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The wines of Montevetrano, Campania, Italy Campanian superstar wine Montevetrano burst onto the scene
in 1995 and achieved cult status almost overnight. Italian
photographer Silvio Imparato initially had just 4 hectares of vines
south of Naples and made a little wine in 1991. Encouraged by the
results she hired winemaker Ricardo Cotarella to help with the 1992
vintage. In 1995 she sent vintages 1991–1993 to Robert Parker who
gave it a high score and famously called it the ‘Sassacaia of the
south’. With this, the wine became sought after overnight. Imparato claims to have a simple philosophy, which is to
make good wine from the property belonging to her parents. When she
began she was part of a consortium of wine lovers, which has now
disbanded, all of who shared a common inspiration: the great wines of
Bordeaux. The vineyard is on a south-facing slope with gravelly soils,
and while the first vintage was 70% Cabernet and 30% Aglianico, the
blend is now more typically 60% Cabernet, 30% Merlot and 10% Aglianico.
Initialy just 1000 bottles were made; now production is more like 30
000 bottles. Vineyard area has increased from 4 to 6 hectares and is
planned to increase to 11 hectares in the near future; the expansion
will stop when production reaches 50 000 bottles. Imparato says she
wants to maintain the passion she has now and at the same time keep
control of the operation from grape to market. Because the vineyard is less than 2 km from the sea, tucked
in behind Salerno, they never get the scorching summer weather of the
centre, and this helps to maintain the natural acidity in the wines.
This proximity to the sea also means that the season starts a little
earlier here, too. The winemaking involves fermentation in short, fat
stainless steel tanks with pumping over. The wines are then racked
into barrels (half new) for 9 months and lightly filtered before
bottling. The association of the name Ricardo Cotarella (now a famous
winemaking consultant) and a high Parker score with this wine might
lead you to assume that Montevetrano is just another blockbuster red
in the international style. But there’s more to these wines than
just modernity, which usually finds its expression in density of
extraction, sweet fruit and plenty of new oak—these wines manage to
express something of their site. They’ve been described as the least
Cotarella-ish of all the Cotarella influenced wines. I liked them a
good deal, although it would be amiss of me not to note that I think
they are a bit expensive, at around £50 a bottle. Apart from price (which can only be blamed on the market,
if people are willing to pay), my only other concern tasting through
this vertical is that as yet none of the vintages have gone through
any great degree of positive evolution. They are not particularly more
compelling a decade old than they are three years old it seems.
That’s not a problem, but when you are paying this sort of money on
release you are usually paying for future potential. This is the first and probably last time that anyone will
get a chance to do this vertical: there’s so little left of the 1992
and 1994 that it’s unlikely to be repeated. I’ll let my notes
speak for themselves. For the record, Silvia’s favourites are the
1995, 1997 and then, close on their tail, the 1993. Montevetrano 2002 (barrel sample) Montevetrano 2001 Montevetrano 2000 Montevetrano 1999 Montevetrano 1998 Montevetrano 1997 Montevetrano 1996 Montevetrano 1995 Montevetrano 1994 Montevetrano 1993 Montevetrano 1992 Wines tasted October 27 2003 |