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September 28, 2008
Sangiovese Purity: Le Pergole Torte
In This Issue
A Note
from Sergio
Of all the producers making wine in Toscana,
only a handful master Sangiovese, the
region's most emblematic grape. And of that
handful, only a couple make a Sangiovese
based wine that truly tastes only of Toscana.
Montevertine is one of those producers;
their Sangiovese wines simply sing with the
taste of Toscana.
That singing, however beautiful, hasn't
always been appreciated, or even understood.
Toscana's best-known region is Chianti, and
throughout its history, Chianti has often
been a wine of somewhat diffuse
character. Historically, Chianti was
as much a regional style as a specific kind
of wine, and though in the past three
centuries various people and organizations
have tried to codify the wine and make it
clearly recognizable, most of the time that
attempt at codification has failed. Either it
has failed by forcing producers to make a
wine that was just plain bad—as
happened in the early-to-mid twentieth
century—or it failed because Tuscan
winemakers went their own way, flouted the
rules, and made wine the way they wanted
to.
It's lucky for us that they did. It's doubly
lucky that one of those winemakers was
Montevertine's Sergio Manetti who, in 1967,
began making wine as a lark. By the late
1970's, Manetti had grown weary of his
neighboring winemakers' adding international
grapes like Merlot and Syrah to their
Sangiovese based wines. He decided to make a
wine that was 100% Sangiovese—something
that no one else in the region was doing at
the time. This wine, Montevertine's Le
Pergole Torte, was very much a precursor of
the Super-Tuscan movement wherein producers
were defying DOC rules not by looking to
France, Germany and California for their
grapes and vinification processes, but by
looking to home, to Italy, for their
rule-breaking. Manetti was one such
producer.
See, the thing is that a wine of Toscana
should be evocative of Toscana, and not of
California or France. When Sangiovese—
the region's most widely cultivated and most
evocative grape—gets blended, it often
becomes overshadowed. Sangiovese is a
finicky grape. It grows in small, tight
bunches that ripen unevenly. It has an
acidic zing and lovely earthy palate full of
"frutti de bosco," or fruits of
the woods like wild berries and plums. It
does not, however, have a massive body, dark
color and thick, unguent jamminess that
characterizes many international wines. It
does not, then, easily please the palate of
people who like those wines.
All of which is to say that when Montevertine
introduced their 100% Sangiovese wines, a
lot of people including wine critics, wine
writers and wine distributors didn't
understand it. It was a wine, like the
legendary ’01 Mascarello Barolo that
famously received an 84 point rating, that
has often been given ridiculously (and to me
sublimely) low scores. I love it when a wine
I know in my gut is a great gets one of
those low scores. It means more for me and
people like me who know that a great wine
can be a wild, complex, and unusual thing of
great beauty.
Montevertine's 2004 Le Pergole Torte recently
received a rating of 85. It's not a wine for
people whose tastes are led by conventional
wisdom. It's a wine that defies conformist
thinking—and it's a wine that was
created in an act of iconoclastic defiance.
It's a wine that tastes deeply and profoundly
of Toscana. It's one of my favorites, and I
am pleased to offer it to my
clients—because I know you, unlike some
others, will appreciate its singing.
My Best,
Sergio
For more accounts of Italian wine, food, and life reserve
my new book:
Passion
on the Vine: A Memoir of Food, Wine, and Family in the Heart
of Italy.
Sangiovese Master
Montevertine 2004 Le Pergole Torte & Montevertine 2003 Rosso
Le Pergole Torte made its mark as the first
single-vineyard Super-Tuscan to be
produced exclusively from Sangiovese in 1981, but
it accomplishes another achievement
today. The 85 point, 2004 Le Pergole Torte
joins our elite list of misunderstood
wines that includes the likes of Bartolo
Mascarello 2001 Barolo (84), Quintarelli
1999 Valpolicella Superiore (85), Soldera di
Case Basse Brunello di Montalcino
Riserva (78), and Biondi Santi 2001 Brunello
di Montalcino (83).
(Read "When 84 Points Is Better Than 100" )
Moreover, like the Brunellos of Biondi-Santi
and Soldera, Le Pergole Torte
represents one of the most important
expressions of pure Sangiovese that Toscana
has to offer. The 2004 vintage is a wine of
longevity that will unquestionably
exceed many of the sophisticated wines of
Montalcino. This wine is all about
finesse, elegance, complexity and, most
importantly, patience. The flavor profile
in its youth is subtle, as it is intended
to be. Therefore some critics often
miss the hidden beauty in this wine—
it is not in your face, internationally
styled, or about instant gratification. The
high altitude of the vines, which
range between 400 and 500 meters, lends to
the structure and aromatics of this
classically styled wine. Crafted
exclusively in vintages commensurate with its
breeding (its limited case production
average 1,500 bottles), Le Pergole Torte
undergoes an extensive maceration period
ranging from 25 to 30 days and is aged
in both barrique and Slavonian oak for a
period of 18 to 24 months. Though this
wine requires another ten years of
cellaring, it will undoubtedly be one of
the greats of the vintage.
Also Available:
Montevertine 2004 Le Pergole Torte
(1.5L)…$231.00
Montevertine 2003 Le Pergole Torte
(1.5L)…$222.75
Montevertine 2003 Le Pergole Torte
(3.0L)…$470.25
Montevertine 1985 Le Pergole
Torte…$276.59*
* Indicates Limited Availability
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