Prima Materia Sagrantino - just drank a recent purchase to be ready for BD14. Beautiful perfume upon opening. Drank it over the course of the evening. Let the decanter do its thing. The taste took 3-4 hours to deliver on the heady intensity promised by the scent, so plan ahead. It develops from tasting kind of thin straight out of the bottle, into an intense experience with beautiful fruit and power supported by smoother tannins. A real find from Lake County, just north of Napa County.
It’s always a pleasure to find a Sagrantino in California. Denier Handel has one (very nice and reminds me a lot of those found in Umbria), Da Vero (overpriced and made with imported vines of questionable provenance), Muscardini (club-only and limited quantity), a couple of others — and now Prima Materia! Very exciting, and a Berserker! Prima Materia’s label design is also beautiful. Normally I wouldn’t comment on something irrelevant to what’s in the bottle, but it’s really neat for fans of antiquities. And, you start digging into the producer, you’ll find quite interesting blog posts and wealth of knowledge.