Palazzone Terre Vineate Orvieto 2015
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Winemaker Notes
This wine is best suited to rich dishes that include sauces of meat or fish and it also goes well with spicy dishes.
Other Vintages
2010-
Parker
Robert
Giovanni began bottling his own Orvieto only in 1982, and even now, nearly forty years later, he still does everything he can to keep the dream of Orvieto alive. Year in and year out, he makes honest, classic wines with only fruit from his own vineyards. No shortcuts in his vineyards, no tricks in the cellar, just pure, historic Orvieto terroir in every bottle. Lest you think Orvieto is at best a simple wine, a recent tasting of mind-bending older vintages of his flagship Terre Vineate stretched back to the early 1990s, and the wines were strikingly beautiful, alive and incredibly fresh.
Giovanni says this is only possible because of terroir. The soil of Orvieto is complex: 3 million years ago, this land was under the sea, so there is a lot of sedimentary clay and limestone with very little organic matter. About 250,000 years ago, volcanic eruptions from Monte Vulsini (now Lake Bolsena) covered this area with volcanic rock, ash and pumice, but most of those layers have since eroded away, with an important exception: Rocca Ripesena, a vestigial outcropping of that volcanic tuff, still protects Palazzone from extreme weather. This elevated protection paired with Giovanni’s slightly north-facing vineyards help to keep his fruit cool during scorching Umbrian summers.
“What keeps an appellation producing wine for 2500 years?” Giovanni asks playfully. “If Piero Antinori, one of the richest and most famous winemakers in Tuscany, decided to make his great white wine in Umbria – it’s for a reason. If Luca Signorelli [renaissance artist extraordinaire], had in his contract both gold and Orvieto wine to paint the fresco of the Last Judgement in the cathedral of Orvieto in the 1500s, it should tell you something. If the wine wasn’t good or didn’t have potential, surely it would have been relegated to history. But we haven’t stopped. There is a huge potential here.” And we won’t stop, either. In fact, we are just beginning.
With hundreds of white grape varieties to choose from, winemakers have the freedom to create a virtually endless assortment of blended white wines. In many European regions, strict laws are in place determining the set of varieties that may be used in white wine blends, but in the New World, experimentation is permitted and encouraged. Blending can be utilized to enhance balance or create complexity, lending different layers of flavors and aromas. For example, a variety that creates a soft and full-bodied white wine blend, like Chardonnay, would do well combined with one that is more fragrant and naturally high in acidity. Sometimes small amounts of a particular variety are added to boost color or aromatics. Blending can take place before or after fermentation, with the latter, more popular option giving more control to the winemaker over the final qualities of the wine.
One of the most iconic Italian regions for wine, scenery and history, Tuscany is the world’s most important outpost for the Sangiovese grape. Tuscan wine ranges in style from fruity and simple to complex and age-worthy, Sangiovese makes up a significant percentage of plantings here, with the white Trebbiano Toscano coming in second.
Within Tuscany, many esteemed wines have their own respective sub-zones, including Chianti, Brunello di Montalcino and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano. The climate is Mediterranean and the topography consists mostly of picturesque rolling hills, scattered with vineyards.
Sangiovese at its simplest produces straightforward pizza-friendly Tuscan wines with bright and juicy red fruit, but at its best it shows remarkable complexity and ageability. Top-quality Sangiovese-based wines can be expressive of a range of characteristics such as sour cherry, balsamic, dried herbs, leather, fresh earth, dried flowers, anise and tobacco. Brunello, an exceptionally bold Tuscan wine, expresses well the particularities of vintage variations and is thus popular among collectors. Chianti is associated with tangy and food-friendly dry wines at various price points. A more recent phenomenon as of the 1970s is the “Super Tuscan”—a red wine made from international grape varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Syrah, with or without Sangiovese. These are common in Tuscany’s coastal regions like Bolgheri, Val di Cornia, Carmignano and the island of Elba.