You may or may not love them, but you cannot disregard Roberto Di Meo’s Irpinian wines. They constitute a real “oenological case,” as they also come out decades after the harvest, accomplices being very long refinements in steel.
Remember “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button“? the 2008 film directed by David Fincher, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, nominated for thirteen Academy Awards, winning those for best set design, best makeup e best special effects. È la storia di un bambino nato con le sembianze di una persona anziana che con la crescita ringiovanirà.
A life story in reverse, unlikely, but one that somehow finds analogy and correlation with the wines of the Di Meo winery in Salza Irpinia. Conosco Roberto Di Meo dal 1998, quando eravamo giovani, lui da poco laureato in enologia e io agli inizi della mia appassionata carriera nel mondo dell’enogastronomia.
Witness Roberto’s avant-garde approach, which distinguished himself as a pioneer of aged white wines, just as he was among the first in Campania to employ wood for the maturation of Fiano, at the time an alternative and experimental vision, as had happened with Antinori’s Cervaro della Sala in 1985 and a few other wines in Italy.
Fiano di Avellino Colle dei Cerri Riserva 2008
For the label Colle dei Cerri, the 2008 vintage is now on sale. Streamlined by wood compared to the 2000 it enjoys astonishing youth and finesse. Recall the other current cru on the market: the 2013 Fiano di Avellino Alessandra, the 2004 Fiano di Avellino Erminia Di Meo, and the 2008 Greco di Tufo Vittorio.
Roberto Di Meo establishes himself master in the aging of white wines, unrivaled, comparing itself with other masterpieces of world winemaking, always emerging victorious. His wines maintain an unhoped-for quality over time, as Erminia’s twenty years and Vittorio’s eighteen years prove. A unique case, finding more and more approval from world critics and which we at Doctorwine have rewarded from the very beginning.
January release of 1993 Fiano
With Daniele Cernilli, we had tasted a preview of the Fiano 1993 (white table wine), produced in about 8,000 units and to be released in January 2025. A wine that is a tangible symbol of excellence and extraordinary longevity. Despite the 31 years passed since the grape harvest, shows no signs of oxidation or ripening, maintaining a greenish straw yellow color reminiscent of its freshly harvested state. An extraordinary parabola of ripeness.
I confess to feeling envy at how this wine bears the years, where time has only benefited the overall harmony, preserving freshness and verticality, while to me it reserved clearly visible changes. Aside from the joke, the case is truly unique.
How does Roberto Di Meo do it?
He applies different techniques, starting in the vineyard. In the winery works in reduction, removing the coarse lees after the first racking, and for the production of reserves, the wines remain on the fine lees for several years, varying according to the vintage and the result he wants to achieve, stirring these at first more frequently and then more and more sporadically, continuing to monitor oxygen in the tank and saturating with nitrogen the headspace of the tanks when necessary.
In short, no special effects. The reduction practiced by Roberto, embodies the Benjamin Button of wines., with the substantial distinction that, unlike the character from the imagination of writer and screenwriter Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Roberto and Generoso Di Meo’s wines exist.
As director Daniele Cernilli said, “such a wine is not even produced in Burgundy.”
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