{"product_id":"paolo-bea-pagliaro-secco-sagrantino-di-montefalco-2019","title":"Paolo Bea Pagliaro Secco Sagrantino di Montefalco 2019","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Land\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSagrantino grows almost nowhere on earth but here. The DOCG covers a small cluster of hill communes in central Umbria around the town of Montefalco, and outside that circle the grape is essentially a curiosity. Pagliaro is the parcel at the historic center of the Bea estate, a hilltop site the importer places at roughly 1,300 feet, planted largely to Sagrantino on soils of limestone, clay and gravel; the name traces to the local word for the straw stack that once stood in fields like this one. The Bea family appears in the archives of Montefalco as early as 1500, farming this same ground centuries before any of it carried an appellation. Harvest runs late here, in the second half of October and sometimes the final ten days of it, because Sagrantino ripens its formidable tannin slowly and refuses to be rushed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Wine\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne hundred percent Sagrantino. Fruit is picked by hand, sorted once in the vineyard and again in the cellar, destemmed, softly crushed into steel, and left to ferment on native yeasts with no temperature control and no sulfur at all. Rosenthal lists a cuvaison of forty to fifty days for this bottling; Giampiero Bea decides when to rack by the moon, drawing the wine off once the skins begin settling on the waning phase, and only then does a small dose of sulfur go in for the first time. The wine then spends a year in stainless steel on its lees, two years in large Slavonian oak casks, and one more full year in bottle before release, unfined and unfiltered. Alcohol runs near fifteen percent. Annual production from Pagliaro is 15,000 to 20,000 bottles. Black cherry, dried fig, saddle leather and Mediterranean scrub sit over a tannic structure that arrives like a closed fist and unclenches slowly; the acidity underneath is what keeps a wine this big from going ponderous.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe People\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePaolo Bea grew up raising cattle, olives and vegetables, and made wine only for the house until 1980, when he decided commercial bottling might be a future for the family. What he made had no name at the time: nothing added, nothing manipulated, no pesticides or herbicides, long skin contact for white grapes as well as red. Decades later the natural wine movement claimed him as a founder, a title he never went looking for. His son Giampiero trained and worked as an architect before returning; he drew the estate's handwritten labels and designed its gravity-flow stone cellar, built without cement to avoid radon and cooled by air pulled through pipes buried in the hillside. He also co-founded the Vini Veri consortium alongside Stanko Radikon. Giuseppe Bea farms the vineyards, organically and without tilling, sowing wild peas and six other cover crops each February and mowing them in June to feed the soil. Estate production totals roughly 5,000 cases a year.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFood Pairing\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTannin this dense wants protein and fat thrown at it. Start with porchetta, where the tannin binds to rendered pork fat and comes out of the exchange softer than it went in. Lamb chops off the coals work the same way, and the char picks up the wine's leather and dried-herb register. Umbria's own answer is strangozzi with black truffle and butter, the earthiness meeting the wine halfway while the butter blunts the grip. An aged pecorino, salty and crystalline, pulls the dark fruit forward instead of fighting it. Decant several hours ahead, or simply lose the bottle in the cellar for another decade. This is not a Tuesday wine; it is what you open when the table is full and nobody has anywhere to be.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Natural","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51319566205151,"sku":null,"price":100.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0439\/7436\/1248\/files\/P9030253.jpg?v=1788538496","url":"https:\/\/denverwinemerchant.com\/products\/paolo-bea-pagliaro-secco-sagrantino-di-montefalco-2019","provider":"Denver Wine Merchant","version":"1.0","type":"link"}