Sant'Elena Cabernet Sauvignon Venezia Giulia IGT 2012

Style: Lush

Country: Italy

Region: Friuli-Venezia Giulia
Appellation/Sub-Region: Venezia Giulia IGT 

Grapes: Cabernet Sauvignon

Vineyard/Cellar Practices: Sustainably Grown
SO2: N/A

Where Food Meets Its Match: Drink with fatty and oily dishes to temper the wine’s acidity; acidic dishes will enhance its fruitfulness.

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Talk about a timewarp. This bottle hails from the Sant’Elena winery, an estate founded in 1893 by the Klodic family. The area was marked by war, serving as a setting for battles and events that rewrote the history of the region. And yet, the winery persisted and in the 1960s, production was converted solely to vineyards and wine production moved onsite. The mid-1990s saw a change of ownership, with Dominic Nocerino, a renowned wine importer of Italian wines to the US acquiring the property and pushing towards modernization. Winemaker Vincenzo Mercurio joined the team in 2015, steering the state towards organic conversion. Here the grapes were hand harvested, destemmed, and soft-crushed before about 10 days of maceration, give or take. Fermentation is completed in stainless steel vats and then the wine is transferred into 20-hectoliter wooden barrels to age for 18 months. Anti-Napa; this cabernet sauvignon is soft, supple, and decidedly restrained. Soft-grained tannins blessed by Father Time himself. Travel back to the era of lower interest rates and high quality cabernet grapes, things were simpler then. We’ll cheers to that. Sustainably grown.