"...fresh and tonic with interchanging aromas of wild rose, blue flower, cassis, and dried herb."
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| "Chiara Vigo's vineyards at Fattorie Romeo del Castello are planted between Etna lava flows, one of them created during the 1981 eruption. This is one of the only estates on the volcano with a recent memory of the immense volcanic destruction that is always a threat in these parts. Chiara can tell you how her house literally sank deeper into its foundations as ground temperatures soared with fast-moving lava nearby. A massive wall of molten rock partially covered her oldest vines, and although the heat caused her stone house to move, the grapevine roots miraculously survived. Now, so many decades after that eruption, grapevine shoots and tendrils have broken through the black rock. It's an incredible site to see, and it's an enduring symbol of nature's sheer power and the grapevine's determined will to survive. Her organic estate is located 700 meters above sea level at the intersection of three national parks: the Parco dell'Etna, the Parco dei Nebrodi, and the Parco Fluviale dell'Alcantara. In 2020, the estate added another new parcel of Nerello Mascalese; but Chiara decided not to make her top wine in 2020, the Etna Rosso Vigo, because that vintage did not live up to her expectations."
Monica Larner, Wine Advocate |
| | "All of the vines are trained in alberello, the traditional cultivation method of the region. In her beginnings, Chiara was heavily assisted by Salvo Foti's I Vigneri team of workers in the vines as well as Salvo in the cellar. But with accumulated experience, she now does everything herself. The grapes are hand-harvested, fermented in open wood vats for the Vigo cuvée and stainless steel for Allegracore, without yeasts, enzymes, or temperature control. Sulfur is used sparingly, if at all. Vigo, a riserva made only in exceptional vintages, is aged in older oak casks for about 14 months then bottled without fining or filtration. The Vigo shows all the remarkable characteristics and potential of this perfect match of terroir (pure volcanic ash and lava flow) and a delicious grape variety [old-vine Nerello Mascalese] only found in this corner of the world. How great are the soils here? A thousand-year-old olive tree survives in them.
Beyond the wine itself, Chiara has used Fattorie Romeo del Castello to pen a love letter of sorts to her family's past through the dynamic, ever-changing labels. Each cuvée tells a different story, with each vintage adding an element to the narrative .... Vigo 2014 hosts Luigi Romeo del Castello on the label and Vigo 2016 features his wife Maria Vagliasindi. Beside their names, their wedding date is written on the label.
Louis/Dressner |
| | | "The top wine from Fattorie Romeo del Castello is its 2016 Etna Rosso Vigo, and this bottle is held back for two more years of aging before its commercial release. There is a lot of fluid complexity and depth here, and new sides of the wine come into view with each swirl of the glass. The organic wine is fresh and tonic with interchanging aromas of wild rose, blue flower, cassis, and dried herb. The mineral nuance and the wine's dryness are downplayed in the 2016 vintage. Instead, it offers substantial fruit weight and extra volume that builds the fruity, or more buoyant, aromatic profile of this terrific red. If this offering of 3,400 bottles were a stock, any good analyst would put it down as a strong buy."
Monica Larner, Wine Advocate |
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