Dievole Dievolino Rosso di Sangiovese
Wine: Dievole Dievolino Rosso di Sangiovese
Grape: sangiovese
Region: Tuscany, Northern Italy
Vintage: 2008
Price: $7.99
In the glass: Dievole wine is a dark garnet-red color with a dense core going out into a fine light-garnet rim definition with medium viscosity.
On the nose: There is spicy black fruit, tobacco, leather, cedar box, ripe black cherry fruit, which is bright at first but then turns deeper, then underlying notes of wood, herbs and fruit-driven minerals.
On the palate: The wine expands to show its ample vibrant red and black fruit medley, dominated by the classic -- for the chianti zone -- red cherry characteristic, followed by currants and cranberries, hints of toasted oak, wood and fine minerals. The midpalate is rich with ripe red fruits going into a nicely balanced and lengthy finish, with just a touch of age and phenolics right at the end. It is a singularly great expression of the traditional young chianti classico wine, but with aged youth so to speak, showing quality in the bottle.
Odds and ends: If there ever were to be an Italian equivalent of Beaujolais nouveau, this Dievolino from Tuscany would be it. While Beaujolais winemakers employ what is known as carbonic maceration, meaning whole cluster fermentation, this Tuscany wine is made in the more traditional method of mixing some stems with the berries, and then a young free-run juice, only just fermented, is bottled and released. Dievole is a respected and traditional house of winemaking in Tuscany and employs the normal amount of modern-day technology for them to make good, solid wines with the indigenous sangiovese grape. Normally a wine such as this would be consumed within a year of its production, as it is intended, but since we have it three years on and fully mature in the bottle, it is a great little pepperoni pizza wine. Drink up before the end of the year.
Gil Lempert-Schwarz's wine column appears Wednesdays. Write him at P.O. Box 50749, Henderson, NV 89106-0749, or email him at gil@winevegas.com.
