Winemaker Notes
Deep ruby red color. Ample ripe cherries, sweet spices, and plum with notes of tobacco, pepper, and tar. Supple and silky on the palate with concentrated texture mellowed into body richness and ripeness. Sweet and fine tannins, long, fruity, spiced, and toasty finish.
Pairs well with hearty foods such as roasted or braised meats, game, ragout, spicy dishes, truffles, and seasoned cheese.
Professional Ratings
-
Vinous
Darkly floral and intense, the 2015 Taurasi Pago dei Fusi smolders up from the glass with a smoky blend of black currants, grilled herbs, crushed rocks and tobacco. Its textures are velvety-smooth, displaying admirable weight balanced by brisk acidity. A wave of tart wild berry fruits floods the palate, leaving a staining of saline minerals in its wake. Dramatically long and with a hulking structure, the 2015 leaves gripping tannins that resonate under an air of violets and lavender. This is a dark and radiant beauty with a perfect integration of oak.
-
Wine Spectator
Savory hints of tobacco and smoke meet notes of cocoa powder and dried fig in a fragrant thread accenting flavors of baked black cherry and damson plum preserves. Tightly meshed, with firm tannins providing taut structure, yet this is fragrant and appealing now, opening nicely in the glass. Long and minerally on the finish. Best from 2025 through 2034.
-
James Suckling
Deep, brooding ripeness full of smoky, sweet blackberries, dried fruit, black mushrooms, black chocolate, ash and black sesame. Full-bodied and very structured on the palate with dusty, vertical tannins and a long, ashy finish. Drink or keep holding.
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.