“Guardiola” Rosso Etna DOC 2024

Tenuta delle Terre Nere | Sicily
Az. Agr. Tenuta delle Terre Nere | Contrada Calderara | IT 95036 Randazzo

19172524 · 0,75 l · 69,33 €/l · Price (DE) incl. VAT, excl. Shippingavailable immediately
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Where it all began. 2002 – the first vintage of Tenuta delle Terre Nere – did not come from just any plot. It came from Guardiola: the estate’s highest vineyard, the most challenging, the oldest. For the first Etna wine of his life, Marco de Grazia chose the toughest start he could find. And he gave it two further firsts: the first time an Etna Rosso bore the Contrada name on the label. And the first time it was bottled in a Burgundy-style bottle. The Contrada Guardiola lies at an altitude of 900 to 1,000 metres – at the very edge of the Etna DOC. Any higher up, there are no more grapes. The soils are poor: sand, volcanic pumice, basalt scree – – the bare minimum a vine needs. The terraces become narrower with increasing altitude; vineyard work there is carried out exclusively by hand and is exceptionally difficult. The vines have stood on this soil for over a hundred years – on their own roots, ungrafted, because phylloxera never reached these heights on Etna. Pre-phylloxera. Alive.

De Grazia describes the Guardiola as the estate’s most reserved and challenging wine, and as "sometimes unbalanced in its youth". And yet: it is his favourite wine. "It must be its intensity, like the tension of a coiled spring. Or its uncompromising purity. Or its austere, rigorous minerality." Hand-harvested in the third week of October. Aged for 14 months in French oak barriques and tonneaux, 20 per cent new oak. Fewer than 5,000 bottles.

A pale ruby red with orange highlights. The bouquet is complex and balsamic – mediterranean herbs, minerality, and dark fruit in the background. On the palate, it has an elegant structure and a pronounced interplay of acidity and tannins, which demands time and rewards it. "The authority and power remain". Always – of that we are certain. SUPERIORE.DE