Fall 2022 Offer #11: Marco Sara Friulano

Marco Sara - 2021 Friulano (Friuli Colli Orientali)

Bottom Line - Marco Sara’s 2021 Friulano is a richly-textured, fruit-forward organic white wine with a long and savory mineral finish. Friulano, formerly known as Tocai Friulano, is widely regarded as one of Italy's best whites, and Marco Sara makes an exceptional example.

This wine is not currently available in North America.

My notes: “White melon, orange peel, hazelnut, salt, gravel; compact fruit in the mouth, good length, refreshing salinity. Very pretty Friulano.”

To order, just click the link above and follow the prompts. Keep reading for more in-depth information on Macro Sara and this Friulano.

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Wine friends,

Friulano is one of my two favorite Italian white wines. Open Tuesday members may recall I’ve said Fiano di Avellino should sit atop any ranking of Italian whites, and I stand by that position. But friulano is definitely on any Mount Rushmore of Italian white wines. (Spots three and four are more debatable: Soave? Etna Bianco? Verdicchio? Pigato? Malvasia Istriana?)

What makes friulano so special? To me, it’s the way friulano’s coiled herbal fruit elegantly gives way to a persistent mineral finish. In a well-made friulano like Marco Sara’s, that flavor shift is both dramatic and harmonious. 

Friulano is not a highly acidic grape, so to get length on the palate, winemakers like Marco encourage their vines to extract saline and mineral flavors from Friuli’s famed ponca soil. Ponca is the local term for flysch soil, which is a mix of chalky clay and sandstone. In Friuli, this soil type is primarily found in the Collio and Colli Orientali regions.

Please check out this short video clip on the ponca in Marco Sara’s vineyards.

I wanted to offer a friulano to our members during our spring beta season, but ultimately was not able to find the right producer. Many of the friulano wines I admire are either too widely distributed already, or too expensive.

It was Manuel Marinacci (from our Barbaresco offers) who first advised me, in May, to look into Marco Sara’s wines. Manuel even served a Marco Sara friulano at his wedding. It’s tough to ignore that kind of endorsement from a great winemaker!

Earlier this week, I made the trip to Friuli to see Marco and taste his wines. The whole lineup was stellar, but this Friulano 2021 was the standout wine of the visit. I’m thrilled we now have a friulano of this quality to offer our members. 

Here’s Marco Sara on the map of northeastern Italy.

Marco only makes about 25 thousand bottles of wine a year, around 8 thousand of which are friulano. The wines can occasionally be found in a few U.S. markets on the west coast, but nothing is publicly available right now.

Friulano, formerly known as Tocai Friulano, is native to this part of Italy. Evidence of its existence in the Friuli region dates back to the 12th century AD.

Food pairing: 

This friulano would be great with roasted vegetables, chicken and fish dishes, or Prosciutto di San Daniele (DOP) from nearby San Daniele. Marco Sara likes to serve this wine with fish, risotto con asparagi (Italian rice with asparagus) and cjalcions (stuffed ravioli-like pasta), a typical northern Friuli dish.

Marco Sara - 2021 Friulano (Friuli Colli Orientali)

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 11th 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