Bea, Paolo - Paolo Bea Sagrantino di Montefalco Passito 2007 375ml (375ml)

Concentrated, lush, and a little nervy, Bea's '07 Sagrantino di Montefalco Passito explodes with ripe blue and black fruits, warm chocolate, plum compote, raspberry jam, maple syrup, peppery herbs, and warm earth. Vibrant acidity ushers this semi-sweet dessert wine across the palate as chewy tannins cling to the cheeks; textured and supple, this Sagrantino Passito is a triumph. At once sweet and savory, this Passito-style wine holds the palate in delicious tension; it's a pure, energetic, complicated expression of Sagrantino, and it could only come from Umbria's master. Bea let the grapes dry for a few weeks, concentrating their sugars and flavors, and then let them ferment with skin contact for 39 days before aging for almost three years on the lees in stainless steel, and bottling the wine almost five years after harvest. Just 200 cases made.

Situated in the heart of Umbrian wine country, Paolo Bea is the quintessential artisanal producer. Bea's credo is "Nature should be observed, listened to and integrated, not dominated. Wine is not made by man but generated by nature!"An estate founded more than 400 years ago, family owned-and-operated Paolo Bea dedicates itself to indigenous Umbrian grapes--Grechetto, Malvasia, Gargenega and Trebbiano for its whites, and Montepulciano d'Abruzzo and Sagrantino for its reds. A guiding force in Vini Veri, or in English the "True Wine Group", Italy's natural wine consortium, the estate nurtures its grapes with organic, non-interventionist agriculture, and it continues that reliance on nature in the cellar, crafting its wines without temperature control and without any additives, additional yeasts, fining or filtration. Bea purposefully keeps its production low--so low that demand for its exceptional reds and outrageous whites always exceed supply.