Taming the wild beast!
The Sagrantino grape is wild -- Giampaolo Tabarinni is wilder.
It takes a wild man to tame a wild beast.
In this case, the beast in question is the mighty Sagrantino grape – the powerful, dark, navy blue-hued, thick-skinned, polyphenol and tannin-laden varietal distinctive to Umbria.
And the man tasked with wrestling it into transcendently quaffable vintages, is Giampaolo Tabarrini – a short, wiry and frenetic fellow who bears resemblance to the acclaimed British motion capture actor Andy Serkis.
Mr. Tabarrini will visit Pittsburgh this week as a guest of Allora Wine Group, with a slate of events lined up including a VIP tasting at the One Bite One Day cancer fundraiser in the Strip District on Thursday, a multi-course wine pairing dinner at Senti in Lawrenceville on Friday, and a tasting at Grapperia in the same neighborhood Saturday.
“He’s a character, one of a kind,” Allora CEO Michel Mincin said of Mr. Tabarrini. He’s known him for nearly a decade. “He makes big wines. He's got a big personality.”
For the unfamiliar, Sagrantino “is to Umbria what Barolo is to Piedmont or Brunello is to Tuscany: a powerhouse,” author, sommelier and restaurateur Joe Campanale writes In his book, ‘Vino: The Essential Guide to Real Italian Wine,’ He continues: “What I love about Sagrantino is that this power is expressed not with the brute strength of a bouncer but with the attenuated grace of a dancer. The muscular wine has a tannic, almost feral quality.”
Per Wikipedia, “The grape has one of the highest tannic levels of any variety in the world. Its wines contain more tannin than those made from Aglianico or Tannat, and twice the level of Cabernet Sauvignon or Nebbiolo wines. It creates wines that are inky purple with an almost-black center. The bouquet is one of dark, brooding red fruits with hints of plum, cinnamon, and earth.”
Found exclusively in Umbria in the area of Montefalco, the grape’s origin remains a bona fide mystery, but the root of the name suggests it was once used to make sacramental wine. Through all of its known history, it was made into a sweet passito — it wasn’t until the late 1970’s that dry expressions were produced.
Mr. Tabarrini’s family has grown the grape in Montefalco for decades, and sold it as respectable if unremarkable “tavern” wine, until 25 years ago when he left a lucrative but unfulfilling accounting career with Mercedes Benz Italia and convinced his father to let him cultivate 50 acres of the family farm.
According to a 2014 Wine Spectator article, “When he started putting his own wine in bottles, Tabarrini noticed differences in his three principal Sagrantino vineyards … he started bottling the wines separately. It was an unusual step. … Given the difficulties of training the explosively vigorous vine and turning its fruit into a civilized wine — one pure Sagrantino per year is enough. Very few make single-vineyard crus. Tabarrini has taken the idea further than anyone by making three separate bottlings from distinct vineyards.”
Those three – Macchie, Cerqua and Grimaldesco – are now regarded as some of the finest in the world and are routinely awarded Tre Bicchieri by the Gambero Rosso society in Italy.
“To try them — one vintage, three in a row, and just see how everything else can be equal, but just because they're in three different places that can really change how the wine tastes and smells is simply amazing,” Mr. Mincin said.
When he leads visitors around the winery he’s not a tour guide, but rather a man emphatically gushing over the wine in the barrels as if it were the very blood in his body. And, in a metaphorical sense, it is.
“His passion is just contagious. How he talks about what he does, to the way his hands are constantly in motion. He deals with Sagrantino, so his hands and his teeth are stained. He's a farmer at heart, but also an artist. He's this dichotomy of a man.
“He is very high energy, too. He's super hard working, he's very, very intelligent. He's got his hand in every piece from cultivating the grapes to designing the labeling on the boxes, to fixing the tractor. It's really impressive how much he oversees. It's quite daunting.
“The wines are as big as his personality. Umbria is a landlocked region, it's hot there, so the heat produces these really, really rich and bold [wines]. They supersede Cabernet Sauvignon by a lot and then some. But, the whites are big too. The Trebbiano Spoletino is a huge, big, creamy but acidic white wine too. They're distinctive.”
Mr. Mincin first met him at a Slow Wine event in New York City, introduced to him by acclaimed Marche region winemaker Lorenzo Marotti Campi.
“So I'm waiting to talk to him. And I make eye contact with Lorenzo, and he's mouthing, “he's molto pazzo.” (really crazy)
He relayed a story from 6 years ago when he and his wife Alejandra (who was expecting their son Marco) were guided through a packed ballroom at the annual Vinitaly trade show in Verona by Mr. Tabarrini, who practically threw blocks for her.
“He was basically like a fullback leading the pregnant woman around the room, and then proceeding to talk to her stomach, introducing himself, ‘Marco, this is your friend, GP.’”
Most recently Michel visited Giampaolo, now 50, and stayed with his family in Montefalco for four days in May, helping to bottle and label wines, and make pasta.
“I think that that's a great example of the kind of unique relationship we have with all of our producers. It's more than just the wine. They're almost like an extended family.”
Meet Giampaolo Tabarrini
Mr. Tabarrini has visited Pittsburgh once before, in 2017 (see bottom), and Allora Wine Group will be reacquainting him with our terroir n’at this week and weekend. If you’d like to meet the mad genius for a guided a tasting of his wines, you can do so:
6 p.m. Thursday, at the One Bite One Day fundraiser event at the Pittsburgh Opera facility in the Strip District. Allora will pour Tabarrini wines in the VIP area of the event.
6:30 p.m. Friday at Senti in Lawrenceville for a five-course wine paired dinner.
5-7 p.m. Saturday at Grapperia also in Lawrenceville for complimentary bites and tastes of Tabarrini wines. All wines will be available for purchase by the glass and bottle, and a flight of all three 2018 single vineyard Sagrantinos will be offered as well.