Avignonesi

Avignonesi
Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, Tuscany, Italy

The Estate

Avignonesi was founded in 1974 by the Avignonesi family who have been residents of the town since the sixteenth century. In the period that followed the winemaking was the kind that ambitious Tuscan estates did then, which was prove they could compete with international grapes and new oak. Some of their wines defined the period. However, Virginie Saverys, a Belgian attorney and trained winemaker, purchased the estate in 2009 and chose a different pat.  She immediately started the transition of the 175-hectare estate to organics and achieved certification in 2016. It was certified biodynamic in 2019 and is the largest estate of the kind in Italy.

The part that matters in the glass however, is what she did to their flagship wine Vino Nobile. The appellation lets you put thirty percent of something else in the bottle, and most producers use some of it. She took it to 100 percent Sangiovese. Tuscany sells itself to Americans in three names. Chianti, Brunello, and the Super Tuscans. Vino Nobile di Montepulciano was in the founding class of Italian DOCGs in 1980, the same year as Brunello, on a hill twenty miles east of it, but for years Vino Nobile was not regarded as highly. Vierginie was determined to change that, and I believe she has.

Vin Santo

The Vinsantaia at Avignonesi has no temperature control, and that is the entire point of it. It is a small building that is mostly height, and it is full of caratelli, fifty liter barrels sealed with wax and left alone. The room is allowed to freeze in January and cook in August because the swing is what drives the fermentation. I have been in a great many cellars. I have never been in another room that smells like that one, and Susan and I were there in the summer of 2018. I can still call it up.

We were too late in the year to see the fruit hanging. That happens earlier, whole bunches strung up in the appassitoio for three to six months until they give up half their volume, and people who have seen it describe rows of drying grapes like drapes across a room. We got the empty loft and the story. Then we got the wine, which is the part I was not prepared for.

They poured the regular Vin Santo first, which is a serious wine on its own terms. Then the export manager went and got the Occhio di Pernice, and he did not bring one bottle. He brought 1990, 1998, 2001 and 2005, in the 375s, and poured a vertical of a wine that almost nobody gets to taste twice in a lifetime, let alone four times in an afternoon. The 2005 was the current release and next to the other three it was an infant, and it was still one of the best things I have ever had in a glass. I have had Sauternes and Port going back a hundred and fifty years. I had never had a Vin Santo like that, and I had certainly never had four of them side by side.

Occhio di Pernice means eye of the partridge, which is a description of the color. It is made from Sangiovese rather than the white grapes that go into most Vin Santo, and everything about it is deliberately inefficient. The dried fruit is pressed at roughly half the weight it started at. The juice goes into the caratelli with a madre, a mother yeast the family has kept going for generations, and then it ferments for anywhere from one to four years depending on what the weather decides to do. It sits for more than a decade after that, sealed, while over half of it evaporates through the wood. What comes out is a wine of about twelve and a half percent alcohol and a couple thousand half bottles a year.

The next generation

This has always been a family affair. Virginie's son Basile was the COO and now running the estate. Eline, her daughter, opened two wine bars in London before opening another in Antwerp. She also launched the first new label of the estate called Ventisei. Ventisei is Italian for twenty six, the age she was when the first wine bar opened, from that fruit on the estate, blended to her own taste but made with the same exacting standards. The estates and people I keep going back to and support all have one or more wines like this. They have a bottle that makes the reputation, priced at what a reputation costs. What separates the ones I actually buy from the rest is the other half of the sentence. Same crew, same ground, same farming, going into a bottle you open on a Tuesday without thinking about it.

 I started drinking Ventisei not long after it appeared, and then I started programming it. I put the Rosso by the glass in Atlanta, which is the hardest test a wine at that price ever faces. It has to be good on the fourth night the bottle is open, it has to work against a kitchen sending out five different things at once, and a guest has to want a second glass. It did all three, every service, for as long as I poured it.

What a private visit is
A private visit to Avignonesi through Vineyard Confidential is the day we had, not the tasting room version of it. You walk plots at different elevations with someone who can tell you why the same Sangiovese tastes like two different grapes three hundred meters apart. You have a wonderful lunch on the terrace overlooking the Tuscan countryside and vineyards only a few feet from you.

The final part of the day is experiencing the sights and smells of the Vinsantaia, and then taste some of that magical elixir which will sear the memories in your brain forever.

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FROM THE CELLAR

The 2021 Toscana Rosso, Ventisei IGT
This is Eline's wine and an argument for restraint in a region that spent the 1990s proving it could make big wine. Sangiovese led with small parts of Merlot and Cabernet, fermented in stainless with indigenous yeast and a share of the fruit left whole, then raised in tank. Nothing touches wood. Wild strawberry, sour cherry, rosehip, low alcohol, fine tannin, a bay leaf note at the end. Serve it cool. It tastes like where it came from because nothing was added to make it taste like anywhere else.

The 2022 Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, Avignonesi DOCG
is 100 percent Sangiovese, which is the whole argument in one number. Red and black cherry over dried herb and iron, tannin that is firm without being hard, and the kind of acidity you only get off vineyards high enough to cool down at night. This is what the hill does when someone farms it properly and then gets out of the way.

1990 Vin Santo, Occhio di Pernice
This was the last glass we tried, and my reaction was almost visceral. It pours incredibly slowly and the aromas were a mix of crème brulee, molasses that lasted forever. We left the estate 30 minutes after the pour and the glass still smelled incredible. This wine belongs in any conversation about the finest dessert wine ever made.

1998 Vin Santo, Occhio di Pernice
Deep ruby to black, toffee on the nose, scents of violets and black fig and date, Incredible flavor and concentration but with the acidity to back it up.. This is just decadence defined. molten treacle toffee on the nose, enormous sugar carried by good acidity. Franco Ziliani, 16.5 of 20: dark ruby, rich and intense, warm and long, with surprising fresh fruit notes.

2001 Vin Santo, Occhio di Pernice
One of the best dessert wines I have ever had. It’s been described as a “singular work of art” and I couldn’t agree more. It’s caramel, maple syrup, espresso bean, licorice, candied fruit and dried fig, smoky and savory on the nose, and built like a tank.

2005 Vin Santo, Occhio di Pernice
Dried fig, date, molasses and caramel, hints of cardamom and cumin with astounding acidity that will keep it fresh for years.