The meeting took place online, as obvious nowadays (due to the sanitary emergency*), but a video virtually carried us up on Monte Somma to show where the new wine, “Ereo” rosé, comes from. Of course, someone might argue that the scents, as well as the breeze and the eventual warmth of this timid spring, were missing but it is exactly all we got by tasting this intriguing rosé.
“EREO” – VESUVIO ROSATO DOP 2019
This is the first edition, a very limited production of about 2000 bottles. A blend of 3 black grape varieties: Piedirosso, Guarnaccia nera and Sciascinoso in equal parts as grown in the vineyard. The colour is elegant: medium pink maybe with some light orange reflections. The nose offers simple and clean aromas of raspberry with gentle puffs of candied orange as well as ash and a pungency like that stimulated by the chalk. On the palate, the right acidity combines to a marked savouriness; medium body. In short, a fine and well-defined wine: lively, immediate as well as “tasty” and certainly territorial.
CANTINE OLIVELLA
Small winery founded in 2004 in Sant’Anastasia town in the Vesuvio National Park of Campania region (Southern Italy) thanks to 3 partners (Andrea Cozzolino, Ciro Giordano and Domenico Ceriello). Organic farming, with a particular focus on green manure, is a consolidated practise for the care of centenary ungrafted vines as allowed by the volcanic sands of Vesuvius, the famous volcano in the province of Napoli city. Among the main varieties, there is Piedirosso (black grape) as well as the whites Caprettone and Catalanesca, the latter recently recovered thanks to an update of the regulations that legitimizes it as wine grapes with a superpotential after having been for long just a generous and resistant table grape.
The tasting of the Ereo was accompanied, in fact, by that of two other equally interesting wines.
“SUMMA”: CATALANESCA DEL MONTE SOMMA IGP 2017
A round and welcoming wine that beyond the tasting profile offers such a silky texture that makes it particularly captivating and completes the wine line. Intense and rather sumptuous wine with notes of broom, grapefruit, golden apple peel and refreshing herbs on the nose. Smooth, well-structured with a bitter finish as expected from a volcanic territory.
“VESUVIO” – VESUVIO ROSSO DOP 2017
A fabulous, balanced, enjoyable, but not trivial red from Piedirosso. The nose offers a layered combination of flavours such as wild berries, roots, cinchona and a pungent black pepper. Quite fruity and juicy with rather low tannins and a medium body; the profile is enriched by a bitter and smoky trait typical of the volcanic soil.
