Robe — Dense garnet-black, slow to loosen its grip on the light
tar
black cherry
incense
iron
dried rose
Palate
Massive tannin and mountain acidity — a wine that demands its decade
Ageing
10–30 years
Serving
16–18 °C, decanted well ahead
Taurasi is the south's Barolo: Aglianico from the cool Irpinian hills behind Vesuvius, where altitude stretches the harvest into November and the volcanic soils set tar, black cherry, incense and iron over tannins that demand a decade. In 1993 it became the south's first DOCG, formal recognition of what the hills had long known.
The proof had come earlier. Mastroberardino's 1968 Taurasi, resurfacing in tastings decades later, demonstrated that southern Italy could age with anyone — a single wine that changed the argument. The vineyards carry their own deep history: on these volcanic soils vines resisted phylloxera, and some pre-war parcels persisted ungrafted, old Aglianico on its own roots above the Calore valley.