The Tannin Question: Is Sagrantino Too Much?

This is Sotto Voce.

Conversations on Italian wine.

I tasted a young Sagrantino last week.

Mm.

It was like chewing on a leather belt.

Which one?

Does it matter?

Yes. It matters very much.

Why.

Because if it was a two-year-old from a producer still pulling everything the grape has - skins, seeds, stems - then yes, of course. Leather. Grip. You haven't tasted the wine yet. You've tasted the potential.

And if it was a ten-year-old?

Then I'd want to know where it was stored. How it was opened.

You see, this is what Sagrantino's defenders always do.

What do we do.

Move the goalposts. The wine is too young. The wine was stored wrong. The wine was the wrong producer. At some point you have to ask whether the defense itself reveals a flaw in the grape.

Or a flaw in the tasting.

Mm.

The question is not whether Sagrantino is difficult. It is. The question is whether difficult means flawed.

That is the question.

Right. The tannin. Let's be specific about it.

Please.

Sagrantino has the highest measured polyphenol content of any major wine grape. Roughly three to four times the phenolic load of Sangiovese.

Three to four times.

The skins are unusually thick. Dense with tannin-producing compounds. And tannins bind to proteins - that's the drying, gripping sensation on your gums. In Sagrantino, they're not just abundant. The molecular structure tends toward larger polymers. Coarser.

You feel it differently than Nebbiolo, for example.

Nebbiolo tannins are fine-grained. Grippy but almost powdery at the edges. Sagrantino is - it's structural in a different way. Denser.

In the vineyard - if you hold the cluster in your hand, the skin is almost waxy. Much thicker than Sangiovese. You feel it before any wine is made.

You've done that.

I live twenty minutes from Montefalco. I have done that many times.

(light laugh) Right. Rather puts me at a disadvantage.

The color too - the grape is nearly black at harvest. The juice runs almost purple when you break it.

Anthocyanins. The pigment and the tannin often travel together - thick-skinned grapes tend toward both.

So the color and the grip are the same conversation.

Essentially.

And compared to something like Tannat? Because people reach for that comparison.

Tannat can actually exceed Sagrantino in raw tannin. But the style is different - Tannat tends toward more aggressive astringency early, then softens significantly with age. Sagrantino is more consistent across time. Stubborn, one might say.

Mourvèdre?

Closer in character. But Mourvèdre has more give when it's ripe. Sagrantino - the tannin doesn't soften the same way even at full ripeness. That's what makes it genuinely unusual.

Unusual, or extreme.

Both. The question is whether extreme is a feature.

The history matters here. Because this was not always a dry wine.

No.

The passito - the dried grape version - that was the traditional Sagrantino. Made for Easter. A sweet wine, deep red, almost liturgical. This is what people drank in Montefalco for centuries.

And in a passito style, the tannin is less confrontational. The residual sugar moderates it.

Exactly. The grape evolved in a context where it was always sweet. The dryness is a recent invention.

Nineteen-seventies. Marco Caprai.

Caprai is the reason there is a Sagrantino di Montefalco DOCG at all. In the nineteen-sixties the variety had nearly disappeared - maybe five hectares total in the world. He spent years researching it. Clonal selection. Rebuilding the plantings.

A rescue operation.

A remarkable one. The DOCG came in 1992. And then - and this is where it gets complicated - the nineties style took hold.

The extraction wars.

Longer maceration, more color, more concentration. The critics rewarded weight. And Sagrantino - if you push extraction, it gives you extraction. Generously.

Rather too generously.

These wines from the nineties and early two-thousands - some of them were extraordinary on paper. On the palate they were... demanding.

Demanding is generous.

(light laugh) Yes. Perhaps. But you have to understand - there was a logic to it. The grape had nearly been lost. Proving it could compete internationally meant speaking the language the market understood.

The language of power and points.

And it worked. The recognition came. But it also convinced many people that Sagrantino was inherently brutal. That the grape itself was the problem.

When in fact the technique was the problem.

That's the argument the new generation is making. Estates like Antonelli, Tabarrini. And Di Filippo.

Which brings us to the philosophy question.

It does. Because for some of these producers it's not only about technique. It's about a completely different relationship to the vineyard.

And how are they doing it differently - concretely.

Shorter maceration. Some are pulling the skins much earlier than the old style. Less contact time means less extraction. Gentler pressing.

And the oak.

Moving away from small barrique - which adds its own tannin - toward larger vessels. Tonneaux, botti. Less surface area, neutral wood. The wine softens without picking up more structure from the container.

Letting the grape's own architecture do the work.

And in some cases, picking slightly earlier. Before the very last stage of skin tannin development.

Which trades concentration for integration.

Right. And there's a broader philosophical shift underneath that. Biodynamic farming. Organic viticulture. A different conversation with the land.

Di Filippo.

Di Filippo is a good example of what this actually looks like in practice.

ICEA certified since 2010.

I was in their vineyard - I want to say three years ago, maybe four. Walking the rows with Emma. And there were horses.

Mm.

Working horses. For cultivation. And the ground - I noticed it when I walked on it. You can feel the difference from a conventionally farmed vineyard. More alive. More give underfoot.

What does that do to the wine, specifically.

The argument - and I find it credible - is that vine stress management improves. Roots go deeper in healthier soil. More complex mineral uptake. The tannins may not be fewer. But they ripen more evenly.

Phenolic maturity, not just sugar maturity. That's the key distinction.

Exactly. Getting them to a place of integration rather than raw aggression. Sugar ripens on its own schedule. The tannins - those compounds take longer, or they need different conditions.

I've tasted aged Di Filippo. There's something more... yielding about it.

Yielding is the right word.

And when I say aged - I mean ten years. That's what this grape requires.

The DOCG minimum is thirty months total. Twelve in wood.

Which is nothing. For Sagrantino, thirty months is an adolescent.

(light laugh) You are hard on adolescents.

I'm accurate about Sagrantino. At ten years - a well-made bottle is a different wine entirely. The tannins polymerize, begin to fall out as sediment. The fruit starts to show.

The tobacco and dried cherry.

Black olive. A kind of iron note. Something savory that wasn't there before. It becomes - almost brothy.

Umami. That's the word in Italian kitchens. The wine reaches for the food.

And with food it transforms. The tannin binds protein - that's the chemistry - so aged meat, game, stracotto, aged cheese. The structure that seems brutal alone becomes architecture alongside the food.

Piccione. Wood pigeon. This is what people eat in Umbria with Sagrantino. The richness of the bird fat - the tannin cuts through it, and then there's nothing left but the flavor of both.

It's a wine that presupposes a table.

Always. It was never meant to be tasted alone in a competition glass.

And yet that's how it gets judged.

Which is why the reputation suffers. You take any food wine out of its context and it looks strange.

Fino sherry without anchovies.

Exactly. Baffling on its own. Essential at the table.

Right. And here is where I want to disagree with you.

Please.

Sagrantino's reputation as too tannic is now its biggest obstacle. There are buyers - intelligent buyers - who would never pick it up because someone told them it was a chewing exercise. That reputation is doing the grape damage it doesn't deserve.

I agree with that.

So the solution is to soften it. To make a Sagrantino that's more approachable, earlier, less aggressive.

No.

No?

The tannin is not the problem. The tannin is what Sagrantino is. If you reduce it enough to make the wine conventionally approachable, you have made something else. Something generically dark and Italian.

One might argue that a wine nobody drinks is a failed project.

One million bottles a year. From six hundred and sixty hectares. This is a very small world.

It is.

It does not need to be Pinot Noir. It does not need to appeal to everyone. It is a specific, difficult, extraordinary thing - for people willing to engage with it on its own terms.

I respect that position. But the new generation isn't trying to make Sagrantino less itself. They're trying to make it the best version of itself. More integrated tannin is not less tannin.

Hmm.

Shorter maceration at Di Filippo - you still have Sagrantino levels of tannin. You've changed how they sit in the wine. That's not capitulation.

This is true. And I don't object to that. What I object to is when the conversation about approachability tips into - let's call it accommodation. Where the goal becomes market share rather than the expression of this particular place and this particular grape.

And you think that pressure is real.

I think it exists. Small region. Difficult grape. Consumers who have options. Yes, the pressure is real.

But the answer to that pressure isn't winemaking conservatism either. The hyper-extracted nineties style - that was also a kind of accommodation. To a different market, a different critical vocabulary.

Yes. Yes, that's fair.

So the question isn't really softening versus not softening. It's who you're making the wine for.

Mm. Perhaps the answer is that the best producers are asking the vineyard. Not the market, not the critics. The vineyard.

That's a lovely answer. It also doesn't answer the question.

No. It doesn't.

Where I land: the tannin IS the point, yes. And the reputation for brutality is unfair. And those two things are in genuine tension. I'm not sure the grape resolves it.

The grape has not resolved it in fifty years of the dry style. I don't expect it will in our lifetimes.

Rather reassuring.

It keeps the conversation interesting.

So. What to do with this information if you're standing in front of a Sagrantino.

Time.

Time.

The answer to almost everything with this grape is time. Taste a young Sagrantino and it tells you almost nothing useful about what it will become. Wait eight years. Wait ten. Then you have a conversation.

And with food.

Always with food. If you open a Sagrantino and drink it on its own - you're working against the wine. This is Sunday lunch, something braised, people at the table.

It's a wine with an argument to make. And the argument lands better in context.

Like the leather belt you tasted.

I'm going to revisit that bottle.

With something from the grill.

Noted. Next time - Marco and Elena, biodynamic winemaking in Umbria.

A subject I have strong opinions on.

I expect you do.

Sotto Voce is produced by The Italian Connection. New episodes every two weeks.

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