COSTA NERA

Costa Nera — Black Slope — is the Pinot Noir of the Masari estate: a wine named for the dark side of the Agno Valley hill where the estate's Pinot Noir vines grow in conditions of particular quality. Pinot Noir is among the most demanding varieties in international viticulture — a grape of exquisite delicacy that expresses its best character in cool climates on well-drained soils, and that punishes any imprecision in viticulture or vinification with immediate loss of the finesse that makes it great.

In the Agno Valley, sheltered to the north by the Piccole Dolomiti and enjoying the specific combination of volcanic and limestone soils that produces the estate's distinctive mineral wines, Pinot Noir finds conditions well suited to its most delicate requirements. The cool temperatures, the well-draining terraced soils, and the specific mineral richness of the volcanic-limestone environment give the Agno Valley's Pinot Noir a character of freshness and elegance that the grape's most renowned Alpine and Burgundian expressions share.

Costa Nera presents as bright ruby red — the luminous clarity that signals a wine made with the care for transparency and freshness that Pinot Noir demands. Elegant, with notes of berries among which cassis stands out — the estate's precise aromatic description, capturing the combination of red and black fruit that defines Pinot Noir's fruit profile in its most complete expression. Soft and juicy in the mouth: the textural qualities that distinguish well-made Pinot Noir from all other red varieties, achieved here through the specific combination of Agno Valley cool climate conditions and careful vinification.

Costa Nera is the wine through which Masari demonstrates that the Agno Valley's distinctive terroir can express greatness across red varieties as well as white.

Available through UniqueWines.