{"id":684,"date":"2015-10-26T12:11:00","date_gmt":"2015-10-26T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.podereleripi.com\/intoxicology-report-chris-kassel\/"},"modified":"2021-07-30T10:40:59","modified_gmt":"2021-07-30T08:40:59","slug":"intoxicology-report-chris-kassel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.podereleripi.com\/it\/intoxicology-report-chris-kassel\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Kassel’s intoxicology report"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Stugots in Montalcino: Podere Le Ripi<\/p>\n\n

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Tuscans have testicles, no doubt about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Think back on the early days of the so-called \u2018Super Tuscans\u2019 when a handful of vintners decided they could make better wines using grape varieties that the Denominazione di Origine Controllata did not allow; thus, they went ahead and added Cabernet and Merlot to their Sangiovese and shrugged off the government\u2019s initial reluctance to designate their wines anything but the lowly Vino da Tavola.In fact, the Tuscans not only accepted the insult, they made the me ne frego chin flick and sold their wine for exorbitant prices anyway.On a somewhat smaller, but still hormone-sopped scale, last Friday I met with Marco Stevanoni, Export Manager for Podere Le Ripi\u2014Montalcino\u2019s coffee-financed, passion-fueled, iconoclast-run winery. The iconoclast is Francesco Illy, who, well-armed with the family fortune (Illycaff\u00e8, specializing in the production of espresso), bought 135 acres of sheep-grazing land in rural Tuscany where, in time, he figured he should produce some wine.Ironically, for the sort of patient beauty that washes over this country\u2014a languid slice of timelessness\u2014Illy is a man who lives very much in the the now. When he was told by Burgundians that a vine required a minimum of 35 years to produce truly magnificent wines (based primarily on root depth) Illy\u2014already in his mid-fifties\u2014didn\u2019t want to wait. So he launched a series of experiments with vine density, decreasing the space between his vines until he had planted the sardine can of viticulture, the most cramped vineyard in the world with more than 25,000 vines per acre.To level set, in Burgundy\u2014where the planting density is considered high\u2014the average is 3600 vines per acre. Most of Europe is content with about 2,500.Illy\u2019s goal in this outrageous experiment, which even his agriculture consultant thought was whackadoodle, was to force the vine roots to develop downward at a faster pace since in the over-crowded neighborhood, that\u2019s the only place they\u2019ll have to stretch their legs taproots.And, in fact, a scant three years later, when he took a tape measure to the root system, Illy found that not only were they far deeper than they\u2019d have been under less stressful conditions, they produced useable fruit in the second year; an almost unheard of bonus.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, my question to Marco Stevanoni, Podere Le Ripi\u2019s Export Manager, was: \u201cIf this idea is so revolutionary and the result so indisputable, why isn\u2019t every enologo in Italy jumping on the high-density bandwagon?\u201d \u201cBecause,\u201d Stevanoni replied, \u201cIlly only gets 500 bottles per acre. And he drinks a hundred of them himself.\u201dLeaving (by my math) four hundred of Bonsai Sangiovese for the rest of the contiguous solar system.To level set once more, a single healthy vine should be able to produce, at a minimum, two bottles of wine\u2014again, using my math, 25,000 vines, properly spaced, should result in 50,000 bottles; a hundred times more than he wound up with.That\u2019s some cloud; that\u2019s some brace o\u2019 bollocks.Although, believe it or not, the nads displayed by this super Tuscan winemaker and his high-density trickle of Sangiovese, which goes for $162 a fifth and should probably sell for a lot more, is not the stugots that the title of this piece refers to:Rather, those belong to Marco Stevanoni, who, after spending twenty minutes describing this avant-garde technique and raving about the unfathomably scrumptious results and generally tooting his Tuscan taskmaster\u2019s trumpet, he informed me that there wasn\u2019t enough to go around and I wouldn\u2019t be getting a taste, but I should write about it anyway.Now, that took stugots.But write about it I shall, and no hard feelings\u2014there was a quintet of lesser wines, mere mortals from other vineyards with sensible vine spacing and roots systems not terrified into performing.And you know what? They weren\u2019t bad at all\u2014although, ironically, I thought the entry level was the best, and noteably so. I probably wouldn\u2019t have appreciated the golden child anyway.And I have the balls to say so.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

Tasting Notes:<\/p>\n\n

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