Feudi di San Gregorio Greco di Tufo DOCG 2019

Greco is a very confusing name for the famed Italian variety. It simply hints the grape to have Greek origin. A number of varieties and historical appellations along the coast of Southern Italy would be named as ‘Greco’. To clarify it, the variety is often written as Greco di Irpinia or simply referred as the appellation Greco di Tufo.

(Calabria has entirely different variety named as ‘Greco Bianco’.)

The appellation of Greco di Tufo was first established as a DOC in 1970, then due to its outstanding quality and excellent cultural representation of local terroir, it had been lifted to DOCG in 2003. One of only four DOCGs in entire Campania, one of two white wines DOCGs.

To meet the requirement of DOCG, the wine must be composed of minimum 85% Greco, the rest can be blended with Coda di Volpe, an equally high acidity, strong texture white variety that means ‘fox-tail’. However the wine is usually finished with 100% Greco. Tufo is the name of the local town, but also sometimes represents the unique sub-soil found in the area. (described as ‘tufaceous’) A mixture of limestone, volcanic debris and sands.

For this particular wine that was made by Feudi di San Gregorio, the wine’s fermentation had been capped strictly at 18℃, to keep its legendary mineral notes intact. Then the wine had been left on its lee in tank for four months before bottling.

Open it now, the perfume of gentle flinty, grapefruit, gentle honey is intense and persistent. The palate perceives more of its broad acidity and the spicy mineral nuance that sits between gypsum and chalk. A typical expression of a vine cultivated in Tufo. Immediately following, there are soft notes of balsamic. This is a perfect sashimi wine, especially delicate white meat fish.