Frappato: unique

Posted on 20 July 2011

I’m back to Sicily tonight – in my glass. You might want to read this article as well as this series on Etna for a broader context. Many Sicilian wines suck: I’d rather have a lager than a sweet, chocolatey supermarket Nero d’Avola, for example. But when they’re properly made by dedicated people in special places, this huge island’s wines have a dimension that makes them unique.

One grape variety I’m really fond is Frappato. It’s indigenous to the south-eastern corner of Sicily, near Ragusa, Noto and Vittoria, where it’s a vital ingredient in the Cerasuolo di Vittoria DOC. Cerasuolo is an unexpected wine: light, airy, perfumed, Burgundian if not downright Beaujolaisian, though it comes from Europe’s hottest and southernmost corner. With its mixture of fresh cherries and strawberries, flowers and Oriental spices, Cerasuolo is one of Europe’s most distinctive red wines.

In Cerasuolo Frappato is usually blended with 50% Nero d’Avola, giving more body and riper fruit. There are increasingly many bottlings of varietal Frappato, however, and today I’m tasting the 2007 Il Frappato from Arianna Occhipinti, an already famous winemaker at 29 years of age, responsible e.g. for the Les italiennes montent à Paris gig. Arianna speaks beautifully about this Frappato on her website:

My Frappato is born from a dream that I think I’ve always had. I want it to convey all that I think, the land I’m working, the air I’m breathing, Vittoria with all its history, perhaps myself as well. I love it particularly because it is a synthesis of my Sicily, with its thousand faces. I adore it because it’s difficult, at times rough and bloody, and yet extremely elegant. I thank it for having brought me back to Sicily, a land that many are still departing from.

I love Arianna’s 100% hands-on, hands-off approach (there is absolutely no chemicals used in the production here), but this 2007 Frappato is really perplexing. It tastes really acidic and green, a characteristic that you don’t expect from a ‘natural’, biodynamic wine (which tend to be ripe, fleshy, and soft). The wine does have the expected depth and complexity of fruit, but although it’s a light red I don’t find the word ‘elegant’ very apt here. I wish I had another bottle to retry it in a few weeks.

Arianna is the niece of Giusto Occhipinti, co-founder and owner of COS, another leading producer of Cerasuolo di Vittoria, responsible for the renaissance of this once forgotten appellation. I’ve long been a fan of these wines – here’s what I wrote (in Polish) about the 2007 Frappato and 2007 Cerasuolo – and there is even some amphora wine being made here. But COS’ greatest achievement is perhaps their flagship Cerasuolo bottling. I’ve cellared the 2006 vintage to see how this wine ages, and it’s drinking beautifully now. Crisp cherries, red currants, a whiff of elusive tulip and violet sweetness, a lightness of touch: this is a watercolour landscape rather than an oil on canvas battlefield, and I just love that. While it might have lost the pungency of youth, this wine has retained Cerasuolo elegance and airiness (despite the 60% Nero d’Avola content). It’s my last bottle of a case, and I’d kill to have more.

Disclosure

Source of wines: own purchases.