Wine Club | November 22: Controvento, The Wines of Vincenzo di Meo
Controvento, The Wines of Vincenzo di Meo
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Controvento, The Wines of Vincenzo di Meo 〰️
Little Pack
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Cold Shower, in Italian, is a skin-contact white wine derived from Trebbiano endemic to the region and Passerina, a far less commonly found variety. It spends five days on the skins. Native yeasts, 25 year old vines. Saline Amalfi lemons crushed in the passenger seat of an old, fuming convertible. Sharp like delicious irony; Brine me in this wine. This wine is the sea salt air in a glass. Demands the bounty of the sea. Pair double-down style with anchovies or slice the fat clean off a triple cream with this wine.
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“Calming Moon” is an orange wine that macerates for seven days on the skins. A blend of all the estate whites, the creamy malolactic palate is the soothing antidote to the scream of Doccia Fredda’s ripping acidity. This wine calls for spices and bright flavors it can cool and dilute. A marmalade dream. Queen on a floating raft.
Prince Pack
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The softer, cake driven side of Passerina. Luscious and with a little air, expansive. Here the light saltiness gives why to citrus and muddled tamarind. Doccia Fredda throws you into the Adriatic and the Vento d’estate brings you back to your towel on the coast.
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“Calming Moon” Rosato of Montepulciano fermented carbonically in stainless steel for nine days. Vines planted in calcareous soil on the Adriatic coast. Spontaneous ferments, no added sulfur
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It wouldn’t be Abruzzo without at least one giant cherried red. This long maceration (8 months) red exemplifies how maceration doesn’t always work linearly. Sometimes what is given to the wine is reabsorbed during these long periods of again. The essence of classic Abruzzo.
Italian Rebel: An Ode to Grandpa and How He did it
Enzo is a winemaker who follows the old ways. Which old ways? Grandpa’s. Grandpa who said “Che cazzo è questa merda?” when American petro-chemical money from the Marshall plan slowly infected the whole of Europe post World War II with new methods of farming and winemaking that were reliant on machines and chemicals. From the Loire to Andalucia to central Italy’s Abruzzo, after the second world war farmers and winemakers were incentivized to change how they farmed and how they made wine. Yet, even after the onslaught of corporate money and the corporate world’s nearly total victory in changing the face of wine and winemaking, there remains these intrepid men and women who remember their forefathers and mothers. These little heroes know in the heart of their being what Enzo has written on every bottle, “Questo vino è prodotto grazie alla terra ricca di pietre e alla sua esposizione, al sole, alla brezza del mare e al lavoro meticoloso dell’uomo” (This wine was made thanks to [by the grace of] the earth rich with stones and the vineyard’s exposition, the sun, the breeze of the sea and the meticulous labor of man.) All wines from Controvento are unfined, unfiltered, fermented with natural yeast, and pure expressions of the land, the time, and the people who live here.
What is Natural Wine?
What is natural wine? Why is it a thing? You mean there’s unnatural wine? These are always some of the first questions that arise when people discover natural wine. We’ll be connecting back to some of these themes as we explore one producer in Central Italy’s Abruzzo, Controvento. Controvento or “Upwind/Against the Wind” is a project of Vincenzo di Meo. The 5 hectares (a hectare is a metric unit comparable to 2.4ish acres) of vineyards are located in Rocca San Giovanni, in the southern part of the Chieti province of Abruzzo not far from the Adriatic sea. Abruzzo is quite mountainous, with the Appiennes on the Western border and even the highest point in mainland Italy, Corno Grande, within the region. However they still manage to produce 22 million bottles of wine annually although that only puts them in seventh for wine producing regions. The southern plain of Chieti provides the largest output in terms of wine production, being the fifth most productive province for viticulture in all of Italy. It is in these regions dominated by cooperatives and bulk operations where the story of natural wine is, perhaps, the most visible and easy to understand. It is the story of global, corporate influences undoing centuries of social, cultural, and agricultural history.
Simultaneously, it is also the story of those who questioned the introduction of new practices reliant on machines and chemicals. This is where natural wine begins for many of the old greats. Winemaker Nicolas Jolly in the Loire Valley or Jules Chauvet, the wine-scientist who could be considered grandpa of all natty Beaujolais or even all natural wine, come to mind. These were men who lived through the rebuilding of Western Europe during the days of the Marshall Plan. They viscerally experienced the circumstances that Noam Chomsky describes as, “[having] set the stage for large amounts of private U.S. investment in Europe, establishing the basis for modern transnational corporations.” The Marshall plan was an attempt by the US to help rebuild Western Euorpe after the devastation of the war. The plan, while not limited to the agriculture, saw an influx of money into Europe connected to what was considered at the time more “modern” ways of farming. The first harbingers of natural wine saw their neighbors begin to use more and more machines, chemicals, and pesticides subsidized in some cases by the Marshall Plan itself. Modernization that came with this influx of money often meant converting what had been organic farming of local grapes to the homogenized, monocultural farming of international varieties for bulk sale. Italy, despite being an Axis power, was the third largest recipient of money from the Marshall Plan. When it came to agriculture, successful recovery was often judged in terms of increased productivity despite large losses to the labor market in regions that accepted money from the plan. It is in these circumstances that the modern need for more natural or more naked wine and winemaking emerged.
Vicenzo’s grandfather was doubtlessly one of these people who simply continued to make the wine they had always made, purely fermented grape juice without chemicals or additives. His winemaking method can be described in what he has written on every bottle, “Questo vino è prodotto grazie alla terra ricca di pietre e alla sua esposizione, al sole, alla brezza del mare e al lavoro meticoloso dell’uomo” (This wine was made thanks to [by the grace of] the earth rich with stones and the vineyard’s exposition, the sun, the breeze of the sea and the meticulous labor of man.) All wines from Controvento are unfined, unfiltered, fermented with natural yeast, and pure expressions of the land, the time, and the people who live here.
For the Little Pack: Doccia Fredda, cold shower in Italian is a blend of Trebbiano d’Abruzzo and Passerina fermented for about 4 days on the skins. Trebbiano d’Abruzzo is a lauded native variety whose praises were first sung by Miguel Cervantes in the 17th century in his Novelas Ejemplares yet is still praised by contemporary writers like Jancis Robinison who claims the grape produces, “one of Italy's most distinctive dry white wines.” Passerina on the other hand, more commonly found in the Marche, is known for being both sharp and lucious on the palate depending on where the plantings are held. This wine leads with bracing acidity and a salty structure.
Ciao!
Little Prince & Bottleshop