CAMPANIA, ITALY
Taurasi DOCG
Taurasi is perhaps southern Italy's most famous red wine appellation. The Aglianico grape, blended or alone, makes interesting wines all over southern Italy, but in Taurasi the volcanic soils and altitude make a wine of extraordinary power, complexity and freshness. The Lonardo family makes one of the best examples of Taurasi I have drunk, cleanly made but complex, intriguing and fine. Serious red-black color; aromas of berries, Japanese salt plum, expensive leather, cocoa, woody herbs (bay? lavender?); big, broad-shouldered wine on the palate. Drink now with roasted or braised meat, or age for 10 ++ years for a real treat.
 
About Contrade di Taurasi:
There are many recent surprises in the region of Campania, which is perhaps the most improved winemaking area in Italy, but one thing has not changed: the wine made from the Aglianico grape grown around the village of Taurasi is still one of the glories of Italian viticulture.
 
Contrade di Taurasi is owned by Sandro Lonardo, a schoolteacher, and his wife Enza. They make Irpinia Aglianico, Taurasi, and small amounts of a white wine made from Grecomusc’, an indigenous white variety (grown ungrafted, interestingly). Their vineyards are all exposed directly south, which is ideal, and are at about 1300 feet above sea level, which may explain how a wine picked in the beginning of November in a warm climate can come in at relatively modest alcohol (between 13 and 13.5% in most vintages).
 
From Ian d’Agata on his website, TerroirSense.com: 
 
'At Cantina Lonardi, also known as Contrade di Taurasi, they have a long history of making outstanding Taurasi wines: in fact, their “regular” Taurasi is usually excellent, and they also make a Taurasi Vigne d’Alto, a wine that in the 2016 vintage is not that inferior to the Taurasi Coste, if at all. Last but not least, this winery deserves credit and will be forever remembered by wine lovers everywhere for having resurrected the long-forgotten Roviello white grape (locally known as Grecomusc’), another in an incredibly long, mind-boggling list of unique and noble native wine grapes that Italy had, somewhat culpably, stopped paying attention to during the twentieth century. But its people like those at Cantina Lonardo that help set things right. And we are grateful.