MCF Rare Wine

It's an Orange Wine, but It's Also Kinda Sherry-ish...but Also Kinda...

Bruno de Conciliis is one of the truly luminous personalities in Italian wine.  The rare blend of fun, kind, philosophical and humble.

He believes deeply in the soul of the land, the grapes and the resulting wines, and treats each not as his possessions, but as his companions.

Sure, he's been known to play Miles Davis to his wines while they rest in barrel, but it's not a gimmick.  He truly believes in the relationships of all earthly elements.

And his wines are delicious.

Today I'd like to talk about one of his most unique bottlings, though.  It's a truly lovable oddball of a wine that delivers almost every 'cool kid' element that an off-beat white can, all without getting too weird or unpredictable (or insufferable).

In fact, when you drink it, you can't help but feel like Bruno stumbled upon some ancient, noble style of wine that was lost to history - it's so unique, but seems to make such perfect sense.

I'm talking about his Fiano 'Antece' 2003, and if you were to roll together all of the elements (orange, nutty, oxidative, spicy, salty, etc.) of any geeky white wine style that has emerged from obscurity over the last decade into one 'Super Geek' white, I have to imagine it would taste like this.

It's a 'skin contact' white (a white whose juice spent time on the skins, like a red wine does, aka Orange wine), made of 100% Fiano.  But it's so much more than just a 'skins' white.  In the 7 months it spent in barrel, it took on a nutty, oxidative undertone that you might expect from a Jura white or a sherry, but above that lies and fantastic, textured citric/exotic fruit that is heavily dosed with an intense Mediterranean saltiness and peppery, volcanic minerality.

Each sip starts by pulling you into a psychedelic orange-wine realm, then is pulls you down into nutty land and them yanks you off into the salty, volcanic realm you expect from a Campanian white.

But, because it's 15 years old now, it has a beautiful 'old white' wisdom to it that manages to make perfect, eloquent sense of what might normally seem a bit chaotic.

It's the kind of wine that I feel like you need to buy multiple bottles of, because once you taste it, your brain will be flooded with all kinds of pairing ideas (oh, this'd go great with roast pork, oh spicy Korean, oh nutty/salty blue cheese, oh pasta alla genovese)...

I feel like I'm out of breath just thinking about it.


Matt Franco

MCF Rare Wine, Ltd
249 West 13th Street
New York 10011
mcf@mcf-rarewine.com
212.255.8870
www.mcf-rarewine.com