Gold Crown to Mustilli Piedirosso

 

The Vini Buoni d'Italia guide is another to have awarded Mustilli with good scores and high praise this autumn. While giving good reviews to a number of wines in the Mustilli lineup, they singled out the Piedirosso Sant'Agata dei Goti for especially warm praise. The Gold Crown is given to a relatively few wines that the editors find highly expressive of terroir and very rewarding to drink. 

Here is the page in question. 

(See after the jump for the translation of the intro paragraph.)

 
 

 You can click on the image to enlarge it.

Before moving on to the translation, I think it's worth pointing out a few things.

1. The Mustillis make wines with only local grapes. They discontinued the practice of also growing some international varieties for blending a few years ago.

2. The hiring of Fortunato Sebastiano 3 years ago as consulting enologo has given their wines a greater focus and stronger individuality. He has also carried them much farther; they now practice all-organic agriculture and are on the way to biodynamic certification.

3. Amazingly enough, the euro prices aren't too different from the dollar prices that you pay for them here. The Mustillis are smart business people and don't practice the same herd thinking that bedevils so many Italian wine producers.

4. Vini Buoni reviews and rates only wines made from local or "autochthonous" grape varieties. 

Now to the translation...

The collaboration between this historic Campanian winery, the first to bottle Falanghina well over 20 years ago, and the young enologo Fortunato Sebastiano is starting to bear fruit. The Piedirosso, one of the work horses of the Mustilli family's "stable", is striking for its simple, upfront pleasure and its ability to be absolutely "typical" [true to type and to the variety]. It has the earthy smell of geraniums and is enjoyable, easy to "get" and easy to pair with various dishes.  

The winery also has a lineup of whites that we think need to be reviewed and appreciated at greater length as they evolve. Their acidity is a little rambunctious and needs some time to calm down. They should be drinking very well before too long.

I'm puzzled by the words about the whites. The acidity is not out of balance -- at all. Maybe the panel of judges tasted those vintages very early on. They are, in fact, drinking very well indeed.