pureCru Wines
2009 Napa Valley Sangio Vetta Sangiovese
Red Blend
California: Napa Valley
Mission Briefing
By Jove!
Today’s outstanding pureCru Wines 2009 Napa Valley Sangio Vetta is yet another stunner from our best-selling winemaker Mitch Cosentino. Mitch has been featured a record-breaking thirty times on The Wine Spies for one simple reason - his wines are out-of-this-world delicious. We’ve come to have high expectations of Mitch’s wines - and today’s offering handily exceeded those expectations.
Today’s wine is a tantalizing blend of 75% Sangiovese and 25% Cabernet Franc, both sourced from Mitch’s best Napa Valley vineyards. Today’s wine is lush and well balanced as well as bright and slightly tart, with lovely hints of terroir and spice that serve to add to its depth and complexity. This is an exceptional food wine. Personally, we look forward to pairing ours with our next hearty winter meal in front of the fireplace.
If you haven’t had the pleasure of trying any of Mitch’s wines, then today is your lucky day, dear Operative!
Tasting Profile
| Look: | Deep, almost opaque at its heart, transitioning slowly to a hazy red fringe at the edge of the glass. |
|---|---|
| Smell: | Subtle and very refined, with dark raspberry and black cherry mingling with sweet tobacco leaf, dried fall leaves, coffee bean, cinnamon, clove, and black peppercorn. |
| Taste: | Ripe and round on the palate, with notes of reduced sweet plum, strawberry, and black cherry counterbalanced by sweet earthy mushroom, fresh suede leather, sage, espresso bean, and a touch of fresh cranberry. |
| Finish: | A lengthy finish, with plenty of structure and a slightly tart acidity. This is a phenomenal wine to be paired with a hearty winter meal. |
| Pairing: | A classic winter’s meal of beef short ribs, slowly braised in a bold red wine with potatoes and other root vegetables. |
What the Winery Says
I have made Sangiovese based wines since 1992. This is the second under the pureCru and the first 100% Napa Valley effort. It is a small production lot that we have given the proprietary name of Sangio Vetta, meaning Sangiovese at the peak or pinnacle. In the future, as with this it will be blended in a way that best reflects the style I believe shows it as a world class red of unique dimension without worrying about the percentages of the varietals used meeting any minimum for labeling regulations.
Spicy red fruit and baking spices in the nose. On the palate the spices persist along with ripe, red fruits with notes of Rhubarb, plums, and berries that is balanced with excellent acidity. The wine is ripe and rich throughout to a long pleasing finish.
- Winemaker
- Mitch Cosentino
- Appellation
- Napa Valley, California
- Fruit Variety
- 75% Sangiovese, 25% Cabernet Franc
- Cooperage
- 33 months in French, American, and Eastern European oak
- ABV
- 15.1%
About the Winery
When we say limited handcrafted wines, that’s exactly what we mean. It’s like having your own custom winery that is dedicated to creating the most unique and award-winning quality wines. pureCru wines are blended by hand for taste and texture and not mass produced by large winery facilities. pureCru Wines provide a unique and exclusive experience. Experience a taste like no other.
Winemaker Mitch Cosentino
Mitch Cosentino began making wine in small lots in Modesto, California in 1980. Ten years later he moved the Cosentino Winery operation to the Napa Valley, where he continued to make many award-winning varietal and blended wines.
Mitch has a gift for identifying fruit sources and is highly skilled and artistic in determining blends. He’s a big believer in the hands-on, old world use of punched cap fermentation, a labor-intensive, hand-crafted method of winemaking. When it comes to the small lots Cosentino puts into his pureCru blends, this “micro” approach to winemaking allows him to better control the delicate process from the vineyard to the bottle.
Mitch has won close to two thousand awards and medals through his 30 year wine career, including the prestigious Andre Tchelistcheff Award for best red wine at the New World Wine Competition and best Winemaker for Winery of the Year at the San Francisco International Wine Competition.