The road to Lacrima Superiore

Stefano Mancinelli, the historic Morro d’Alba producer, offers his vision of Lacrima di Morro Superiore.

Now that producers have agreed on what a “stock” Lacrima di Morro d’Alba should be – with its extraordinary fragrance of red flowers that the varietal offers and wine lovers have shown they appreciate – the new frontier in the area now would appear to be that of finding a shared vision for the Superiore version. Here, however, things get a bit more complicated.

While the aromatic personality of the varietal is beyond question, finding a way to make a wine that can positively evolve in the bottle raises a number of questions: from the type of extracts to strive for, to the types of wood to use for maturing the wine. Lacrima, in fact, can achieve bold levels of extracts and polyphenolic properties but it is exactly for this reason the wine tends to “implode” in the bottle without developing positive characteristics from aging.

Stefano Mancinelli, who is kind of the “father” of Lacrima du Morro, seems to have in recent years been working almost “in subtraction” to create his version of Superiore. The result is a wine in which the super-fragrant scents of rose and violent fall into the background to make room for balsamic and moss notes. The road to finding a common definition for Lacrima Superiore may still be long, but there are some encouraging signs.

Lacrima di Morro d’Alba Superiore 2016 Stefano Mancinelli

Made from Lacrima grapes with a brief maceration in the skins before fermenting off the skins under controlled temperatures. The wine matures 1/5th in barriques and barrels and 4/5th in stainless steel vats for 12 months. The color is a distinct, but not opaque, ruby-purple and the bouquet has alternating notes of moss, black olives and a hint of dried leaves on a background of roses. The medium mouthfeel is dry, with tannins typical for the varietal that are not too drying. The excellent finish has notes of rose and black olives. Try this with pulled pork.

86/100

€ 12

Related Products