JamesSuckling.com

• By James Suckling
  7/20/2017 (link)

  (Cantina Terlan Pinot Noir Alto Adige, Red, Italy) Subscribe to see review text.

Full Pull

• By Paul Zitarelli
  Full Pull Alto Adige, 6/28/2018

  (Cantina Terlano Pinot Noir) Hello friends. I’ve been collecting the wines of Cantina Terlano, in Italy’s northern Alto Adige region, for at least five years, and I’ve been chasing a Full Pull offer for at least that long. Why? I’ll let the maestro of Italian wine, Antonio Galloni, introduce the winery (from his introduction to the estate for Vinous in 2013): What is left to say about Terlano? That it is a world-class estate? Too obvious. That the wines have enormous personality? Of course. That the range is full of great values? Evident. During a recent visit I also tasted a number of older wines, culminating with the extraordinary trio of the 1959 and 1955 Pinot Bianco Vorberg followed by the 1969 Terlaner, which is and will probably remain the single greatest Italian white wine I have ever tasted. Numbers are superfluous. While those older wines are virtually impossible to find, readers will have better luck with the late-release Rarita series, which are generally aged one year in cask and as much as ten additional years in tank prior to being bottled. A few weeks ago I shared a bottle of Terlano's 1955 Pinot Bianco with a group of collectors at a charity dinner. Not just any collectors. I mean the type of winelovers who regularly open bottles most of us dream of tasting once in a lifetime. They were blown away. None of them had ever tasted a white that old, much less an Italian white with serious bottle age. This is Terlano. One of the few wineries in the world capable of making not just great wines, but emotional wines. The reason we’ve been chasing – not offering – Terlano wines has been all about supply. These wines aren’t imported into the United States in any great quantity; even less so to the Deep Space Nine outpost that is the PacNW. But then our successful Gruner Party offer from April set a blueprint for how to make this work. Expand the number of wines offered (just like with the Gruner party, it’s four wines), which offsets the limited quantities available. You may recall from that Gruner offer this note that I wrote: When it comes to European white wines, there are three regions I see as dramatically undervalued compared to their inherent quality and (in some cases) ability to age: the Savoie in eastern France, Alto Adige in northern Italy, and Austria. When I peruse the shelves of my little pantry cellar, a high proportion of the old-world whites come from one of those three places. We’ve dialed in Savoie the past few years via our Jean Vullien offers, we had our Gruner Party in April, so that just leaves one: glorious Alto Adige. I could try to describe this region, its pockets of vineyards nestled up above rust-roofed villages and below the towering Dolomites, its mishmash of Italian-German-Austrian culture, but if you have a few moments, I’d rather direct you to James Suckling’s wonderful new documentary, The Miracle of Alto Adige. The whole 24-minute video is worth a watch, but if you only check out the first six minutes, you’ll see a flyover introduction to the region, and then the first winery featured is – you guessed it – Terlano. Terlano is actually a co-op, boasting 230 grape-growing members, of whom 70% are original founding families from 1892. The members farm and contribute grapes, which are turned into wine in one large facility and bottled and marketed under the Cantina Terlano label. Co-ops are not always synonymous with high-quality wine, but Ian D’Agata, writing of Terlano in Vinous in 2017, noted that “surprising as it may seem, Italy’s best white wine producer may be a co-operative. Certainly no producer in the country makes longer-lived white wines than the Cantina Terlano.” He said this after participating in a library tasting of reserve Pinot Bianco’s from 1959 to 2014. Lucky man. We’re going to focus on the reserve Pinot Bianco today as well as another Terlano wine so classic it has its own personal appellation. And then we’ll wrap up with a quick-hitter pair of bonus wines that should be more familiar: a Pinot Grigio and a Pinot Noir.See key for # of bottles currently available.