March 17, 2005
The Prince's Wine - Italy's Great Secret

A Note from Sergio The Prince and His Magic Cellar Fiorano's Rare Assorted Case

Ferrari's Precious 1959 Gem Last of the Mohicans is No More

In my 30 years with wine, I can honestly say I have never come across a more humbling experience or intriguing glass of white wine. The components of this story combine the dying wish of Italy's most celebrated wine / food critic and the wines of a reclusive and eccentric prince. These precious gems are the product of dedication and passion from Prince Alberico Boncompagni Ludovisi (and his Fiorano estate), whose avant garde approach of organic agriculture and the use of a magical mold was way ahead of its time. His '70's, '80's, and '90’s whites were phenomenons for their ability to age, but they became a true rarity as the prince was ever elusive and did not care to put his wines in the wrong hands. After tearing up his vineyards to assure that his vines would not end up in the wrong hands, Ludovisi passed his private cellar to the iconoclastic writer Luigi Veronelli to place the bottles with the appropriate persons who could keep his story alive. His wish continues today, as the vintage wines have been left to me by the late Veronelli, who presented me with the challenge of fulfilling his promise to the prince. With this in mind, these wines will only be made available in an extremely allocated assorted case, in an effort to find serious owners.

The two whites being offered, Bianco and Semillion, range from the 1986 to 1994 vintage and are only beginning to show their great destiny. We implore the recipients of these wines to cellar a portion of their allotment up to 20 years so they may show their full grace and the story of the prince will continue.

This magical tale of the Prince and his forgotten bottles is truly a gift to be shared and was captured by The New York Times chief wine critic, Eric Asimov, in the December 22, 2004 edition of The New York Times. I am sharing this article below, along with another great wine story that begs to be heard again. If you have interest in obtaining these wines, which will arrive in June, please call Perry Porricelli exclusively at 212.473.2323.

On a final note, it is with great sadness that I share the passing of true Barolo’s greatest supporter and voice Bartolo Mascarello. After many years of my thinking I knew how to taste wines, it was Bartolo who finally taught me how to listen and take my time. He is a treasure who will be sorely missed, but his legacy will carry on with his daughter and my beloved friend Maria Teresa. Please read more on Bartolo below.

My best,
Sergio

Read about more stars of Italian wine!

Rome. In a secluded back room of a hotel not far from the Trevi Fountain, a dozen glasses of Italian white wine sat before each of a small group of tasters. All were used to this sort of thing and, really, how exciting are most Italian white wines? Six were made from malvasia di Candia, ordinarily a workmanlike grape not known for producing great table wines, yet these were astonishing.

The oldest, a 1978, was dry and fresh, with aromas of flowers, honey and minerals. The flavors seemed to linger in the mouth forever. The wine in the other glasses was sémillon, the backbone of great white Bordeaux but practically nonexistent in Italy. Yet these wines were even more astounding than the malvasias. The oldest, a 1971, had the lively mineral flavor of a fine Puligny-Montrachet.

The older the wines got, the younger they tasted. They seemed almost magical, and indeed the story of these wines has a fairy tale quality to it.

Once upon a time there was a prince. By most accounts he was not so much charming as eccentric. His name was Alberico Boncompagni Ludovisi, prince of Venosa, and his family, which can be traced back at least 1,000 years, includes two popes.

The prince lived on an estate, Fiorano, on the outskirts of Rome near the Via Appia Antica, the ancient Appian Way. There he grew wheat, raised dairy cows and made three wines, one red and two whites, from a small vineyard. The vineyard had been planted with the local grapes that make the sort of nondescript wines typical of Latium, the region centered on Rome.

But in 1946, when the prince inherited Fiorano, he replanted the vineyard with cabernet sauvignon and merlot, long before these Bordeaux grapes became familiar in Italy, and malvasia and sémillon. The prince practiced organic agriculture in an era when others embraced chemical sprays. He kept his yields ridiculously low, resulting in minute quantities of intense, concentrated wines, and he did not filter them. He aged the wine in large numbered barrels, which he reused year after year. A fine white mold grew naturally in his cellar, covering the barrels and the bottles that he stored in neat stacks. The prince did nothing to remove it; he believed it was beneficial. Few people knew of the wines, but their reputation was excellent.

"The greatness of Fiorano is a secret shared by a few," wrote Burton Anderson in "Vino," his 1980 guide to Italian wine.

The red made the most profound impression. Italian white wines were thought to be inconsequential, and few paid attention to the prince's whites, though Mr. Anderson called the sémillon "the most refined wine of its type and a rarity in Italy."

One who was in on the Fiorano secret was Luigi Veronelli, a leading Italian wine writer who regularly rhapsodized about the wines. He liked the reds well enough, comparing them to Sassicaia, the Tuscan Bordeaux blend that became famous in the 1970's. But he loved the whites. He was among the first to note their potential for aging, and he bemoaned their scarcity. "To obtain his cru is practically impossible," Mr. Veronelli once wrote. "If I lived in Rome, I’d beg for them at the prince's door every morning."

By all reports the prince was strong-willed and stubborn. He was elusive and rarely spoke to business associates. Mr. Anderson said he never met him. Neil Empson, who exported Fiorano wines to the United States in the 1970's, also never met him or saw the winery. He dealt only with a secretary.

"He was a rather strange person to do business with," Mr. Empson said in a telephone interview. "You had to pay him when you made the order, and he would ship whatever he wanted to ship, not what you ordered."

Mr. Empson said this caused him to stop doing business with the prince, and eventually he lost track of the wines. The aging prince continued to make his wines until 1995, although he had stopped selling the bottles. After the '95 harvest he pulled out all the vines in his vineyard, except for a small plot of cabernet and merlot. He offered no explanation, and at the time none was asked.

The prince is now 86 years old, in ill health and living in a hotel in Rome. He had one child, Francesca, who married Piero Antinori, the eminent Tuscan winemaker, at the Fiorano estate in 1966. Mr. Antinori suggests today that the prince was unable to bear the thought of anybody else making his wines when he could no longer do it.

" He is so in love with this estate, and when you are very much in love, you are also a bit jealous," Mr. Antinori said by phone. "When he was not able to do it himself in the old way, probably he preferred to give up."

And so the vineyards lie fallow. And 14,000 bottles remained in the prince's cellar, slowly becoming engulfed by the white mold, until 2000, when Mr. Veronelli, seeking to publicize some Roman wines in connection with a bicycle race, sought an audience with the prince. It was then, Mr. Veronelli said, that he learned of the destruction of the vines.

Mr. Veronelli requested a sample of one of the remaining bottles and sent an emissary, Filippo Polidori, a restaurateur and television personality, to pick it up. After being kept waiting for 90 minutes, Mr. Polidori said at the tasting in Rome, a secretary told him that Mr. Veronelli could not have one bottle, but he could have all 14,000 — 9,500 of the malvasia and 4,500 of the sémillon — if he could disperse them properly.

Mr. Polidori said the prince wanted the bottles to be treated as a legacy, and not consumed right away. But first the bottles, mostly from the 1985 to '95 vintages, which had lain untended in the cellar for years, needed to be cleaned and cataloged. It took two people almost a year to complete the task.

Mr. Veronelli and Mr. Polidori then held a series of tastings, looking for the right people to disperse the wines. They eventually settled on three: Andrea Carelli, an Italian wine broker, who would handle the European and Asian markets; Paolo Domeneghetti, an importer in New York, who will handle American restaurant sales; and Sergio Esposito, managing partner of Italian Wine Merchants near Union Square, who will handle American retail sales.

Mr. Esposito, who was invited to a tasting, said he had never heard of the wines, and could only find vague references in old catalogs. "At the tasting I was completely overtaken by the wines and fell in love with them," he said. "To me, they are treasures. They're wines made from grapes that nobody knew could make wines like that. They had no history. It was one person's devotion."

Highlights from the Rome tasting stand out: a 1982 malvasia with flavors of apples, minerals and pears; a 1980 sémillon that tasted of hazelnuts and wax and seemed impossibly young. As the wines aged, the youthful acidity seemed to give way to mineral, earthy flavors. Yet unaccountably, in contrast to most white wines, which get darker with age, the golden colors of the young wines turned pale as they got older. How to explain this?

Mr. Esposito suggests that the prince was correct about the white mold. "He was so in tune with his surroundings that he had confidence the mold was O.K.," he said. "I think it was much like how blue cheese was discovered. It's blue and you're eating it and it's O.K."

Mr. Esposito said he plans to sell his allocation slowly over the course of five years, aiming for collectors who allow them to age. He is also planning to hold back bottles from each vintage for charity tastings. "I want to participate in these tastings for the next 20 or 30 years and see how they develop," he said.

As much as these wines are a legacy of the prince, they are too a legacy of Mr. Veronelli, who died in November at 78. Of these wines, which will never be produced again, he wrote, "They enchant you with the first taste, burrow in your memory and make you forever better."

**Read the entire article at The New York Times. Note: Registration for their site is free, but there is a nominal fee to view articles more than seven days old.

Click for Old Wines from IWM!

"The oldest (bianco), a 1978, was dry and fresh, with aromas of flowers, honey and minerals. The flavors seemed to linger in the mouth forever. The wine in the other glasses was sémillon, the backbone of great white Bordeaux but practically nonexistent in Italy. The oldest, a 1971, had the lively mineral flavor of a fine Puligny-Montrachet." - Eric Asimov, The New York Times

What you can expect from the recent offers:
"Highlights from the Rome tasting stand out: a 1982 malvasia with flavors of apples, minerals and pears; a 1980 sémillon that tasted of hazelnuts and wax and seemed impossibly young. As the wines aged, the youthful acidity seemed to give way to mineral, earthy flavors. Yet unaccountably, in contrast to most white wines, which get darker with age, the golden colors of the young wines turned pale as they got older." - Eric Asimov, The New York Times

Fiorano's Rare Assorted Case:
Fiorano Bianco 1994 Botte 26
Fiorano Bianco 1994 Botte 46
Fiorano Bianco 1993 Botte 25
Fiorano Bianco 1993 Botte 32
Fiorano Bianco 1992 Botte 26
Fiorano Bianco 1988 Botte 26
Fiorano Bianco 1986 Botte 25
Fiorano Semillon 1994 Botte 47
Fiorano Semillon 1993 Botte 22
Fiorano Semillon 1992 Botte 46
Fiorano Semillon 1990 Botte 47
Fiorano Semillon 1989 Botte 48

Assorted Case Price (one of each): $948.00*
*Cases sold as a futures with June delivery.

Click for Recent Offers from IWM!

With the advanced state of the overripe grapes of 1959 dehydrating on the vines, Ferrari had the Primitivo grapes trucked up to his Piemonte vinification center. At the time he had calculated the potential alcohol content to be 21% and expected to create a historically big, high alcohol wine. He had the print shops develop the labels with the estimated alcohol content and began to prepare his distribution. However, during a rapid temperature change in the cool hills of Novara, fermentation stopped at about 14%, leaving residual sugar and a sweetness to the wines. Realizing what had happened and envisioning the wine’s destiny, he placed the juice for ten years in the best Slovenian casks he could find before leaving it for another 35 years in a cement cask at the Ferrari winery. During this period, Antonio gave only one bottle of this mystical wine away, as he felt the market was not ready for this masterpiece. Over two years ago Antonio passed away and his daughter now looks to complete her father’s journey.

Solaria Jonica lands somewhere between a Recioto and a Port, displaying the lavish opulence of the finest dessert wines. With 45 years of age on it, the wine miraculously still displays a vibrant ruby color and boasts aromas of blackberries and espresso. On the palate, the tell-tale flavors of raisins, chocolate, and licorice are followed by massive concentration and warmth which are matched only by its depth and lush richness. The wine never becomes overly sweet or syrupy and is held in check by its awesome flavors and focus. Prepare your palate for a marathon finish.

Antonio Ferrari 1959 Solaria Jonica $139.95 (500ml)

Click here to order Ferrari 1959 Solaria Jonica!

As a teenager, Bartolo already showed great charisma, diving wholeheartedly into WWII as a partisan fighting for his ideals; back in Italy after the war, he chided German Barolo fans, saying "first you chased me, now you chase my wine!" Later in life, he welcomed countless visitors who flocked to his side to sample his elixirs and hear him speak. The door at via Roma 15 in Barolo was always open for a friendly audience with this distinguished man, the conscience of Barolo and the "Last of the Mohicans," as he liked to be called. Always lucid and very emphatic in his beliefs, he demonstrated unusual compassion married with excellent wit and a keen sense of irony; his zealous opinions never left him in daily interactions and often found their way to the labels of his wine, which he himself drew by hand. Some of these bold statements became famous, and the labels collector's items, as when he proclaimed "No Barrique, No Berlusconi" in a bifurcate attack on modern vinification methods and the Italian Prime Minister's politics.

Though still a vibrant character, Bartolo had already passed control of the winery to his daughter, Maria Teresa, who has crafted Mascarello’s Barolos for fifteen years now and will continue her work unaltered. Maria Teresa shares her father’s ideology, philosophy, and understanding of wine and is without a doubt the perfect heir to Bartolo’s legend.

An IWM favorite, Bartolo received Sergio as a guest many times, and Sergio always endorses the wines of the great traditionalist. "These are perhaps the greatest Barolos ever produced;" Sergio continues to offer both old vintage rarities like the 1964 and his recent release efforts with Maria where the great tradition will live on....

Click here to read more about Bartolo Mascarello!