Description
Cantina Gungui, Cannonau di Sardegna “Berteru”
Today’s a painite-rare opportunity. While deep-pocketed wine collectors scramble after Grenache cult labels like Rayas, Sine Qua Non, and L’Ermita, we’re over here lazing with Gungui, saving thousands while doing so, and having a more enjoyable experience. If you’re not one to succumb to marquee luxury brands, allow me to introduce one of the most mesmerizing, plush, labor-of-love reds in existence.
This incredibly rare bottling from tiny Cantina Gungui is “max-setting” Grenache grown in Sardinia’s remote, mountainous, and otherworldly Barbagia region. This unforgiving terroir is home to vines that climb well beyond 2,000 feet and produce agonizingly low yields that Luca Gungui treats like precious gold. As a one-man show, he crafts just four wines, entirely by hand, with a total production that could be annihilated by his quaint home village in a single evening. This is an obscure wine, no doubt, but mark my words: If it was ever produced on a large scale (impossible) or if it was brown-bagged by top cult-label-loving critics, it’d instantly become an unobtainable grail. Let’s hope that never happens so we can keep basking in the glory of inimitable, micro-produced Sardinian opulence. Gungui will blow you away, that’s a personal guarantee!
Cannonau, a.k.a. Grenache has been grown on Sardinia for so long most natives consider it an “indigenous” variety, and the Barbagia is considered the ultimate terroir for the variety. Granitic soils, organic farming, low yields, and high elevations all conspired to make today’s 2021 one of the most profound Cannonau experiences on earth—an experience greatly heightened by where it is made, how it is made, and who made it. “Berteru” means “sincere” in local Sardinian dialect, and when someone is as sincere about what they’re doing as Luca Gungui is, it shows. This is the ultimate in hand-farmed, hand-made wine and it’ll stand toe-to-toe with Grenache greats from Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Barossa, Priorat…you name it.
Luca Gungui trained as a lawyer and worked for a time in the Sardinian capital city, Cagliari, but he was eventually pulled back to his home village of Mamoiada and took control of about three hectares of vineyards, some of them very old, bush-trained parcels that had belonged to his grandfather. He has purposely kept his holdings small so that he can continue to work the vineyards himself, by hand. He farms organically, aided in this effort by a hot, dry, windy climate that reduces disease pressure on the vines. Soils are rocky decomposed granite and the vineyards climb to some serious altitudes, some approaching a half-mile in elevation. This allows for wide diurnal temperature swings that are critical to preserving acidity in grapes that have no trouble whatsoever getting ripe. Gungui makes three wines: a rosato and three single-vineyard reds, all of them from 100% Grenache. That’s it.
As we’ve seen in other Mediterranean growing zones (like Châteauneuf-du-Pape, another Grenache stronghold), we’re living in an era where 15% alcohol wines are commonplace. What’s fascinating is how some wines can “carry” this elevated alcohol with relative ease, while others come off syrupy and “hot.” Grenache is a hot-climate variety with a wide range of expressions but for all of us at SommSelect, the Platonic ideal is the way it behaves in wines like Châteauneuf’s Rayas: more red-fruited and lifted with perfumed aromas that almost remind you of Pinot Noir in juicier form. Gungui has found the tightrope balance we see in the best Châteauneufs; the combination of richness and freshness is amazing and superbly rare.
Today’s 2021 “Berteru” was sourced from a young vineyard called “Sas de Melas,” hovering about 2,000 feet above sea level. The harvest here wasn’t completed until early October (quite late for this part of the world), allowing time not just for maximum sugar ripeness but also phenolic ripeness. It’s a deeply hedonistic styling, albeit one with shocking levels of finesse that’ll stun you into a stupor. This is only possible due to a combination of high-altitude vines, super-low yields, and a brief, clean aging regimen in stainless steel. In the glass, aromas of kirsch, raspberry liqueur, wild strawberry, white pepper, plum pie, roasted garrigue, and hot stone fire out as if shot from a cannon. The nose is an intoxicating luxury but it’s the exotic, pure, full-bodied palate that truly wows: There is no heat, no mid-palate fatigue, no saturation. This is lifted and buoyant throughout, a feat that must be tasted to be believed. Enjoy this rarity over the next five years. Cheers!
