It’s been a few years since I’ve bought Contadino — I seem to recall it being priced around $35, or so — some of these posts are making it sound like the price has increased (significantly?) from that — what does it go for these days?
What I see on CT are still below that, but the most recent is '17 (unreliable entry w/only 2 bottles, so more confidently '16). The Magma and Munjabel are pricey. The Munjabel I’ve had were “big” as well as microbially diverse and “challenging”. My impression was “trying too hard” to be something other than true to the grapes. I think I recall he stopped making Contadino, but not sure. Someone brought a Susucaro Rosso as a blinder a couple years ago, and it was good. That’s in the $30-35 range.
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Used to love these wines until I experienced nothing but extreme disappointment bottle after bottle. The last several bottles of Magma I’ve had (different vintages, multiple bottles) have been nail polish funk beasts. Crossed this off the list and is firmly in the no fly zone.
There is a pretty big variety among the Munjebel. Do you know which you have had?
Everybody, it’s Munjebel, not Munjabel.
And I wonder whether the Cornelissen wines suffer badly during the transport to the states, because I’ve had a good bunch of Cornelissen wines from the early 00’s to the recent vintages and for the past 10 years or so most of the wines have been surprisingly clean and nothing like the funk bombs they used to be. No problems with heavy brett, excessive VA or mousiness.
Regarding Contadino, to my understanding it became Susucaru Rosso after Cornelissen started to decrease the amount of white varieties (and later on introduced Susucaru Rosato as a sort of replacement for what Contadino used to be). Contadino used to be a blend of white and red grape varieties that were from lesser vineyards and leftovers from making the higher-tier wines, bottled unfiltered, unsulfited and with a large amount of lees to protect from oxidation. Susucarus are still the entry-level cuvées and they, too, are made from a blend of white and red varieties. Rosato has a larger portion of white varieties and has a relatively brief maceration period, whereas Rosso is mainly just red varieties and macerated for an extended period of time. Both are now bottled without that extra dose of lees and instead lightly filtered (as are most, if not all, Cornelissen wines nowadays).
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