2009 Occhipinti SP68 Bianco
The fact that I love the wines of Arianna Occhipinti isn’t exactly a secret….I love her red wines and have become a massive fan of this particular white wine which never fails to excite with its heady perfume.
Arianna Occhipinti hails from the Vittoria region of Southern Sicily. She studied her art under the watchful eye of her uncle, Giusto Occhipinti, who is owner of the famous COS estate. The vineyards Arianna sources fruit from are run biodynamically and she’s one of the young guns of the Italian winemaking scene
The SP68 is the name of the main road that passes near to Arianna’s home town of Vittoria just to the West of Ragusa…..the capital of the province of the same name. Vittoria is also the home of Sicily’s only D.O.C.G, Cerasuolo di Vittoria….a blend 0f Nero d’Avola and Frappato. But that is not what we are concerned with here….we are talking about a savoury, heady, sucking on a river-stone dry white wine that positively sings with cheese and fatty charcuterie….and let’s face it we all need to eat more fatty charcuterie.
It’s a blend of Albanello and Moscato di Alessandria, which is known locally as Zibibbo and sees around 15 days of skin contact before spending six months in stainless steel tanks. It is bottle without filtration and spends a short amount of time in bottle before release.
Dark straw in colour with a head-spinning floral nose that seems both rich and impossibly perfumed at once. There’s citrus and lemon fruit here, almost lemoncello-like in its power and intensity and it’s wrapped up a a blacket of fragrant blossom and flowers. It’s incredibly exotic with hints of cardamom, dried honey, bergamot, jasmine, herbs, frangipani, incense, epsom salts, rosewater, porcini and garam marsala.
On the palate the wine makes you do a quick double take….it’s colour could possibly suggest a sweet or off-dry wine but the SP68 Bianco surpises with a finish that is bone dry….and I mean stony, savoury bone dry displaying a beautiful intricacy of flavour. Again pithy citrus and lemon fruits slide across the palate with a wake of floral characters trailing…..jasmine and frangipani stick out prominently with hints of stone, fennel, curry spice, dried honey, ginger, scattered herbs, mushroom broth, incense, talc, minerals and bergamot.
It positively aches with stone and savoury tones….harmonious and very textured and weighted perfectly. If you haven’t seen tannin in a white wine before….look no further…and those sweet tannins pull everything into line just right. Just beautiful, geeky wine drinking.
Price: $45 – Closure: Cork – Alcohol: 11% – Source: Sample – Importer: Addley Clarke Fine Wines
A wine that throws some funky shapes
