Robe — Dark garnet with a sunburnt, brick-warm rim
black cherry
dried herbs
leather
maquis scrub
warm stone
Palate
Firm, sinewy and sea-freshened, Sangiovese's grip in a southern accent
Ageing
4–15 years
Serving
15–17 °C
Patrimonio became Corsica's first appellation in 1968, a chalk amphitheatre opening onto the gulf of Saint-Florent at the base of Cap Corse. Its pride is Niellucciu — and its secret is a genetic surprise: the island's flagship red grape is Sangiovese, almost certainly carried across during the centuries of Genoese rule, when Corsica belonged to the same world as Tuscany.
Exile changed it. On Patrimonio's limestone, under sea wind, the grape turns maquis-scented — dried herbs, black cherry, leather — closer to a sea-blown Chianti than to anything on the French mainland. The appellation's growers, many farming organically in the island's oldest vineyard land, treat the Genoese inheritance as simply, defiantly Corsican.