Il Mostro ‘Longana’ Frizzante Rosato 2022

Location: Italy, Abruzzo

Winemakers: The Marchesani family

Grapes: Montelpulciano

Soil: Shallow sandy, clay loam with limestone deposits

Winemaking: Native fermentation in stainless steel. 2 hours skin contact. Aged 2 weeks in stainless-steel.

From the Importer Vine St. Imports: ‘Il Mostro’ was conceived as a new experimental project from Poggio Anima. The names of the wines are derived from children’s bedtime warnings throughout Europe. This is a single-vineyard wine from the Monteodorisio Vineyard in Chieti, Abruzzo. The Marchesani family has been farming this since the mid-1960s and following the marriage of Sebastano Jasci to Lucia Marchesani, the newly married couple embarked on a new frontier of higher quality farming. Sebastiano pushed for organic farming and became one of the first certified organic vineyards in Italy in 1978. Today their son Nicola has taken over the business side of things, and his wife Federica manages the winemaking. ‘Longana’ is a mythological creature that calls the caves above the cliffs of the northern Adriatic Sea home. ‘Longana’ have limbs of a goat which aide in traversing the mountains of Alto Adige and the Veneto but are frequently spotted in the sea. They are stunningly beautiful creatures that have been known to woo humans with their highly evolved knowledge of nature. Their intuitiveness with the spirits of nature is what prompted this wine to be named after these beautiful creatures.

The Montepulciano was hand-harvested during the second week of September from three blocks on a northwest facing ridge at 700 feet in elevation. The majority of the grapes were cooled down at the winery and fermented at a cool 60ºF with the remaining grapes being whole-bunch pressed to tank and chilled very cold to prevent fermentation and held in tank. Primary fermentation occurred naturally in a sealed stainless-steel tank and when the wine reached 15 g/L residual sugar the tank was cooled down in order to hold the ferment at 10 g/L. The wine was bottled and topped with more of the unfermented juice from tank and the bottles were crown sealed. Secondary fermentation occurred over the next 2-3 months and the wine was disgorged and topped up along with a small addition of sulfur helping to preserve freshness and ward off unwanted microbes.