Quarantasarme Perricone IGT Terre Siciliane 2019

VinoLauria is based on generations of experience and combines family tradition with modern enology. In the heart of Sicily, a good 65km southwest of Palermo, the winery is located in the free communal consortium of Trapani. The family business was founded as early as 1958 by Vito's grandfather, but had to be abandoned in 1993 due to economic difficulties. Vito Lauria, who is deeply rooted in his homeland, then harboured the desire to revive the winery and to carry his family's vinophile heritage into the future. Familiar with his grandfather's working methods from an early age, he decided to study viticulture and oenology. Preserving the soils, the foundation of his home and his vines, is the guarantor of origin-based wines.

Quarantasarme is in a class of its own in VinoLauria's portfolio The rarest and most valuable wine is made from the careful nurturing of 40 sarme Perricone , an ancient Sicilian unit of measurement, roughly equivalent to 80 hectares stretching between Alcamo and Campo Reale. Vito Lauria keeps a close eye on this area every year and only when he discovers a vineyard with the perfect ripeness is this wine made by buying in 100% old Perricone vines. Harvesting begins in mid-October, followed by cryomezaeration for 24 hours and fermentation for 15 days at 15 degrees. The wine is then aged for 12 months in untoasted large oak barrels.

Purple red with violet reflections and black core.

The nose of the 2019 Quarantasarme from VinoLauria shows great calm, tidy and clear. The fruit presents itself nicely lined up, as if someone had draped it on a cool marble floor. The blackberries, plums and blueberries show themselves clearly outlined, underneath shimmer mineral notes of wet stone and distinctive spice of tobacco, freshly tanned leather and dark spices like pepper and black cardamom.

It is also refreshing on the palate, the extract-rich fruit always coolly underpinned by tart phenolic and striking minerality. This gives it freshness and the popular grip that keeps the saliva flowing. Like the finest velvet, its tannins are close-meshed, low-pile and shimmering violet, along with the sinewy, taut fruit that is largely defined by the extract. Animating red wine with a rapid flow.