A mug of wine

It had been exactly six months since I last ran into Valentino Valentini, a wine producer and former mayor of Montefalco. We were in the Beijing suburb of Yanqing, it was a hot and humid day and the sky was grey with smog so it was not exactly the best place for a major wine trade fair. We were apparently there to ‘educate’ winegrowers in this part of China where they are ambitiously planting vines in the foolish belief that they can copy a wine the same way as they can copy a fashion creation. When we met a few days ago it was at his winery in the heart of Umbria, in Montefalco, more precisely Madonna della Stella and it was a wet, cool and the sun was going down.
Bocale is asmall family-run winery created in 2002. Its roots were in farming and a wine which Valentino’s grandfather had been making since 1927. His friends nicknamed him Bocale, la derivation of boccale or mug, because he use to drink his wine from a two-liter tankard. The name stuck and it is now that of the winery. The estate has 4.5 hectares of vineyards and produces 5-6,000 bottles of Sagrantino and 16-17,000 bottles of Montefalco under the supervision of enologist Emiliano Falsini.
Although not certified organic, the estate follows organic methods, uses no chemical products and only employs indigenous yeasts.
After a brief tour of the vineyards planted with Sagrantino, Sangiovese, Colorino and Merlot grapes, we headed for the tasting room to sample the winery’s products. Meeting us there was Valentino’s father Ennio, who kindly smiled and insisted we eat the bruschetta with the farm’s olive oil while it was still hot. He also showed me the posters on the wall created by different artists, including Altan and Mattotti, to mark each new vintage Sagrantino. It was a lovely tradition which this year, after a lull, began again with a work by Sudario Brando for this year’s vintage.

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