2007 Arnaldo Caprai Spinning Beauty

There's a lot to say here, so hold onto your horses. The 2007 Montefalco Sagrantino Spinning Beauty plays homage to the cashmere and textile background that brought success and prestige to the Caprai family (and continues to do so). This pure expression of Sagrantino is made in extremely limited quantity. Some 900 bottles were produced in this vintage. To me, the wine is almost Baroque in character, with so many over-the-top aromatic embellishments it's almost hard to know where to direct your attention. This fullness and overt generosity comes into stark contrast with the famously spartan, humble and inward-looking personality of Umbria. This wine definitely stands apart among its peers (of which there are few). Candid cherry, bitter chocolate, cinnamon, black currant, toasted vanilla, barbecue smoke and Christmas spice rise to the top. The wine is almost chewy in terms of density, and there's an obvious point of sweetness among all that densely extracted fruit.