Wine of the Week! 09/09/2024

Cantina del Morellino di Scansano
Cala Civetta
Trebbiano di Toscana

Normally $17.99 / Now on Sale for $14.96
90% Trebbiano, 10% Vermentino (Toscana IGP)

Saragiolo is a small town that sits just north of Scansano in the Maremma area of Tuscany.

Forget your usual thoughts of Tuscany, Maremma is its coastal southern tip, looking out on the Ligurian Sea at the island of Elba and — after that — Corsica. It was the home of the Romans and, before them, the Etruscans, and, later, the Aldobrandeschis in the Middle Ages and then the Medicis in the Rennaisance and then the Lorenas in the 18th Century. Green, wooded hills — with vineyards perched on them among natural thermal baths — descend down into flatlands of black rock and marshes before you run into long Mediterranean beaches.

It is also a land of wine. Maremma, after all, saw the genesis of the Super Tuscan red. However, this week’s White Wine of the Week explores a different Maremma specialty.

Cantina del Morellino di Scansano is a collective of winemakers who banded together in 1972. After a decade of growth, they found themselves at a crossroads — focus on producing more wine (and grow bigger) or focus on increasing their wine’s quality. The latter won out, and though that direction led to some defections, here we are with Cantina del Morellino, a family run co-op dedicated to sustainable and organic farming and to faithfully representing the wines of Maremma.

Though Trebbiano is widely planted throughout Italy and is behind many pleasant but immediately forgettable whites, Cantina del Morellino takes special care with this workhorse grape. They make the Cala Civetta out of sustainably dry farmed, organic Trebbiano, grown on low-yield vines, some of which date back to the 90s. This vintage sees a bit of Vermentino thrown into the mix to deliver a white with a light melon-like fruit that is delicately sprinkled with acid for freshness. We don’t usually make this recommendation with European whites, but go ahead and chill this sucker down to get the full “refreshing breeze off of the Ligurian Sea” experience from it.