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| ~ The Antipasti platter at Gnocco made for a nice start to the lunch ~ |
Last month I had the opportunity to linger over lunch with family proprietor Valeria Losi from Agricola Querciavalle. We spotlighted this amazing family estate in a two part series just over a year ago, so we were both eager to sit together and check in on the estates newest releases.
Back then, I wrote that the origins of the family estate had their roots in sharecropping and the move to fine wine production only began in the late 1950’s when Tranquillo Losi had the foresight to hire Tancredi Biondi Santi as consulting winemaker. That decision seems incredibly prescient today as the vines he helped graft continue to pay dividends in the form of impressive wines.
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| ~ Vigneto di Agricola Losi ~ |
We tasted through the full range of wines over a delicious lunch provided by Gnocco, a small but intimate trattoria in lower Manhattan. The owner, PierLuigi, was on his game and the food perfectly complimented the range of wines. We’ll be covering all of the Losi’s wines tasted that day over the course of the next few weeks. Today, we’re focusing on the wine Tancredi Biondi Santi had a hand in creating; Armonia.
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| ~ Tagliatelle fresca con tartufi neri ~ |
Our first introduction to Armonia was the 2007, which was impressive. Armonia is only produced in optimum vintages from a single vineyard on Querciavalle’s Pontignanello estate. The 2010 Querciavalle Armonia certainly lives up to the wine’s reputation. This particular bottle was carried from the Cantina by Valeria Losi. It has not yet been released.
In the glass, the wine is a very deep ruby to garnet color with almost no fading out at the rim. Produced from 100% Sangiovese Grosso “imported” by Biondi Santi, the wine displays an elegant style with complex aromas and flavors. Crushed cherry, flowers, chestnut and leather on the nose give way to structured, masculine flavors of wild berry, earth notes, tobacco and leather. Armonia is vinified in large oak casks (50 hl) for up to 25 days and then transferred to French barrique for 10-12 months before resting a year in bottle prior to release. Someday I would love to include this in a blind tasting of Brunello as a “ringer”. I think it would raise quite a few eyebrows. Delicious wine, and a relative bargain around $40. 93 points. Disclosure: This wine was a producer provided sample.
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| ~ Armonia is 100% Sangiovese Grosso ~ |
Salute!
July 11, 2016
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