Wine of the Month: Ilione
As we recount this great story and offer it to you through our blog, we can’t ignore what may be described as the children of our passion: our wines.
Each month we are going to offer you a contribution from our colleague, Master Oenogastronomist Sommelier AIES Veronica Casella, dedicated to one of the products in the Tenute d’Italia catalogue, to give you a close up view of our philosophy and our work. It may just excite your curiosity!
So we’ll immediately clear the field for the first article/tasting that Veronica has dedicated to a really special wine, not just for its quality but above all for what it represents in our personal history: the Romagna D.O.C Sangiovese Superiore "Ilione” is in fact the first organic wine produced by Tenute d’Italia, the fruit of intense research that our team hopes to be able extend to the entire “Canale dei Molini” line.
The truly exceptional situation we are experiencing in recent months is profoundly affecting both our daily lives and the real traditions that mark our lives.
For the first time I have in fact had to renounce the traditional Easter lunch in the home of my maternal grandmother, a fixed appointment not only in its regularity in the family calendar but also in the menu.
Strictly circumscribed in every one of its courses, it has always represented a kind of security in terms of quality (and abundance!) for the whole family.
Despite the impossibility of being able to share personally, I have however decided to carry on the tradition to the best extent possible by consulting my grandmother over the phone to get her recipes and precious advice on the preparations and thus honouring (even at a distance) that special moment of sharing.
One of the most crucial moments of the preparations was certainly the choice of wine to be served at table and to be paired with the fruit of all my (quite unremarkable!) efforts in the kitchen. I was looking for a full-bodied wine, with character, able to deal with the rich preparations of the family culinary repertoire, but at the same time I had the desire to include in the logic of my pairing that small, but fundamental element of innovation that lies at the basis of every step through which an ancient tradition is handed down, facing a new future.
And that’s when I thought of Ilione; a wine that renders homage to one of the oldest wine making traditions of Romagna, that has as a protagonist the vigorous Sangiovese, combining it with the most modern wine making and aging techniques.
Taking advantage of this opportunity to appreciate also its most recent evolution in the bottle, I opted for the 2017 - the second, and so far, the latest production since its debut in 2016.
The thing that strikes one immediately is the exquisite ruby red that immediately reveals the complete fidelity with which this wine depicts the Sangiovese grape: brilliant and profound, Ilione enchants the eye, as only a great classic, a true timeless beauty is able to do.
A gentle rotation of the glass reveals the first features of Ilione's magnificent body and exudes the first scents, tantalising our sense of smell.
Approaching the glass, the great typicality of this Sangiovese is expressed in all its detail: a luxurious prelude of blackberries and cherries introduces the concert of floral scents in which the notes of violet excel, finely articulated on a crescendo of spicy tones, most prevalent of which are vanilla and black pepper.
Intense, fragrant, surprising for the wide persistence of its charm but above all for the cleanness of the scents; clearer and more recognizable than ever, they give us a faithful, even masterly, portrait of the Sangiovese in it’s purest form.
Now we’ve finally arrived at the tasting, where we realize that the slow, gradual preparation up to this point has made it even more special: if the desire to taste Ilione was already awoken at the first glance, the gradual unveiling of each characteristic has in fact the power to render the last act of our tasting a real triumph of pleasure.
The full, fragrant body harmonises with the extraordinary freshness on which the scents are already perceived by the nose: we pick up the dense juiciness of the blackberries, the crunchiness of the cherries, to finally catch the provocative spicy hints typical of the vine, harmonized with the soft tannins that wrap gently around the palate.
In short, what we perceive on the palate is not just the unfolding of a fine, elegant, masterfully balanced wine: Ilione’s excellence is revealed in the profound coherence that binds each of its characteristics and makes its tasting an indispensable experience for every wine lover.
This Organic Romagna D.O.C Sangiovese Superiore 2017 has proved to be an excellent pairing for almost all of my lunch courses, from the aubergine parmigiana to the roast kid, to the inevitable fried lamb ribs.
To our next tasting!
