My Favourite…with Leonardo Alves
In our monthly column featuring the favourite products of NOffLA staff members across the country, this month, Leonardo Alves, of Redmonds Off-Licence, Ranelagh, Dublin, tells us about his favourite wine…
Print16 April 2015
When people get to know what my job is, usually I will come across the question: “What’s your favourite wine?” sooner or later! I’ve being saying my taste for wine is as changeable as the Irish weather and when I’m approaching wine, I also must be open-minded, because it’s a very broad and exciting universe of flavours, aromas and experiences. From the professional point of view, I’d say we need to be even more open-minded as we know “trendies and new classics” in the wine industry come and go in a glimpse, and also customers must be considered!
But at the moment I’ve been sipping some Italian wines that have fascinated me with their freshness and fruit profile soul. Not to mention that they can go from “gamey” to “ripe” or be even “smooth” and “earthy” within just a few years.
Italy has been producing wine for thousands of years and it’s located between two seas (Mediterranean and Adriatic), stretching to the Alps in the North and to almost Africa towards the South. Italians have know-how to produce wine in almost everywhere in the country and they do it. Their wine is diverse and regional as is their gastronomy.
I’ve been quite curious in trying indigenous grapes, different wine regions and they keep surprising me with their natural claim for “not being too pretentious”, but you can spot a few “masterpieces” in almost every wine-producing region.
Thanks to Vineyard Management, creative winemaking and the ancient human beings passion for wine, Italy has been showing a revival on its Classics Regions and its less famous regions have been always stimulating my thirsty for wine.
There are two wines I would mention in particular…
Aglianico Beneventano Vesevo 2010: This is a wine that is not afraid of the influence of the time. After five years it still shows a complex blend of plums and cherries with a right dosage of oak, all wrapped up on a firm structure. A second, and more austere, layer revels its savoury, dried-fruit, spicy and earthy background. Aglianico is for sure a truly rustic Italian speciality grown around Naples in Campania Region.
Primitivo di Puglia Cantina Pietro Tauro 2013: This is a more powerful and at the same time more smooth wine from an exponent and more southern region in Italy, Puglia. The nose is ripe and pronounced emanating compote of dark plums and berries, cherries and herbs. This is a full bodied, vanilla-touched, wine that also combines tar, cocoa, cloves and figs, making it very intriguing.
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