Wines of the Week: Sea Smoke & Conti Zecca

Sea Smoke Estate Vineyard 2019 Pinot Noir Ten Sta. Rita Hills California                           93

Good full ruby. Forward aromas of red but mostly blue/black fruit (blackberry, blackcurrant, dark cherry), complicated by a hint of cedar, lavender, oaky sweet spices and herbs on the nose and in the mouth. Seamless and juicy at the same time, there’s lovely purity of fruit and sneaky concentration here on the long, very focused and brightly energetic aftertaste. This lovely wine strikes me as very precise, but at the same time less luscious and showy, even less sexy if you will, than the 2017, for example. The wine’s name, “ten”, is a reference to the ten different Pinot Noir clones that are planted on low-vigour rootstocks in the vineyard. They combine to give the estate’s most masculine, brooding wine when young, but I think the 2019 is one of the more accessible Ten wines made. However, there is still plenty of substance and depth to this, so decanting this ahead will prove helpful. This wine is made from a single vineyard monopole organically and biodynamically farmed. One of the cult producers of the Central Coast, the winery became a reality in 1999, when owner Bob Davids was able to create the Sea Smoke Estate Vineyard in the western end of Santa Barbara’s Santa Rita Hills AVA. The shallow clay soils and the area’s unique mesoclimate are believed to play a large role in the area’s great potential for the production of world-class Pinot Noir wines. In fact, the winery’s name, Sea Smoke, is derived from the “sea smoke”, a cool maritime fog layer that is channelled into the area by the Santa Ynez River Canyon, and that acts to slow ripening, thereby extending the growing season and grapes hang time. Drinking window: 2024-2030.

Conti Zecca 2019 Negroamaro Donna Marzia Salento Italy                                       90

Conti Zecca is a well-known and respected name in Southern Italian wine, well-known for its bevy of fairly-priced, oftentimes downright inexpensive, wines that convey a sense of the grape variety they are made with and of Puglia. The Donna Marzia line especially is a wine lovers delight, because both the Primitivo and the Negroamaro are delicious (though very different one from the other). I could have very easily picked to write about the Primitivo Donna Marzia, which is just fine, but as wine lovers all over the world may be more acquainted with that grape given it’s the same as California’s Zinfandel and Croatia’s Tribidrag, I thought it was a good chance to shine the spotlight on the Negroamaro instead. Bright ruby-red but not inky despite its name referencing to the colour “black” (while the name has no relationship to anything bitter or amaro, the Italian word for ‘bitter’, so if you see that “explanation” somewhere that will tell you all you need to know about the level of knowledge of he/she spewing such nonsense). Negroamaro is a quality grape that was long used to make bulk wine from high yields that had very little aroma and flavour but that did offer colour and alcohol degree by which to go strengthen the anemic reds made in Northern Italy and France in centuries past.

The Conti Zecca 2019 Negroamaro Donna Marzia Salento Italy is a bright, full red-ruby colour. The aromas and flavours will recall dark plums, licorice, violet and a hint of shoe polish that adds complexity and interest and is fairly typical of Negroamaro wines. Vibrant and juicy in the mouth, it is a medium-bodied red the red and dark fruit and herbal flavours persist nicely on the long finish.  Though not the most concentrated or complex wine you will ever taste (but given the price this is more than acceptable), there is a lot to like to this easy-going wine that has soft tannins and enough acidity to match with most meat dishes, but also less complicated fare such as pizza, pasta (noodles) and sandwiches too. This is a blend of 85% Negroamaro and 15% other not-better specified grapes; macerated ten days on the skins, fermented in stainless steel tanks and matured in epoxy resin-lined cement vats. There’s lots of wine for the money here, and it seems to be a very successful wine in 2019; given it price, this really qualifies as a steal, but the fact is a number of wines from this estate are worthy of your attention. Besides the aforementioned Primitivo Donna Marzia, make sure to try the Salice Salentino Riserva Cantalupi too. Drinking window: now-2024.