Alarico Terre Nobili di Lidia Matera, Organic red from Calabria, big, rich and creamy red, cassis and dark fruits, spice and vanilla, for fillet steak! This wine is the southern Italian sun captured in the glass, rich and full of dark fruits and spice.....complex, intense, persistent bouquet; lengthy finish with notes of wild red berries, cassis and hints of iris, cotugnata and eucalyptus followed by an enveloping and spicy taste with dense but not aggressive tannins. The 6 months oak ageing rounds out and softens this beautifully silky southern Italian red. This is seriously intense wine. In Calabria the summer temps reach 40 degrees and the fruit becomes super ripe as they green harvest to reduce the yields to Grand Cru Burgundy levels. If you like big Italian reds (Amarone for example) and steaks on a Saturday night, you must try this unique wine!
Lidia Matera is quite a character, she greets you with a big smile, a warm embrace and always very keen to pour her wine for you to taste. Her small wine farm is based in the Valle del Crati, a small bowl shaped valley in the northern part of Calabria where summer temperatures are will peak at close to 40 degrees and the sun shines constantly. Here Lidia grows local varieties Magliocco Dolce and Canino and also Nerello Mascalese, a grape more associated with Mount Etna in Sicily. Her vineyard is organic and she achieves a level of ripeness which produces exceptionally rich and opulent wines which in the best years also have a creaminess and mouth feel which makes very impressive. The sweet flavours of south come through, dark fruits, prune, blackberry, and sweet spices, vanilla, notes of liquorice and chocolate can be found in all the wines. These are full bodied wines for those who like big bold flavours and deep colours. The Cariglio and Ipazia are fresher as they don't see any oak, the Alarico is bigger and bolder with more toastiness. Lidia also makes a very full bodied white from Greco Bianco which with some Moroccan style food with spices and fruits is superb.
