I made my own wines in Umbria

I made my own wines in Umbria

With Danilo Marcucci!

New Wines from Danilo Marcucci!

Including Blends I Concocted Myself!

We recently received a shipment of new wines rom Danilo Marcucci and they’re particularly great and exciting. I’ve been reflecting on Danilo’s arc as a wine maker and my friendship with him. I’ve learned more from him about wine making and the business of wine making than I’ve learned from any other person. Some of it he explicitly told and taught to me but a lot has just been from proximity and access; which seems pretty special and rare. I’ve known Danilo since spring of 2017 and I’ve visited his winery 7 times now. He’s always been super happy to have me and brought me into pretty much everything he does from cleaning tanks and barrels, pruning, bottling, grafting, negotiating with wine makers he advises, pressing grapes…; sometimes he’s even just dropped me off with his winery team and had them put me to work. I’ve loved it all because it’s given me more of an honest window into making and selling wine. I know he has his personal views and agenda, like anyone, but I’ve gotten to see so much that I can filter some of his personal take on things and keep it in perspective. I have huge respect for Danilo: he works on so many harvests at so many different wineries each year that he has exponentially more experience than many other wine makers. He has very deep technical knowledge from his studying with the university of Sienna. I respect him for how he has stuck to his belief in natural wine making, how he’s spread knowledge to other people, the brilliant wines he’s made, and how he’s struggled with personal and professional losses (both parents passed last year). He makes wines with zero additives and no temperature control. And he has made a LOT of delicious and fun wines over the years!
These wines are special because they’re some of the best I’ve tasted from him, it seems like he’s moved into a new phase of wine making, and some of these are blends I created myself. Read on to learn about them!
I visited Danilo for several days in late spring. We talked a lot about how hard business has been for him recently: Europe has been in recession, China has been in recession, he got a lot of press a few years ago that has now faded, he has too much wine… The last morning I was at Conestabile della Staffa Danilo and I went for a run early in the morning to catch up. …. And then he said “Ned, I have a deal for you. I will make a wine for you. You can taste all the wines in tank and make your own blend. Please, I need to sell more wine and I can make something of incredible for you”. I had to leave for the next appointment, but I couldn’t pass that up! So I had 1/2 an hour to run back and forth and taste all the tanks, imagine what they would taste like in the future and what they would taste like blended. We mixed things up with a graduated cylinder to be exact, shook hands, and I jumped in the car and was off.
I re-used the Case Sparse labels since they already existed and had TTB approval. I wanted to get the wines here ASAP! And now they’re here. I didn’t want to get my hopes up, but I opened them a week ago…. and they’re pretty awesome. I had both open for 3 days and they held up great! Neither got mousey or fell apart. Danilo is always talking about how important natural acidity and minerality is and this seems like a good example of why!

7pm on Saturday 10/26 Vessel and Vine is putting on a family style dinner, with the Case Sparse red and white here, all inspired by the movie: Big Night!
It’s $90 per person, including wine, and $20 of that goes to the Portland Housing Authority.  
Call Vessel and Vine at 207-721-3000 to make a reservation. I’ll be there hanging out in case you want to talk wine….

Conestabile della Staffa 'Case Sparse' Bianco 2023
Approximately $18/btl
Available at Nibblesford, Blyth and Burrows, Perks Beverage, Harbor Table in SWH, Quanto Basta, the Millers Table, Vinolio, Great Cranberry General, Camp Pennant, Wind and Wine, Blue Hill Wine Shop, Vessel and Vine, Downhill Bagel, and Maine and Vine
In 5 minutes I tasted through I don’t know how many tanks of different whites that Danilo had. I liked a little tank of 2023 Trebbiano that had been made with no skin contact and was just clean and laser focused and salty, but I felt like it needed fruit. On the other hand I tasted a tank of 2022 Grechetto that would be Grec-orange eventually; that had 6 days skin contact and was super tropical and aromatic. What I wanted was a balance between the two…. We mixed up 80% of the Trebbiano with 20% of the skin contact Grechetto and it was perfect!
Aroma: honey suckle, white rose, white peach, honey dew melon, a little hint of clementine and a hint of mango. There's an aroma of tropical fruit but it's not unctuous and there's a lovely subtle floral aroma to it. It has this lush Grechetto aroma: kind of fleshy ripe melon. It also very much has this salty ocean brine aroma from the Trebbiano!
Taste: gentle fresh orange and a hint of dry peach followed by a delicious salty briny mid palate. It's medium bodied and has a broader mid palate with dry mango and ripe cantaloupe in the background but the tasty salty structure is the driving force. There's a bit more peach on the finish with some more subtle cantaloupe there. This is delicious, beautifully balanced, and fresh.

Conestabile della Staffa 'Case Sparse' Rosso 2023
Approximately $18/btl
Available at Leeward, Harbor Table SWH, the Cheese Shop of Portland, Monte’s, Perks Beverage, Camp Pennant, 44 North, Downhill Bagel, Salisbury Organics, and Vessel and Vine
For the red blend I tasted even more tanks and wasn’t grabbed by any. There was a tank of cofermented Ciliegiolo and Aleatico that had beautiful floral aromas and was very smooth, but it was 2023 and felt too young, a bit too austere. But then I tasted a 2021 Sangiovese that was rich and deep and dripping: it seemed like the perfect addition to round out the Aleatico/Ciliegiolo and take the austere edge off. And it was! The wine is even more pretty and floral now, but has a sleek supple body backing it up.
Aroma: bright vivid beach rose, ripe raspberry, a touch of pomegranate juice, lavender, and cherry candy. The aroma is uplifted and floral and very expressive. It's a very pretty without crossing the line into being unctuous or jammy.
Taste: pretty fresh raspberry and ripe but tart cherry fruit. There's a shade of blood orange and then this delicious salty tasty backbone. It's not too in your face but it really supports the pretty fruit with a serious rocky tasty structure that makes the wine more serious and gives it this gravitas. There are tannins on the finish and they are a bit grippy but not too much; they're very much in balance with the lovely aromatic fruit the wine has. The texture is quite supple. This is an impressively structured, integrated, and polished natural wine. It's way better than I even expected it to be!

This is from 2 years ago. There are at least twice as many tanks now. Too Much Wine!

The vineyards where the Aleatico and Ciliegiolo came from. All the Conestabile vineyards are contiguous here, but some are shaded by the hill so the climate in them varies.

Conestabile della Staffa 'Il Rosso' 2022
Approximately $24 per bottle
Available for special order
Sangiovese with a bit of Caniolo and Sagrantino blended in. The wines under this style of label are a bit more “traditional” ie riper and bigger and more developed. This ages for one year in a big old oak cask. It doesn’t give any wood flavor to the wine but it does let it breathe and evolve and mature. This vintage is excellent and rich but focused and clean.
Aroma: powerful rich dark cherry, black raspberry; it's got some of that dark spicy brambly raspberry bush kind of aroma, a hint of spicy basil and a touch of dry autumn leaves. It's a lovely dark fruit driven aroma with a nice balance of background savory notes
Taste: lovely ripe juicy dark cherry: concentrated and rich but with a sleek suave texture. It has good supporting acidity keeping the fruit fresh tasting and then a touch of mocha on the mid palate. It's medium bodied and just 12 and a half percent alcohol but has presence and depth that belies that. Firm but finally grained tannins round out the wine and balance the textural and chewy fruit. This is lovely dense powerful central Italian Sangiovese with lovely vibrancy to it!

Conestabile Della Staffa 'Rossissimo' 2022
Approximately $27/btl
Available at The Cheese Shop of Portland and Bleeker and Greer
Il Rossissimo is a fun wine! This is 100% Colorino, a local traditional blending grape….. that is actually Alicante Bouschet! I never realized until Danilo told me! Anyway this is always a delicious mouthfull of wine: it’s always harvested fully ripe and then ferments with native east in open vats with manual punch downs. It ages in an ancient oak tank for 1 year. I cleaned that barrel out and pumped the new rossissimo into it way back in late 2017. This is not usually imported and is only available in Maine.
Aroma: whoa! Hello candied strawberry and raspberry jam! Smells like a raspberry tart! Bright and vibrant and playful but so much fruit! And a touch of sage and oregano; a dry aromatic herb quality subtly in the background. Very sunny dry Central Italian!
Taste: this is the big guy! Vibrant fruit but so much of it; juicy and lush and mouth filling with some serious tannins but there's so much fruit that you don't really notice them! There's a little bit of black pepper on the mid palate and this cooked raspberry flavor runs all the way through the wine right through the finish. Definitely lip smacking! Yes, I am smacking my lips right now. There's a little bit of a rich spicy supple cooked gingerbread flavor in the mid palate as well. This is so tasty and satisfying; chewy in a most delicious way!

Conestabile della Staffa 'Rosso due Colli' 2023
Approximately $27/btl
Available at Oakhill Beverage and special order anywhere
100% Gamay del Trasimeno (aka Garnacha, but a local unique variety). Danilo has always been excited about this little plot of grafted Gamay del Trasimeno, and he’s made some great wines from it, but this vintage takes the cake! This was Danilo’s favorite wine of everything he made in 2023. It’s so vivid and beautiful!
Aroma: wow! Really beautiful aromatic Cherry Jolly rancher, maraschino cherry, raspberry jam aroma! Really gorgeous vibrant red fruit with just a hint of something a little spicy like the smell of pine trees in the background. There's a hint of white pepper too. What a lovely and elegant aroma!
Taste: so supple and elegant! But with really vivid fruit. The fruit is so vibrant and beautiful with gorgeous intense extroverted raspberry and strawberry but then the mid palate has some more depth and a subtle lush viscosity. It feels very poised for such a beautifully fruity grenache. It's not heavy, it's very light on its feet, and then it has this subtle sneaky pepperiness on the back end that's just enough to sort of tickle your palate. Yes, it’s Grenache. The finish has some subtle but lingering tannins offset by a delicious saltiness. This is pretty exceptional!

Some of the old Sangiovese vineyards viewed from the winery and looking towards the lake.

Really, Danilo’s methods of work and wine making are proudly quite primitive. It allows him to more cleanly express the relationship between the grapes and the weather. It also makes it quite hard to do anything on a large scale!

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