To commemorate the publishing on our new book, Decoding Italian Wine: A Beginner’s Guide to Enjoying the Grapes, Regions, Practices and Culture of the “Land of Wine,” I will be reviewing a string of what I think (and hope) will be awesome Italian wines I found at Costco in December. I’ll also throw in some tidbits from the book related to each wine and region.
This Carmignano (“car-min-yah-no”) was a perfect bottle to start with. Carmignano is really the original Super Tuscan, something I learned while researching the book. While many believe that the Super Tuscan movement, which refers to blending grapes outside of the regular and excepted guidelines(and they created excellent wines while doing so), originated with a band of rouge Tuscan winemakers, the truth is that the winemakers in nearby Carmignano had been blending for hundreds of years. This bottle (I believe) is predominantly Sangiovese with smaller parts of Cabernet Sauvignon.
I was excited to have found this bottle at Costco and would have purchased it for almost any reasonable price given the story I just outlined and how it related to the studies for the book. The good news is that it was $19.99, after $5 off (regularly $24.99 at Costco). And it is a delicious wine.
Nose of dried fruit and plum, this wine is juicy on the palate with robust red fruit flavor, leather, tobacco aromas, and it all leads into a dry chalky finish, with hints of sour cherry lingering behind. Beautiful body, soft tannins likely getting softer as this ages. This is a quintessential Italian red wine and it is drinking really nice right now.
CostcoWineBlog.com Rating: 92 Points
Costco item number: 24963
Purchased at Costco in Atlanta, GA
Ray
Wednesday 3rd of December 2014
This sounds as good as the Rompicollo, if not better. Thanks for the heads up. Cabernet and Sangiovese is a great marriage.