One of the four crown princes of hell. Roughly translated to ‘without yoke’ in Hebrew. It is believed that Belial is the purest definition of ‘lawlessness.’ The correlation is that much of what has come to be known as ‘Supertuscans’ or ‘IGT’ is simply lawless. People blending international varietals with indigenous varietals, etc.
This is 100% Sangiovese sourced from a single Montecucco vineyard. This wine puts the ‘super’ in SuperTuscan and certainly at this price. Winemaker, Riccardo Campinoti is a firm believer that the wine is made in the vineyard and when he found this one with mature vines (averaging 15 years of age) he knew he had something special. The grapes were hand harvested and the fermentation included 2 weeks of skin contact to extract rich flavors and color. Aging is in neutral barrels so the Sangiovese fruit is the star here.
2008 was the inaugural vintage for this wine and the response was overwhelming to say the least. It is not too often where the marketplace smiles in unison when selling and drinking a wine, but that happened here. This is a pretty serious and structured wine for this price. The 2011 has considerable amount of fruit, in a positive way. The vintage was even and nearly flawless until about a month before harvest when a hot cell from Africa descended upon Tuscany and decided to stay put for the rest of the summer. Harvest was a few weeks earlier than usual, though the wine has great balance and looks more like 2005 than 2003.
- Region: Toscana IGT
- Varietal: 100% Sangiovese
- Vintage: 2011
- Vineyard: Single Site in Montecucco
- Vine Age: 18 years old
- Yield: 3.4 tons per acre
- Soil Type: Clay over Limestone
- Oak: 10 month in Slavonian botti
- Production: 3,000 cases
FYI, I forgot to mention that the above notes are their talking points about their wine.
