Delicious Italian wine at affordable prices.

Over the years, we’ve been making frequent trips to Friuli-Venezia Giulia, where we’ve gotten to know Damiano Meroi. He comes from a winemaking family and is passionate about great wine. We were instantly drawn to his enthusiasm for great wine. In recent years, Damiano has started an import/distribution company called Gemma Wine.

Damiano offered to send us the Italian wines from his portfolio. Having confidence in his palate, we immediately accepted. We were not disappointed and all the wines showed well.

The Gemma Wine portfolio focuses on small producers throughout Italy and the rest of Europe. The Italian wines in the portfolio are small, under the radar gems, and offer some serious value for money.

Gemma has some brilliant, classic wines in the portfolio in addition to several hidden gems. All of these wines below are under the radar producers. They offer tremendous value in today’s wine world, which is something we could all use a lot more of.

Wine Recommendations:

Sparkling Wine

• Solci’s, Metodo Classico Dosage Zero NV – Lombardy

Solci’s, Metodo Classico Dosage Zero is a blend of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and a few random grape varieties. Made in the Champagne method. Notes of white pear, lemon, quince, and just a touch of baked bread. It’s not super complex but it is a delightful drink. The bubbles here are fine but not too aggressive. Lemony finish. Score: 89/100

White Wine

• Massican, Sauvignon Blanc 2018 – Friuli-Venezia Giulia

The Massican, Sauvignon Blanc is barrel fermented and aged in oak for 12 months. This is a riper take on the grape. Notes of white peach, kiwi, acacia flower, and just a touch of oak. This is a rich white wine with some weight and texture. Very Friulian in style. Not Loire, not New Zealand, it’s own style. Score: 89/100

• Hedele, Chardonnay Goće 2016 – Vipava, Slovenia

The Hedel, Chardonnay Goće is a single-vineyard wine fermented Chardonnay that has really resisted aging. It’s more mineral than fruity. Notes of white pear, white peach, lemon zest, and minerals. Barrel integration is fantastic here. The mouthfeel stands out here. It’s more mineral than fruity at first. With air, sweet yellow fruits start to explode on the finish. Score: 90/100

• Santa Maria la Nave, Millesulmare 2016 – Sicily

The Santa Maria la Nave, Millesulmare is made from the grape Grecanico Dorato (Garganega) grown at 1000 meters. It is labeled as a Sicilia IGT, not an Etna Bianco. This is smoky and complex with notes of ash, Asian pear, lemon, and a little honey. High acid and many layers of texture. For a wine that didn’t see oak, this has plenty of refinement. Long, strung out palate with a smoky finish. Score: 92+/100

Red Wine

• Tenuta la Novella, ‘Casa di Colombo’ Chianti Classico 2017 – Tuscany

The Tenuta la Novella, ‘Casa di Colombo’ Chianti Classico is Sangiovese aged in cask and cement. For a hot vintage like 2017, this shows finesse, is floral, and perfurmed, Notes of red cherry, raspberry, dried flowers, and a hint of pepper. This is fruity and easy to drink. The tannins are grippy but not aggressive. Fun to drink, it tastes more like a Beaujolais than a Chianti Classico. Score: 87/100

• Nero Magis 2014 – Friuli-Venezia Giulia

Nero Magis is a blend of Merlot and Pignolo aged in wood for 24 months. Very big and complex red with notes of cherry, red plum, fall leaves, black olive, tobacco, and pepper. This isn’t a big, bold red. This is savory with plenty of earth and leather notes. The tannins are small and biting, almost Nebbiolo-like thanks to the Pignolo. Long finish. For a tough vintage, this is a gorgeous wine.  Score: 92/100

• Davide Pellizzari, Langhe Nebbiolo 2017 – Piedmont

The Davide Pellizzari, Langhe Nebbiolo is made from vines planted in Roero and aged in French oak for 12 months. This shows a lot of refinement for a Langhe Nebbiolo, it’s almost Barbaresco-esque. Notes of sweet cherry liquor, cranberry, violets, tar, and earth. It dances on the palate nice with a silky smooth texture before the big time tannins hit. Refined Langhe Nebbiolo. Score: 91/100

• Santa Maria la Nave, ‘Calmarossa’ Etna Rosso 2016 – Siciliy

The Santa Maria la Nave, ‘Calmarossa’ Etna Rosso is a blend of Nerello Mascalese and Nerello Cappuccio aged in French oak. Very much Red Burgundy in style. Red raspberry, crushed rock, white pepper, smoke, and a hint of sweet vanilla. Mouthfilling red fruit with minerals on the backend. The acidity is dancing on the palate and the tannins are firm, this is really built to age. Subtle and gentle now, this will reward those with patience. Score: 93/100

Sweet Wine

• Filippon, Ramandolo 2017 – Friuli-Venezia Giulia

The Filippon, Ramandolo is Verduzzo barrel fermented and aged in wood for 24 months. Notes of dried apricot, dried peaches, honey, dried lemon peel, and white pepper. Full-bodied and rich with yellow fruit flavors. There’s plenty of acidity here to keep the palate from feeling too heavy or sappy. The acidity isn’t as high as a TBA Riesling or sweet Tokaji, but it’s enough to stretch out the palate. Score: 91/100

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The post Italian Wine From Gemma appeared first on Wine Travel.

There are sixteen mountains around the world that are classified as “Decade Volcanoes”. A mountain qualifies for that title when it is located close to heavily populated areas and when it has a history of large eruptions. In the South Mediterranean, there is one example of these special forces of nature. It dominates an entire island’s landscape and its destructive eruptions had once stopped invading empires. Today, this Decade Volcano is the epicenter and lifeblood of a fresh and exciting wine region.

The Volcanic Wine of Etna

Wine on an active volcano? Sipping a glass of beautiful red while looking down into a valley with a smoking cone looming behind. That all sounds like a fantasy, but this is a reality in the northeast corner of Sicily. The volcano is Mount Etna and it is home to a fascinating wine region unsurprisingly dubbed “Etna”.

Charine and I were at a champagne-pairing dinner in Singapore in 2014. The concept of a champagne-pairing dinner is straightforward—there are usually anywhere from five to seven courses of food, each course is paired with a champagne. At that dinner, there were five courses, which consequentially made for five different champagnes. One of the five was different, it was not a champagne. While scanning the menu, the words “Etna Rosso” jumped out at me, a dry red wine by Tenuta di Fessina.

Everything about the Etna wine was enchanting, from the light ruby color to the slight bit of tanginess in both corners of my jaw. The color, smell, and taste made the word “fire” come to mind. But I could very well be biased after doing some due diligence on the wine and discovering that it is grown on the slopes of an active volcano in Europe.

On the Etna Wine Trail

A year and a half after that dinner, we were picking up a rental car from the Sicilian port city of Catania and heading to the towns of Etna. Mount Etna is hard to miss, she towers over the eastern end of Sicily, always in sight. We headed up the mountain as the rain started to set in and the visibility went down the pipe. It didn’t help that the only car available at the rental office was a Fiat 500 with an automatic transmission. Driving a tiny car, with a feeble engine, and no control of the gears, made me feel like I was driving an electric golf cart at the end of its battery cycle.

We stopped at the first guesthouse we could find, ate, and then went to sleep. Before turning in, the visibility outside was not more than a few meters. When we rose at dawn, the story was different. Mount Etna dominated the sky and the top of her perfect cone was puffing smoke continuously, the view was finally clear and it was time to set out.

Wine tasting at Gambino Winery.

The road circumvented the mountain range with Etna’s peak leading the way. At our first tasting stop at Gambino Winery, they laid out a platter of local cheeses to accompany the generous tasting pours. The setting could not be better. It was the epitome of what comes to mind when I think of drinking wine in a far-flung destination. We sat on cool metal chairs starring out into the beautiful Alcantara Valley with a towering volcano behind us.

Paul Lukacs the author of Inventing Wine: A New History of One of the World’s Most Ancient Pleasures said, “What interested me about wine is that it’s intellectually very, very rich. You don’t need to know, but you want to know.”

That is the beauty of wine and that is the kind of curiosity that took over as we drove from winery to winery for tastings. Since seriously getting into wine a few years ago, I find great excitement in learning more about this very drink that used to seem so mysterious. There is great pleasure in drinking them, but there is more pleasure in knowing about them.

The wines of Etna are fantastic, the reds and whites all dance on the palate while each has texture from the “minerality” that comes from the volcanic soil. One fellow taster described the mineral taste in the whites as if she “had just licked a rock”. While that may not sound enticing to some people, I can assure you that it makes for a very distinctive wine. The Etna wine is an absolute pleasure to drink without any pretense. Most of them are made in a way that allows them to be drunk young so the drinker may enjoy the purest form of the wine’s fruit flavors with a complexity that comes from Etna’s unique terroir.

I am not alone in my affinity for the Etna wine region, which some have nicknamed it the “Burgundy of the Mediterranean”. The great wine along with the magical setting fueled my inquisitiveness. I had to try as many of the wines from the area as humanly possible. The “want to know” is what makes wine and enotourism so exciting, and the mystery and depth of wine are exactly what Lukacs was referring to as intellectually rich.

There are few places where drinking wine is as majestic as in Etna. The fusion between man and nature is what has made wine special historically. Farmers always have a deep respect for the land where they work but in Etna, it becomes more than respect. It’s reverence and perhaps a bit of fear. This is understandable, how would you feel if you had a ticking time bomb in your own backyard? That allure has drawn many winemakers from Tuscany down to Sicily to try their hands in this up-and-coming wine region.

This includes the winery that drew us here in the first place, Tenuta di Fessina. The owner of Tenuta di Fessina is from central Italy and now trying her hand on the slopes of Etna, with great results. I found the winery’s location on Google maps but we drove around the area multiple times and somehow we kept missing it. After finally locating it, we stopped in day after day but nobody was to be seen and the doors were always locked. The whole experience in the region was great but the fact that we could not get into this specific winery didn’t sit right with me. That simply means a repeat trip will be necessary in the near future.

Nonetheless, we had to move on, even though we didn’t exactly get our way, we got more than we bargained for. Etna has magnificent wine and is largely devoid of fellow oenophiles because it is a rising region in the wine world. It has the views, the food, and of course the vino. As we drove away from our base of Castiglione di Sicilia, it occurred to me that while so people have dreamed of tasting wine under the Tuscan sun, they might be missing out on tasting equally impressive wine under a snow-covered cone.

The village of Castiglione di Sicilia.

Exotic Wine Travel’s Pick

Photo credit: tenutadifessina.com

Tenuta di Fessina il Musmeci Rosso, Etna DOC Riserva, 2008

We still haven’t visited Tenuta di Fessina, but we’ve had several vintages of this Etna wine on many different occasions. The most recent bottle of this vintage we had was taken from our own cellar. Last tasted in March 2018.

It’s in a great spot right now. Full of mineral, sour cherry, and sweet cedar notes. It’s elegant yet it also has the Italian rusticity. Well-developed tannins guided by juicy acidity and a long finish. A quintessential, medium-bodied Etna Rosso.

4.3/5 (You can find out more about our scoring system on the START HERE page.)

Buy Tenuta di Fessina Musmeci Riserva Etna Rosso (Sicily, Italy) on Wine Searcher.

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