Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
James Suckling
A beautiful, layered Taurasi with crushed-berry, mineral, bark and lava aromas and flavors. Some oyster shell, too. It’s full-bodied and savory with walnut, pumice and ash undertones. Special, unique wine here. Drink or hold.
-
Wine Enthusiast
Aromas of new leather, ripe plum, aromatic herbs and black-skinned berries emerge from the glass. The savory, elegantly structured palate offers dried black cherry, star anise and tobacco alongside a backbone of fine-grained tannins and vibrant acidity. Drink 2024–2035.
Cellar Selection -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This is the inaugural vintage of a new wine from this new estate owned by Antonio Capaldo of Feudo di San Gregorio. Always at the forefront of research, experimentation and investment, Capaldo's new project is intended to underline the best in Campania wines. His Tenute Capaldo 2015 Taurasi Riserva Gulielmus (packaged in its distinctive wide-shouldered bottle) is soft and yielding in a manner that the Aglianico grape rarely is. The wine is tart and streamlined with plenty of dark cherry, blackberry, spice and sweet tobacco along the way. The wine is just about ready to drink now, so many years after the harvest, but could also stand to age further.
-
Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The explosive 2015 Tenute Capaldo Gulielmus is powerful yet well-structured. TASTING NOTES: This wine excels with aromas and flavors of boysenberries, savory spices, and rustic earth noes. Enjoy it with grilled goat meat. (Tasted: December 31, 2022, San Francisco, CA)
Tenute Capaldo is a boutique estate who produces only two single-vineyard wines: Goleto and Gulielmus. They are effectively the reference points for Campanian Greco di Tufo and Campanian Taurasi (Aglianico). This is a passion project of Antonio Capaldo, the owner of Feudi di San Gregorio, one of the largest and most respected wineries in Southern Italy. Tenute Capaldo is separate from Feudi, and designed to show off the unique, diverse terroir of the Irpinia region in the central part of Campania. These are very small production wines that showcase the beauty and potential of Southern Italy.
Making its home in the mountainous southern Italy, Aglianico is a bold red variety that is late to ripen and often spends until November on the vine. It thrives in Campania as the exclusive variety in the age-worthy red wine called Taurasi. Aglianico also has great success in the volcanic soils of Basilicata where it makes the robust, Aglianico del Vulture. Somm Secret—The name “Aglianico” bears striking resemblance to Ellenico, the Italian word for "Greek," but no evidence shows it has Greek ancestry. However, it first appeared in Italy around an ancient Greek colony located in present-day Avellino, Campania.
A winemaking renaissance is underfoot in Campania as more and more small, artisan and family-run wineries redefine their style with vineyard improvements and cellar upgrades. The region boasts a cool Mediterranean climate with extreme coastal, as well as high elevation mountain terroirs. It is cooler than one might expect in Campania; the region usually sees some of the last harvest dates in Italy.
Just south of Mount Vesuvio, the volcanic and sandy soils create aromatic and fresh reds based on Piedirosso and whites, made from Coda di Volpe and Falanghina. Both reds and whites go by the name, Lacryma Christi, meaning the "tears of Christ." South of Mount Vesuvio, along the Amalfi Coast, the white varieties of Falanghina and Biancolella make fresh, flirty, mineral-driven whites, and the red Piedirosso and Sciasinoso vines, which cling to steeply terraced coastlines, make snappy and ripe red wines.
Farther inland, as hills become mountains, the limestone soil of Irpinia supports the whites Fiano di Avellino, Falanghina and Greco di Tufo as well as the most-respected red of the south, Aglianico. Here the best and most age-worthy examples come from Taurasi.
Farther north and inland near the city of Benevento, the Taburno region also produces Aglianico of note—called Aglianico del Taburno—on alluvial soils. While not boasting the same heft as Taurasi, these are also reliable components of any cellar.