Domaine Comte Abbatucci, Ministre Imperial, Cuvee Collection 2015

$120.00

Out of Stock

Domaine Comte Abbatucci, Ministre Imperial, Cuvee Collection 2015

$120.00

22% Sciaccarellu, 18% Niellucciu, 15% Carcajolu-Neru, 15% Montanaccia, 12% Morescono, 10% Morescola, 8% Aleatico

Out of Stock

Add to Wishlist
Add to Wishlist
SKU: 4781 Category:

The Domaine Comte Abbatucci Collection wines all come from a single parcel planted by Antoine Abbatucci in the early 1960’s. At the time, Antoine (Jean-Charles’s father) was president of the Chamber of Agriculture in Corsica, and noticed that the subsistence farming lifestyle of the mountain villages was rapidly disappearing as the villagers left the countryside for the coastal towns. Several villages farmed old vines of indigenous varietals that were left abandoned as the population left. To save these varietals from extinction, Abbatucci took cuttings of each threatened vineyard he came across and planted the cuttings on his estate near Ajaccio, in a single plot of granite soil. By 1962, eighteen different varieties had been planted. More recently, Jean-Charles has begun propagating the vines using séléction massale on his own estate, as well as supplying cuttings to other vignerons all over Corsica. He blends these native grapes from the original plot planted in the 1960’s together into four different cuvées, each one named after an ancestor (except for the barbarossa which is named for the grape varietal). All four cuvées have exceptionally low yields to produce a mere 1,500 bottles.

“What to make of a biodynamic wine grower whose unorthodox methodology includes having the choral polyphony for which his homeland is famous broadcast to his vines (and the sheep that graze them) as well to his young wines? Now that Jean-Charles Abbatucci has begun to acquire some of the fame he deserves, I’m told the music – rather than emanating from loudspeakers mounted to his pick-up – is performed live. Recent projects at this 50-acre (20-hectare) estate just outside Corsica’s capital Ajaccio on the island’s west coast include two “Imperial” bottlings sourced from Sciacarellu vines that have been left, un-pruned, to revisit their riparian roots as he imagines them having done for centuries. Another profoundly important project whose results – just two of which I have yet tasted – I can only characterize as awesome, involves vines from ancient Corsican cultivars that Abbatucci’s father collected as cuttings and established on a rocky granitic site in the early 1960s. This vineyard was never intended as a museum, but rather as a living link – in some instances possibly the very last – to vine varieties and a way of life that persisted just short of a millennium from the Pisan and Genoese conquests (with vines in tow) to the mid-20th century. In that spirit, Abbatucci, his horses and singers cultivate it, resulting in a Cuvee Collection with wines labeled to honor several of his heroic Napoleonic military and diplomatic ancestors. Collectively, Abbatucci’s wines will stretch your palate, your imagination, and even your notions about what wine is or can be. (And you’ll have fun drinking them.)”-WA

Additional information

Country

Other Attributes

Price Range

Sub-Region

Type of Wine