Creators Syndicate
It isn’t often that I hand out a perfect score to one of the thousands of wine samples I taste each year.
I can remember a Montrachet from Drouhin, a cabernet from Nickel & Nickel. There have been a handful of others, always from the usual suspects: world-renowned wineries, rock-star winemakers, hallowed vineyard ground.
Feudi di San Gregorio is none of these things in the conventional sense. This relatively new, relatively modern winery was founded in 1986 in the small village of Sorbo Serpico, in the Campania region of southern Italy. The winery sits in the shadows of Mount Vesuvius. The sandstone and marl soils are laden with mineral-rich volcanic ash from the frequent eruptions of Vesuvius.
There is little doubt Vesuvius contributes mightily to the personality of the wines. They all have backbone. The reds are massively structured, with mouth-puckering tannins and firm acidity that can carry them for decades. The whites are rich and oily, with scintillating acidity that defies logic considering how close the region is to the warmth of the Mediterranean Sea.
The most important red grape is aglianico, a variety little known outside of southern Italy. It can be unfriendly, even off-putting at times. For more than a century, the wines made from aglianico were rustic and mean, needing years in the cellar to be ready to drink. Over the past quarter-century, Feudi di San Gregorio and a handful of other wineries in the area have worked at improvements in the vineyard and the cellar to make the wines more approachable.
Serpico, which carries the Irpinia IGT designation as its appellation of origin, is Feudi di San Gregorio’s flagship wine. The Serpico vineyards are planted at more than 1,000 feet of elevation and range from 40 to 70 years old. I have long thought it is one of the greatest red wines in the world. I tasted the 2008 Serpico in a flight of a dozen mostly impressive Italian reds. It was the standout by far. Ten hours later, I went back to retaste the open bottle and found it to be even better the second time around.
It is quite possible that Serpico would not be to your liking. For me, however, the complex flavors, the remarkable structure, the real or imagined potential for historic longevity all add up to what I am looking for in the perfect red wine.
And that, dear reader, is why the 2008 Feudi di San Gregorio Serpico is a 100-point wine.
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