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2017 Giampiero Bea Lapideus Umbria Bianco $65 bottle
“Lapideus” spends a month on it skins after pressing, followed by over 200 additional days on the gross lees. Racy, with a precise sense of acidity, the wine emphasizes drive over density and an underlying salinity.
A subtle note of honeyed sweetness at the wine’s core speaks of its warm-climate origins, and Bea’s propensity for wildness reveals itself in a fascinating cheese-rind whisper in its aromatics.
2015 Paolo Bea Rosso de Veo Sagrantino $65 bottle
This 2015 is Mike Tyson in his prime: potent, assertive, brazen, and making no concessions to polite society. Monstrous in its tannins, it nonetheless presents them in such a multifaceted way as to almost transcend their viselike grip; the tannins themselves have layers, offering classic sandalwood spice on one level, mineral-saturated depth-charge stoniness on another, and—most thrillingly—a direct, naked evocation of crunching into dripping-ripe berries. Four years of élévage did nothing to blunt this astonishing wine’s unmitigated expression of freshly plucked grapes, and this is a monumental “Rosso de Veo” that should live for a very, very long time.
2015 Paolo Bea Pagliaro Montefalco Sagrantino $95 bottle
Bea produces perhaps his most renowned wine from pure Sagrantino grown on the prized hilltop site of Pagliaro.
This 2015 is absolutely jaw-dropping in its intensity and presence. Bea’s wines at their best offer a panoply of spices so intoxicating, so far-reaching, so evocative, as to nearly defy belief. The only wines that approach Bea’s in that regard are perhaps the most un-sculpted Syrah-based wines of the Northern Rhône.
