A tale of two harvests — A Single Carrot

Update: 24 April, 2020: Like many other small producers, the Potentino wines are almost exclusively sold to restaurants and guests at their agrotourismo. As a result, the COVID-19 lockdown measures enforced across Italy are having a huge effect on business.

At the moment they are offering a 30% discount on the Italian retail price of all of their wines (use code CRUTCHERCARROT30 when you check out). If you are in the UK, this will offsets the cost of getting it shipped over if you order 12 bottles, and a more for larger orders. Within Italy, delivery is free for orders over 18 bottles. The bottles range from €15 - 30, without the discount, making it exceptionally good value.

The article below gives a small amount of insight from my first hand experience into how the wines are made. The bottle I took to Burgundy was a 2010 Sangiovese, Wine Makers Release, available on the website for €20 with the discount.

If you would like any more information on the wines, or what to buy, please get in touch and I would be more than happy to help. The wines can be ordered direct from the producer’s cellar via the Potentino site.

What is the difference between a £30 and a £150 bottle of wine? Both are expensive by most people’s standards so one would hope that quality is a given. A sceptic would say that the majority of that £120 swing lies with brand and marketing. But what about the viticulture and processing? Working with two top wine makers in Burgundy and Tuscany over their 2019 harvest gave a small amount of insight.

First, let’s deal with the sceptics. The effect of brand on wine prices is undeniable. You only have to look at the bottles that consistently command record breaking prices in Hong Kong, New York and London auction houses – Lafite, Latour, Romanee-Conti – to realise that wine buyers are suckers for notoriety. The Burgundians are masters of exploiting this. Each tiny parcel of land along the famous Cote d’Or is boxed up and branded with its own, historic mark. What’s more, these “appellations controlee” (or AOCs) are systematically ranked by the french legal system adding a further level of repute to the top plots.

The village of Pommard on the Cote de Beaune, the southern half of the Cote d’Or, is an instantly recognisable brand in the wine world, although mid table by Burgundy standards where the likes of Gevrey Chambertin, Vosne Romanee and Chambolle Musigny, command the top spots. Within Pommard however, the Clos des Epeneaux – a 5.23 hectare walled monopole owned by the Comte Armand – has a special status. In the AOC system it is a Premier Cru (no mean feat) but it is often referred to as the “Grand Cru” of Pommard, and attempts have been made in the past to have it boosted up this notoriously rigid system.

At Castello di Potentino, an imposing medieval castle set in its own wild valley in the south of Tuscany, 30 minutes from Montalcino, British winemaker Charlotte Horton rejects the Italian DOC/DOCG system, the equivalent to the French AOCs. Unusually for the region, she also grows pinot noir, alongside more conventional Tuscan sangiovese. The vineyards at Potentino stand in the middle of a landscape of olive groves and chestnut trees. The biodiversity stands in stark contrast to the monoculture of the Cote d’Or, where stratospheric land prices mean that every available inch is covered in rows of vines.

Year round, an enormous amount of time is committed by the teams at both places to ensure that their plants produce the best possible quality of fruit. From pruning through to harvest this is done manually and organically with no time or expense spared. There is one thing however that can't be replicated. Charlotte and her family planted the vineyards at Potentino after purchasing the property almost twenty years ago. The youngest vines in the Clos des Epeneaux were planted 36 years ago. The oldest were planted in 1919 and are in their centenary year. Whilst these thick gnarled vines are less productive, they produce a higher quality of fruit with more concentrated sugars that are capable of creating a more powerful, complex wine.

The sorting table at Domaine Clos des Epeneaux

Production at both wineries is similar, at around 20,000 bottles PA. At this level, both can comfortably be described as “artisanal” wines. At Potentino, I was struck by the simplicity of the wine making process: grapes are taken from the vineyard and emptied into a basic de-stemming machine then pumped into large wooden tanks to start fermenting. In Burgundy, the grapes are first placed onto a twelve foot conveyor belt and hand sorted by a large team. Mouldy, dried and under-ripe grapes are carefully picked out and any leaves or other non grape material is discarded.

The de-stemming machine at Domaine Clos des Epeneaux is three times the size of the one in Tuscany and at another level of sophistication, and I suspect, cost. It spits out berries with their skins almost completely intact. After this they are carefully lifted by escalator into the fermenting tanks. I am told by those that know more about wine making than I do that keeping the berries whole in this way slows down the fermentation process, creating a more elegant wine.

In both cases, one thing was clear: without good grapes, you can't make good wine. No amount of technology or wizardry in the cellars is capable of redeeming bad fruit. All of the additional technology in Burgundy was simply there to ensure that the fruit made it from the vines into the tanks in the best possible condition. The wines from the Clos des Epeneaux have incredible precision and depth - there is no doubt that this is a wine worthy of its famous name.

One day during the Burgundian harvest, I nervously produced a bottle of Castello di Potentino sangiovessi to share at lunch with the winemaker, his cooper and some of the other harvest staff. As was convention over lunch at the Domaine, the wine was tasted blind. Could these seasoned professionals tell that this wine had been made with the last generation of de-stemmer? Or that the grapes were from the unknown commune of Seggiano, not its famous neighbour, Montalccino? If they could, no mention was made. The wine was met with a resounding nod of satisfaction and the greatest complement a fellow wine maker can bestow: that it “really tasted like a sangivovessi”. Confirmation that top wine making is all about getting a great harvest then helping it reach its potential.