The 2008 Contessa Entellina Rosso Mille e una Notte stands out immediately in a blind tasting, thanks to the wine’s instantly recognizable pedigree. Crafted in a seamless manner, this mostly Nero d’Avola based wine is inky dark and beautifully concentrated with thick layers of blackberry, barbecue spice and a defining note of eucalyptus oil (that seems stronger in this vintage). This is a soft and penetrating effort with long, polished tannins, impressive richness and persistency. Donnafugata doesn’t reveal what other grapes may be present in the blend, but given the strong Bordeaux influences at the winery, there could be grapes associated with that part of France. In the style of the great super Tuscan wines, Mille e una Notte is a true “super Sicilian.” Drink 2015-2025.
Many, many years ago as a staff reporter with a Milan-based daily newspaper I was sent to Sicily to cover the night harvest staged at the Donnafugata winery in Contessa Entellina. By picking fruit during cool nighttime temperatures, Donnafugata argued, aromas would be preserved and the resulting wines would be better. Of course, vintners pick fruit at night around the world, but Donnafugata nonetheless packaged this otherwise banal fact as a delectable little morsel of news that would eventually attract the likes of Time magazine, FOX News and other major international media. A harvest party with sultry Middle Eastern music started off the evening. Belly dancers in shiny costumes danced down the vineyard rows under pools of light created by tractors fitted with strobes. Fish couscous was served in painted ceramic bowls and the wine flowed generously throughout the night. Harvesters emerged, sheers in hand, to pick the beautifully ripened fruit hanging from the vines. Their work rhythm would synchronize with the music and dance choreography underway. It was a night I will not soon forget. Thinking back now, I believe the so-called “Sicilian wine renaissance,” sparked in the late 1990s, started with Donnafugata’s night harvest. The Rallo family, including brother and sister Antonio and Jose, brought the wines of Sicily to the attention of an international audience. Their “night harvest” was a public relations stunt, and a stroke of genius, that served to underline Sicily’s psychological shift away from quantity wine production towards quality. I believe it is one of the most important events on a timeline of modern Sicilian wine history.
Importer: Folio Fine Wine Partners, www.foliowine.com
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