Italian Red
Calabretta Nerello Mascalese Vigne Vecchie, Sicily, Italy 2015
- 100% Nerello Mascalese
- Practicing Organic
- View winemaker fact sheet
Since the winery’s founding in 1900, the Calabretta family has farmed and produced wines from Etna’s ancient indigenous varieties—including Nerello Mascalese and Nerello Cappuccio—in the mountain’s unique noble vineyards. The estate has been described as “a thousand miles away” from other Italian wine, but the gap might be better measured in time, since the estate seems stuck somewhere in the 19th century. The Nerello Mascalese Vigne Vecchie remains the estate’s crown jewel to this day. The extended aging sculpts the wine's velvety texture and subtle aromatics, making it dangerously delicious upon release while also imbuing it with a deceptively age-worthy structure. It coats your palate without a trace of excess weight, sliding towards a unique convergence of value, character, and age rarely seen in Italy, if not the world.