Love in a Bottle: The Biodynamic Mara Estate’s Sangiovese Guiry 2017
The 2017 Sangiovese Guiry 2017 of the Mara Biodynamic Estate is a wine that gives hope, immediate joy, and lots and lots of drinkability. It is a so-called natural wine, a purebred Sangiovese produced without many technicalities, but with a sure hand, indigenous yeasts, and without temperature control.
The beauty of this wine is that you know what awaits you; it doesn’t hide behind heavy refinements; it’s not spicy like gingerbread, full-bodied, or tannic; it’s just a juicy, vibrant, elegant, and never pumped wine.
Drinkability is sky-high, pure grape juice that takes over; it lets you drink it, which is wonderful; however, it is never trivial or simpleton; on the contrary, it flatters you with a discreet minerality, almost marine, with iodized tones in the background.
If we want to call it a wine that shows what the gentle hills of Rimini are like, that’s a good way to describe it. But what is interesting is that a conscious wine does not want to be anything else but the shining incarnation of what the Sangiovese dei Colli di Rimini is. It’s not such an obvious virtue in this world of Italian wine so full of wannabe cools at all costs.
How the Sangiovese Guiry 2017 Mara is produced
The Mara winery has 7 hectares of Sangiovese vineyards in the town of San Clemente, which is between Morciano and Coriano and just a few kilometers from the sea. All of the vineyards are grown with Sangiovese. The cultivation is organic, and the wines are produced according to biodynamic dictates, so it is the territory of these splendid Romagna hills that speaks volumes. After the harvest, the bunches are pressed, and the must ferments in wooden vats without temperature control during a 30-day maceration on the skins. The aging on the fine lees takes 12 months, followed by a period of rest in the bottle for 4 months.
The bouquet
Delicate, clean, typical, and straightforward nose The fruit is subtle and ethereal; floral notes return to refine; there is a barely whispered sea breeze; and cherries, berries, and roots finish the wine, as befits a good Sangiovese. Wood is irrelevant.
The taste
On the palate, it is exactly like the nose: pungent, crystalline, fresh, juicy, and driven by good freshness. The tannins are firm but never rude and do their job, giving structure and conveying flavors of roots, earth, and leaves. The variety is good, and the finesse is there. It does its duty and offers a lot of drinkability without ever falling into predictability. Cleanliness and volume are OK; there are no smudges, oxidations, or reductions; everything flows, as a great wise man said.
Price
17–20 euros: an acceptable price for a good wine.
Pairings
Grilled meat, risotto, cutlets, Indian dishes that are not too spicy, Argentinian cuisine, but above all, pasta and grilled mutton. Recommended dishes: black truffle risotto, passatelli with Parmigiano fondue and truffle, bucatini all’amatriciana, roast beef, hamburger.