€6.98, £7.95, 11.50 Swiss francs, 2,592 yen
You don’t often come across wines whose price seems genuinely incredibly low but this is one of them. Please don’t tell the Scala family who make this wine on their mixed farm producing olives, milk and wine in Calabria on the toe of Italy just 500 m from the Ionian Sea (what a lovely name!).
Sebastian Payne MW of the deliberately non-profiteering Wine Society in the UK buys it and I was deeply smitten by the 2013. Having read dire reports of the 2014 vintage in Tuscany and Piemonte, I was a bit worried about this later vintage but 2014 was of course exceptionally good on Sicily and, it turns out, this far south on the Italian mainland.
There is precious little wine made in Calabria. Indeed Calabria is famous for very little other than the local Mafiosi known as ‘Ndrangheta. I went there in 2003 and visited the estimable wine producer the Librandi family, who impressed me with their work rescuing local vine varieties some time before it became fashionable to do so. I was struck by the ruggedly beautiful terrain, but also by how often it was spoilt by half-built houses – all something to do with tax, I was told. (The Wikipedia entry for Calabria includes this observation: ‘Calabria is one of the least developed regions in Italy, although the high degree of tax evasion makes it difficult to verify these statistics.’)
Never mind about this macro picture. Concentrate on the value on offer here. Gaglioppo (pictured above) is Calabria’s own red wine grape and was for me the star of a big wine tasting event devoted to the wines of the far south of Italy, Radici del Sud, when I visited Puglia in 2011. Made well, it yields seductively perfumed reds relatively light in colour but with oodles of ripe fruit. As we explain in Wine Grapes, it is closely related to Sangiovese (whose origins are partly Calabrian), Ciliegiolo and Nerello Mascalese, the Etna grape. It tastes nothing ike Sangiovese, however, being generally lower in both acidity and tannin.
Cirò on the southern coast of Calabria is its best-known DOC and Gaglioppo is the signature grape variety – although the authorities misguidedly and distinctly late in the day decided to allow some Bordeaux grape varieties into the blend for those who wanted to ‘internationalise’ a distinctive local treasure.
My tasting note on the 2014 (whose label is very different from that of the 2013):
Another stonkingly good value offering from this small denomination on the sole of Italy. The 2014 is more concentrated than the 2013 – 2014 was so much better in southern than in northern Italy – but it still has that distinctive rose-scented nose as well as massively friendly, fruity palate. Not for long-term cellaring, but this was the group’s favourite of four reds I showed at the 2016 Kerrygold Ballymaloe Literary Festival, even though it was the cheapest. Masses of character and charm. VGV.
The Scala family have been farmers here since the 17th century, apparently. It was Federico S who installed a modern winery, and the vineyards are sustainably cultivated with his son Giuseppe now involved as well as oenologist Riccardo Cotarella. They also grow local varieties Marsigliana Nera (Maglioco Dolce) and Guardavalle as well as Nerello Cappuccio and Greco on their 150-ha estate.
According to Wine-searcher.com, the 2014 is available in Germany as well as in the UK and Switzerland and the 2013 in Japan. Why not the US, I wonder?