Mastroberardino Stilema: The greatest Fiano ever

Piero Mastroberardino offered us a preview tasting of the new Fiano di Avellino Stilema 2015, an absolute and elegant star with magical finesse.

Being a seasoned and no longer young wine critic, I always run the risk of being a bit cynical and bored when a producer presents me with their new wine. This changes somewhat if the person in question comes from a family with a great winemaking tradition, as is the case with Piero Mastroberardino. And it changes a lot more, to the point of impressing me, if the wine I am tasting turns out to be a true masterpiece.

It was no accident that Piero Mastroberardino named the wine Stilema nor that it is a Fiano di Avellino, a wine his father Antonio rediscovered and reinvented at the end of the 1940s, when that varietal and that wine existed only in the memory of a for the most part forgotten ancient tradition. Antonio reselected the vines he thought were of that varietal and Fiano was magically reborn. I remember some extraordinary vintages, like 1971 and 1986, white wines capable of aging long, something rare for the Italian wine landscape.

When Piero offered me his Fiano di Avellino Stilema 2015, produced using an ancient winemaking method of his father, with the wine sitting long on the fine lees, the “umbilical cord” we have written about various times in DoctorWine®, it was like going back in time. The only differences is that today it is possible, with modern presses and a more efficient control of temperatures during fermentation, to obtain a precision of aromas that is, above all, even better than in the past.

The result is an exceptional wine, an authentic Irpinia response to the great Chablis. And the comparison with the Grand Cru of Fevre and Ravenau is even more evident than one could imagine. This in regard to the winemaking style, obviously, because a great Fiano already has all the characteristics it needs. The wine is still very young and it will have a long and happy life because already today it is possible to identify the characteristics of an absolute champion.

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