2018 Passobianco
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Tasting Notes
This wine comes from one of Italy’s pioneering winemakers, Andrea Franchetti, who founded the Super Tuscan estate Tenuta di Trinoro, before becoming instrumental in Mount Etna’s wine renaissance with his Passopisciaro estate. His Chardonnay comes from one of Etna’s prime sites and is stunning in 2018. For fans of laser-like Chardonnay, this wine ticks all the boxes. The nose has an unmistakable mineral smokiness typical of Etna, yet it doesn’t overwhelm the delicate Amalfi citrus and white flower aromas. The wine has a lovely silky texture, but no flabbiness – a surge of acidity brings vertical depth, structure and brilliant poise to the wine. This Chardonnay has everything – a mineral smokiness, salinity and silky, layered, textural creaminess, while remaining very pure. It has really blossomed in bottle and outclassed a line-up of Chardonnays tasted alongside, from Burgundy and beyond. It remains outstanding value for the quality on show here.
Critic Scores
Monica Larner, Wine Advocate
More reviews and scores
A pure expression of Chardonnay, the Passopisciaro Vini Franchetti 2018 Passobianco is a generous wine with lots of honey, dried apricot and apple baked in butter. Ultimately, this expression from the volcanic soils of Etna stands apart from other great renditions of this versatile grape thanks to those dusty or ashy mineral notes as well as those slightly exotic hints of saffron and ground cumin. It is aged in oak casks and cement for 10 months. The wine's appearance is golden and bright, and the palate carries generous fruit weight and concentrated flavors. Grapes come from high-density vineyards at an impressive 850 to 1,000 meters in elevation from the terraces of Contrada Guardiola and Monte Dolce. Some 40,000 bottles were made. Very few people know more about making fine Italian wine than Andrea Franchetti, who farms in Tuscany but was courageously among the first to believe in and invest in the potential of Etna. Just recently, I awarded Andrea's Tenuta di Trinoro 2019 Tenuta di Trinoto a perfect 100-point score. That wine is made far off the beaten track in Sarteano in southern Tuscany. Now completing his 19th harvest on Etna, Franchetti and his team have a deep understanding of the volcanic soils and the sometimes dramatic weather conditions at these high altitudes. This set of new releases includes a new wine. It is a Chardonnay-based white from the Contrada PC (Passochianche) with vines between 870 and 950 meters in elevation planted in steep, labor-intensive terraces. This inaugural release shows well in the rainy 2018 vintage, as Chardonnay is often harvested early. But the 2018 reds presented here all taste thinner and shorter compared to recent past vintages. This is a common trait across the 2018 Etna reds that experienced humidity, rain and thick fog banks. If you were to taste Franchetti's single-vineyard wines in order of increasing vineyard elevation, from lowest to highest parcel in meters above sea level, they would be Contrada C (550 meters), Contrada P (650 meters), Contrada G (800 meters), Contrada S (850 meters) and Contrada R (1,000 meters).
About the producer
Tenuta di Passopisciaro is the Etna estate owned by Andrea Franchetti, one of Italy’s pioneering winemakers who founded the Super Tuscan estate Tenuta di Trinoro, before becoming instrumental in Mount Etna’s wine renaissance with his Passopisciaro estate.