CERVIGNARA

Cervignara is the most ambitious white wine in the Cantine Lulli range — the Bellone grape taken beyond its most immediate and charming expression into a register of complexity, structure, and aromatic richness that twelve months of ageing in acacia barrels reliably produces. It is a wine of genuine sophistication: exuberant, sensual, and structured in the estate's own terms, carrying the ancient Roman identity of the Bellone grape into a context of contemporary ambition.

Acacia wood is a relatively uncommon choice in Italian wine ageing — less dominant than French or Slovenian oak, lighter in its tannin contribution, and possessed of a particular aromatic affinity for white wines of aromatic intensity. For the Bellone grape, whose characteristic bouquet of orange blossom, jasmine, and floral depth is one of its most valued qualities, acacia ageing preserves and amplifies the aromatic register rather than imposing the vanilla and spice of heavier woods.

The wine is described as semi-aromatic — a quality that the combination of the Bellone grape's inherent aromatic intensity and the acacia wood's particular contribution creates with notable effect. Vivacious and feminine in character, it reveals fruity notes of pear, apple, and white mulberry set in turmeric and sage — an aromatic profile of unusual breadth and specificity that combines fruit, herbal, and spice dimensions into something genuinely individual.

The estate's description of Cervignara as fascinating and purely sensual is not marketing language but an accurate characterisation of a wine that engages both the nose and the palate with an intimacy and a generosity that the more restrained Bellone does not always offer. It is a wine for the most considered moments of the table and for those who appreciate the particular quality that extended oak ageing brings to a well-suited indigenous white variety.

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