gets cleared for vineyards, and the toasty barrique and the fully international approach to wine making is embraced, the good people of Montefalco could well be thinking, there goes the neighborhood. On the other hand, my friend Roberto Paris, with eight different Sagrantino’s on his il Buco wine list, (and all doing very well, thank you very much) thinks I’m a bit of a hysteric. “Relax he says, “this is wine, not psychotherapy.” But sometimes the comparisons are irresistible. As I only drink the wine and not make it, I will comfort myself as a parent does: a search for the meaning of its life might be in store, but this teenager has a solid structure, good values and a knock out personality. Sagrantino will withstand the growing pains ahead ---and with style.