Top Etna Rosso Wines Blind Taste Test

I think I was inspired by March Madness.  College basketball at this time of year is impossible to ignore, especially because my Alma mater ( Michigan State) is a regular contender. Except this year!!!  I was thinking to myself there are so many wines from just Etna alone how can we figure out our favorites?  Why not have a bunch of Etna Rosso wines and taste them all in the same day and directly compare to find the winners and losers?  So I started picking up all the Etna Rosso wines I could find.  I thought that at most it would be an “Elite 8”, but all of the sudden I ended up with 12 and still left a couple out!  For the test they had to be true Etna Rosso DOC meaning that they could only contain Nerello Mascalese and Nerello Cappuccio grapes.  No blends with Nero d’Avola, Syrah, Cabernet, etc.

I brought out these old wine tasting party kits Continue reading “Top Etna Rosso Wines Blind Taste Test”

Donnafugata Damarino 2010

Dan Marino?

We have been impressed with Donnafugata wines, so we thought we would give this one a shot and sure enough it was good as well.  I made some chicken piccata using the wine.  Also had most of the bottle left over for dinner and it was great white for the dish.  Light but still had a nice taste to it.   I believe we got the bottle for around $10.

http://www.donnafugata.it/prodotti/Damarino.aspx

 

Vespa rating for the Damarino 2010 from Donnafugata

Banfi Chianti Classico 2009

Banfi redeemed itself after our last Banfi wine that fell into the mini donkey realm.  This Chianti Classico is exactly that, with a very good dry Chianti taste. $9.99 per bottle.  Not exactly a Ferrari find, but good.

Rating: Vespa

SegnaVento – Primitivo Di Manduria – Wine

I picked up this wine as a recommendation from my Italian friend, Mario.  We weren’t expecting too much in that it was only €3.75, but it surprised us in a good way.  Had a lot more flavor than we were expecting.  The grape is a Primitivo, which is somewhat synonymous with Zinfandel.  Most Primitivo is grown in Puglia (Apulia), the “heel” of Italy, and it is estimated to be the country’s 12th most widely planted grape variety.  The main three DOC areas are Primitivo di Manduria, Gioia del Colle Primitivo (Riserva) and Falerno del Massico Primitivo (Riserva o Vecchio).

 

 

 

If your wondering what DOC stands for here is a quick blurb that explains it.  Its basically a standard of sorts:

Vino a Denominazione di Origine Controllata (DOC) is the Italian answer to the French AOC. DOC wines are produced in specific well-defined regions, according to specific rules designed to preserve the traditional wine-making practices of the individual regions. Thus, the rules for making Barolo differ markedly from those for making Chianti Classico. The winery can state the vineayrd that the grapes came from, but cannot name the wine after a grape type (doing so would cause confusion, because there are some DOCs named after grape types, for example Brunello di Montalcino), and cannot use a name such as “Superior.” Since a wine has to meet certain standards to qualify as DOC, the quality of Italian wines as a whole has improved since the first DOCs were established in the 1960s, though in some cases the rules drawn up by the commissions had unexpected effects — Super Tuscans (VdT) arose from the requirement (since dropped) that producers put white grapes in their Chianti Classico.

On the map below I marked where the wine is from.

 

To cut to the chase we give this wine a rating of  Vespa because of its good quality for the price.

 

For info on our rating system go to this link