Cantina Zaccagnini

Wines for Mother's day. Week one of our radio wine slot, 10 minutes, 3 wines and one girl down. We were entering the unknown but pretty confident in our choice of crowd pleasing, Oedipus Wines. I am assuming that you have read previous posts but I will reiterate our thinking behind the Italian Wine theme. Apart from the Irish mother and son duo, what other nationality mirrors this syndrome?.. Whilst researching this theme I stumbled upon a couple of frightening statistics. According to Google and the BBC - 80% of single Italian men live at home with their parents until well into their 30's. Also, the Italian Government have offered a reward scheme of €1000 to pregnant young couples as a means of encouragement/bribery. Bottom line is they produce good gear and the wine I chose to review for week 1 was Cantina Zaccagnini. Funnily enough this is produced by Mamma Zaccagnini and her 2 sons - do these boys live at home?... I can't answer that but whatever the Zaccagnini's are doing in D'Abruzzo, they're doing a good job of it.

This is a cherry purple wine in colour. On the nose it displays meaty, savoury aromas with loads of summer fruits - strawberries, raspberries, a hint of new oak packaged as vanilla and some violet in the backdrop. The palate is creamy, full bodied soft fruit, ripe cherries and blackberries. Very little tannin and soft acidity. The really great thing about this wine is that it's one of the few that I could recommend to go with everything. Not just the regular fish, chicken, steak but anti-pasta, good parmesan, scallops, sole, beef wellington or even a quarter pounder.

Montepulciano has been subjected to some bad press, I believe these guys are paving the way to grape greatness. €15.00 Bottle

Love it!!

O&O

Ruth.