MARICINÈ

Maricinè is the Aglianico red of the Etel estate in its most immediately accessible expression — a wine that carries the full personality of this great southern Italian grape on the high, ventilated slopes of Alto Cilento, aged for nine months in stainless steel to preserve the fruit's freshness and the terroir's mineral character without the mediating influence of wood.

The name carries the warmth and specificity of a local Cilento term — one of those place-linked names that signal immediately a wine of genuine territorial origin rather than generic production. The Aglianico vines from which it is produced were planted in 2011 on the same rocky, clayey, northwest-facing slopes as the Valmezzana rosé, but the Maricinè grapes are harvested later — in the last ten days of September and the first ten days of October — allowing the variety's characteristic phenolic ripeness to develop more fully.

The vinification involves maceration with the skins for approximately twenty days at a controlled temperature of 24 to 28 degrees Celsius — an extended maceration that extracts the tannins, colour, and aromatic compounds characteristic of Aglianico at its most structured. The resulting wine is aged nine months in stainless steel, followed by three months in bottle before release.

The Aglianico grape in the Cilento produces a wine of a slightly different register from its more celebrated expressions in Irpinia: the altitude and northwest orientation of the Etel estate's slopes give a freshness and mineral precision that tempers the variety's natural warmth and weight. Maricinè is a wine of genuine substance — the firm tannins and high acidity characteristic of Aglianico are present and formative — but they are balanced by the freshness that the Cilento terroir reliably delivers.

Available through UniqueWines. Serve at 16 to 18 degrees Celsius. Long longevity.