Looking ahead. New arrivals for July, part 2: Caparsa.

Last July I was staying at Caparsa, two-thirds of the way through a work travel marathon that started in Naples and wound as far south as Manduria, before circling back for final days in Umbria and Tuscany. Now that I’m marooned by Coronavirus inside our borders, and mostly inside these four walls, I think back fondly to time on that farm. Actually it was pretty hot in Radda during my stay. And there was a lot of early morning tractor activity, at least early by cityfolk standards. In spite of the elevation, Paolo Cianferoni’s guest house was a little oven during daylight hours. A couple of afternoons I hiked through the fields and forest to the village of Radda, beautiful walks ending in gelato or an aperol spritz, (or both.) 

Caparsa’s vineyard managers.

A wave of recent critical acclaim in the wine press keeps the availability of Caparsa in the USA tenuous, and fleeting. Please read through my notes from wandering around Caparsa’s 16th century cellar, tasting things with Paolo, and let me/us know if you’d like some wine. For better or worse, we won’t necessarily be able to fill all requests. 

Paolo noted that his grandfather’s generation would drink two liters of wine a day. As the last generation before Italy’s post-WWII industrial boom, it was their only drink, and it was low alcohol, frequently served with water added. It is Paolo’s intention to make healthy wine that you can drink a lot. Wine with all the antioxidant properties intact, quercetin and other polyphenols, etc. The kind of wine that helped preserve these old timers, and could be a reason why Italians live longer lives than many of their European counterparts. Twenty two percent of the Italian population is over 65, the life expectancy of the average Italian male is 81, for Italian women it is 85.

How does Cianferoni make a healthier wine? It starts with native yeast. According to Paolo, a winemaker only adds selected yeasts because their grapes are sterile from the use of too many chemical products in the vineyard. Years of certified organic farming at Caparsa have created a vibrant and useful microbiome. Paolo’s wines ferment with their skins, powered by wild yeast. The grapes are destemmed, and typically fermentation lasts two weeks. Last year it lasted 29 days! If malolactic fermentation doesn’t occur naturally because acid/alcohol levels are too high, or the cellar is too cold, Paolo adds the sediment from young wine in the following year, to kick-start to malo.  

Paolo’s family first planted vines at Caparsa in the 1960s. In the 1970’s his grandfather restored the (16th century) old cellar and built the new cellar. His mother was adamantly against buying the property: she thought it would ruin them. Tuscany in the 1960s and 1970s was basically abandoned, stripped of its labor force by the flight of former sharecroppers and the collapse of the feudal latifundia system in the wake of World War II. Buying property and making wine seemed a risky proposition. 

The soil here is clay/Alberese limestone marl. Clay, and quartz, rocky. 

Dario Cecchini provided the protein for a week at Caparsa.

Quality across the Chianti Classico region has risen steadily since 1997, a watershed vintage that made global wine drinkers sit up and pay attention to wine from Tuscany (again.) An influx of investment and expertise followed. In two short decades central Tuscany was transformed from an impoverished hinterland, into a playground for food-loving international tourists, second homes, luxury cars, olive trees, and vines. 

Paolo remembers the days before the Germans and Scandanavians bought all the land. He says there used to be wheat, pigs, mulberry trees (for silk.) It was working polyculture. Little had changed from the middle ages. He likes the film Il ballo da sola (Stealing Beauty, a later work by Bertolucci starring Liv Tyler) as it encapsulates this era well. I’ve never seen it, but we’ll take his word. 

As vineyards across the globe swelter from the effects of global warming, it helps that Caparsa faces northeast, away from the summer sun’s hottest rays. Two generations ago south-facing sites were necessary to fully ripen Sangiovese. “Now the finest properties evaporate under the sun,” Paolo states. “In Italy it is still not (legally) possible to irrigate. (Therefore) It is still possible to create an expression of terroir.”

Paolo mentions a handful of the many good wineries working in his region today. Poggerino, Monteraponi, Poggio al Sole, Cascina da Cornia. We really are living in a golden age for Chianti Classico. Let’s hope the hills of this special landscape are high enough to moderate the progressively hotter summers, to allow the Sangiovese renaissance to continue. 

Caprsa bottles 45% of its total production. Now they are making 50,000 bottles. The farm has the capacity to produce 120,000. The remainder is sold to negociants, Antinori, Ruffino, etc. Until two years ago they were only bottling 33%, but strong domestic demand (they have good national distribution across Italy) has allowed Paolo and his sons to do more.

Federico Cianferoni’s dog Pancake guards the old cellar.

Across seven days I tasted and drank nearly everything Caparsa had available. In the cellar, al fresco with beautiful local charcuterie, on the patio with epic grilled bisteca fiorentina from the butcher of Panzano, late at night while watching heat lightning flash across the forested hills of Radda and beyond. 

Here’s a summary of what I tasted. 

2018 Bianco di Caparsino is currently available in N.C. Paolo thinks it’s the best vintage of white wine they’ve ever made. They used dry ice to cool down the fermentation vessels, which might be why the wine is lighter on the palate, lighter in color, and more overtly mineral than before. We purchased most of their tiny production for drinking this summer in balmy North Carolina.

2018 Rosato Toscana has come and gone, sadly. Maybe some bottles are still in shops. It was made with a selection of grapes from closer to the forest, “a fresher place.” Flavorful, intense, dry, a touch flinty. Bright cherry. The juice spends 24 hours on the skins. There is no temperature control. They roll the rosato barrels outside in winter, to precipitate the tartrates out of solution.

2016 Chianti Classico This is a first for Caparsa, a new not-riserva Chianti Classico. Lot #1 is sold out in North Carolina, but good news! Lot #2 will be available beginning July 21st. Both are 100% Sangiovese, aged in cement for 18 months. 

Lot #1 has nice fine try tannin with a very pleasant astringency to the finish. Lot #2 Has more clean, dark fruit. It tastes purer, fresher, and younger. Accessible. 

Lot 11/14 of the Rosso di Caparsa has also come and gone from our North Carolina warehouse. Look for a new lot this winter. When tasted last July it was fresh and enjoyable, not possessing the gravity of the new Chianti Classicos, but a seriously gulpable red for drinking in summer and fall. 

2016 Caparsino Chianti Classico Riserva is likely to be sold out by the time you read this: sorry. Blame the media. When tasted last summer it was quite intense, closed, tannic. A big wine for the cellar. Lots of tarry black fruit. 

2015 Caparsino Chianti Classico Riserva (available beginning July 21st) is really very good. Lot of stars and arrows in my notebook indicate an unmissable need to purchase this one. Exceptionally pleasant mouthfeel, rich without sacrificing any of its typicity. Hedonists and nerds alike will gravitate to this bottle. Our world could use a little more consensus. 

2014 Caparsino Chianti Classico Riserva (sold out for now, sorry) was in Paolo’s parlance “the other side of the moon.” Clean, fresh, light, easy, good, a slight wine of real precision, a cool vintage classic. 

2015 Doccio a Matteo Chianti Classico Riserva (not currently available in N.C. because we can’t have everything) contains 2% Colorino, alongside the Sangiovese. The wine is aged 50% in cement, 50% in oak barrel. I can taste the heat of the vintage a little more in this one. It’s spicy. 

2012 Doccio a Matteo Chianti Classico Riserva (available in small quantities beginning July 21st) is mellow. With a little aeration a woodsy, wonderfully old-world quality emerges. I kinda love this one. Doccio a Matteo is from a specific part of Caparsa’s land, vines above a natural aquifer that consistently produce top-notch Sangiovese.  

According to Paolo, there are still 50,000 grape growers in Italy, and 1,000 varieties of grapes. It’s a density and diversity worth preserving. “Maybe two percent of people know about wine,” Paolo states. “Ninety-eight percent buy from the supermarket.” It sounds like a grim assessment. Then he elaborates, “Two percent is not a small number.”

Well-said. Two percent of the global wine-drinking population. It’s enough. We are lucky. Places like Caparsa can be preserved, and thrive.