2010 Ministre Imperial

Abbatucci’s 2010 Cuvee Collection Rouge: Ministre Imperial Jacques-Pierre-Charles Abbatucci – which receives minimal elevage in older demi-muids – is utterly unlike any other red of my experience (and thus far it’s the sole red wine in his series from ancient cepages that I’ve tasted). Geeks among us please note that this mind-bending cuvee comprises – in diminishing proportions of 22-8% each – Sciacarellu, Niellucciu, Carcajou-Neru, Montaneccia, Morescono, Morescola, and (hey, I recognize this one) Aleatico. An eerily lovely evocation of herbal and effusively-flowering scrub akin to that of the corresponding white, General de la Revolution soars from the glass accompanied by sweetly ripe, high-toned evocations of fresh and distilled cherry and strawberry. Here too – but even more strikingly given that the wine’s red – there is a remarkable alliance of textural creaminess with refreshment and levity, harboring only the faintest and then most mouthwateringly tea-like impression of tannin. Mint, tarragon, tonka nut, and pronounced piquant evocations of cherry pit and almond, accent and set into relief a luscious, polished, yet palate-stimulating torrent of fresh strawberry, cherry, and blood orange whose sense of sweetness would ordinarily only be approached in a wine of over-ripe flavors. But here the impression is entirely fresh-fruited, juicy, and buoyant, leading to a kaleidoscopically interactive, saliva-inducingly saline, uncannily energetic, and virtually endless finish. I lack any experience to speculate on the maturation of this ca. 2,000-bottle cuvee (first rendered in 2007). Methinks, though, that many of us will count ourselves lucky to be able to witness that evolution. (To verify vintage, consult the first two digits that appear in tiny print on the back label immediately after the capital “L.”) What to make of a biodynamic wine grower whose unorthodox methodology includes having the choral polyphony for which his homeland is famous broadcast to his vines (and the sheep that graze them) as well to his young wines? Now that Jean-Charles Abbatucci has begun to acquire some of the fame he deserves, I’m told the music – rather than emanating from loudspeakers mounted to his pick-up – is performed live. Recent projects at this 50-acre (20-hectare) estate just outside Corsica’s capital Ajaccio on the island’s west coast include two “Imperial” bottlings sourced from Sciacarellu vines that have been left, un-pruned, to revisit their riparian roots as he imagines them having done for centuries. Another profoundly important project whose results – just two of which I have yet tasted – I can only characterize as awesome, involves vines from ancient Corsican cultivars that Abbatucci’s father collected as cuttings and established on a rocky granitic site in the early 1960s. This vineyard was never intended as a museum, but rather as a living link – in some instances possibly the very last – to vine varieties and a way of life that persisted just short of a millennium from the Pisan and Genoese conquests (with vines in tow) to the mid-20th century. In that spirit, Abbatucci, his horses and singers cultivate it, resulting in a Cuvee Collection with wines labeled to honor several of his heroic Napoleonic military and diplomatic ancestors. Collectively, Abbatucci’s wines will stretch your palate, your imagination, and even your notions about what wine is or can be. (And you’ll have fun drinking them.) Importer: Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant, Berkeley, CA; tel. (510) 524-1524