Massa Vecchia ’06 Rosato
For extreme vinophiles only!
This unique wine straddles the fine line between interesting and oddly obscure.
Fabrizio Niccolaini, the Italian winemaker who runs Massa Vecchia, a tiny biodynamic vineyard in Tuscany, has created something lush, ripe, alcoholic, earthy and ever so rustic, made from a blend of ancient Merlot (60%) and Malvasia Nera (40%) vines.
This bottle is like a primitive countryside organic cheese…pungent and tasty and wild. Too strong for the average individual, yet prized by the aficionado and the gourmet.
It has tastes that I simply can’t identify. Maybe because he ages the wine in Chestnut rather than Oak or maybe because he uses methods usually associated with creating a Rose. I remain perplexed by this bottle.
I had to drink two bottles of this to decide what I thought. It’s pungent but smoothes out if you let it breathe. It’s concentrated but still has crisp lingering tastes that surface on the palate underneath the richness.
At $46 a bottle this wine is not for everyone.
When your wine aficionado friends drop by who pride themselves on acuteness of their palates and taste in concert with their understanding of how wine is made, this one is perfect.
Chambers Street Wines still has some in stock.
