Fall 2022 Offer #16: La Visciola 

La Visciola - 2020 “Vignali” Cesanese del Piglio

Bottom Line - La Visciola’s Vignali is a luscious medium-bodied red wine with perfect fruit-savory balance and endless flavor depth. This biodynamically-produced Cesanese brings to mind an elegant red burgundy, but with more body, more cherry fruit, and a much lower price tag. La Visciola has now achieved “cult-producer” status in Italy, and bottles are very tough to find – yet somehow prices remain reasonable. 

My notes: “Cherries on the nose, with strawberry, dried bay leaf, and loamy earth; silky on the palate, gliding to a long finish; soft tannins, good acidity, no hint of oak; restrained and focused. Beautifully complex Cesanese.”

Open Tuesday has the lowest price in the U.S. on this limited-availability Cesanese.

To order, just click the one the blue link above and follow the prompts. Keep reading for more in-depth information on La Visciola’s Vignali.

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Wine friends,

Cesanese is the most important red grape in Lazio, the region surrounding Rome. The varietal’s best growing areas are just 60-70 kilometers to the southeast of the Eternal City. About three decades ago, wine people in Rome and throughout Italy took note of the grape’s potential, and began tracking Cesanese producers with keen interest. Which producer would become the standard bearer, and what style would turn out the greatest Cesanese? 

Today, a consensus has emerged around La Visciola and owner Piero Macciocca. His wines are a cut above the rest. Indeed, they have become a stylistic reference point for Cesanese in Lazio.

While there are other examples of high-quality Cesanese, La Visciola’s wines realize an unmatched level of elegance and fruit purity. Piero picks healthy grapes relatively early in the season, macerates less, and eschews any maturation technique that might affect the fruit’s natural character. The results are magnificent. There’s no sign of the rustic heaviness you get with many other Cesanese wines.

La Visciola makes four single-vineyard Cesanese bottlings: Vignali, Ju Quarto, Ju Lattaro, and Mozzatta. A fifth Cesanese bottling, Vicinale, comes from a blend of smaller vineyard plots. All five are 100 percent Cesanese. Of the four crus, Vignali tends to express the brightest fruit, with hallmark notes of strawberry and pomegranate in evidence.

While refined and elegant, La Visciola’s cru wines are also structured, foretelling a fascinating evolution in the cellar. Then again, it may be tough to keep your hands off any bottles you try to lay down. 

La Visciola only produces about 15-18 thousand bottles per year, around two thousand of which are Vignali. Piero was among the first adopters of biodynamic vineyard principles in Lazio.

La Visciola and vicinity: La Visciola Azienda Agricola. 

Like a number of more famous cult producers, La Visciola doesn’t have a website. Unlike a number of more famous cult producers, Piero Macciocca smiles constantly and appears to truly enjoy making wine and talking about it. The photos we post on social media will give you an idea.

Food pairing: 

La Viscola is my number one wine pick with three notoriously difficult-to-pair Roman pasta dishes: arrabiata, amatriciana, and carbonara. During visits, Piero serves this wine with local primo sale cheese (early maturation, semi-soft cow’s milk) and coppa (charcuterie meat from pork mid-shoulder). 

La Visciola - 2020 Vignali Cesanese del Piglio

13.5% ABV

To order, just click the links above and follow the prompts.

Happy Tuesday,

Chris

If you have any questions or feedback, please email us: [email protected].  

How it works: 

After clicking one of the links above, you’ll be able to request 1-12 bottles. Actually, that’s all you have to do!

About a week later, when we close the offer, you’ll get an email confirming how many bottles we allocated to your account. We will charge you when the wines are allocated.

We’ll do our best to allocate all the bottles you request. But when there are more requests than bottles available, we’ll allocate one bottle to all requesting members before allocating a second bottle to anyone. We want as many members as possible to try these wines.

This is the 16th of 18 offers during the fall season. Through the first week of November, we are sending offers on Thursday and Sunday, and the Open Tuesday re-up on Tuesdays.

We ship in increments of 12. With 18 offers this season, there should be plenty of chances to get to 12, 24, or 36. If you don’t have an increment of 12 at the end of the fall season offers, we can hold your wines until the next offer season – spring 2023.

Wines offered in the fall will ship in late November-early December for $5 per bottle (if you have an increment of 12.) This is about the same as the price to ship coast-to-coast within the U.S. – but our wines come directly from Italy.

Once your payment method is on file, you can make future requests with just a few clicks from the offer email. If you don’t have a card on file, you can add one during your first order. Your personal financial information is protected by Stripe.

Chris MacLean

Rob Genova

Open Tuesday Wines S.r.l.s.

Via Augusto Anfossi 19, 20135 Milano - Italy