The Stars Even When They're Not There

Etnella - Notti stellate 2010 Etna Rosso

Testaccio (RM), March 2014, Vini di Vignaioli – that's where I met Davide Bentivegna of azienda agricola Etnella, with vineyards in the north-eastern area of the great active volcano: Presa, Linguaglossa and Passopisciaro, between 600 and 1,000 metres of altitude, are the areas of the estate's vineyards on basaltic soils.

Davide has a boisterous, jovial manner – simple and warm, a little rough around the edges yet concrete at the same time. He has me taste his wines together with a few fellow drinking companions and travelling friends, and everything he expresses as a person I've only just met I find again in Notti Stellate 2010, an Etna Rosso with a predominance of Nerello Mascalese (90%) and the remainder being Nerello Cappuccio (7%) and other native varieties, aged in third-use barrique and worked in the vineyard and cellar using entirely natural methods.

The glass of this Etna is pure, unpretentious, free of superstructure, frank and direct – at times unruly, much like the way Davide moves and gesticulates, but always with a smile on his lips. This is not a fashionable wine that flatters Bourgogne, it is nothing we have seen before...

Light ruby, perfectly transparent, no odd glimmer, yet those reflections of cooled lava. The first nose is still vinous, at times reluctant to reveal itself; a few swirls to oxygenate the liquid and it immediately becomes three-dimensional: tar, ash, cinnamon, bay leaf and a damned balsamic note that is intoxicating, then that slow and inexorable "evolution backwards" – an oxymoron – towards those typical fruity notes of the grape variety: cassis, wild violets, blackcurrant and again that minty note of nepitella.

On the palate, six months ago it was decidedly sulky but all the more fascinating for it; today drinking it is an ecstasy: dry, clean, thirst-quenching, with a velvety and silky tannin that is not yet fully tamed – I would say supremely elegant in its natural expressiveness. It carries all the mountain freshness of vines at 700 metres above sea level and that mineral finish that completes the circle perfectly; the alcoholic hints are delicate and caressing, lending even greater length to the tasting persistence.

It flows quickly – very quickly – across the palate, yet lingers long on the taste buds thanks to its earthy authenticity and those highly pleasurable retro-olfactory returns. A food wine, to be drunk just cellar-cool at 16°, to be enjoyed with trusted people, with serious companions, with lifelong friends...