Donnafugata's Mille e Una Notte: 1995-2011

BY
IAN D’AGATA | DECEMBER 22, 2016



















Sicily’s
red wines, even the good ones, carry a monkey on their shoulders. Namely, most
people think of them as broad, fleshy behemoths sporting superripe if not
downright overripe aromas and flavors and unwieldy alcohol levels. But this is
clearly not the case with the region’s best wines made from its two mostly
widely known native red grapes, Nerello Mascalese and Nero d’Avola. This Vinous
exclusive, a report on the first complete vertical tasting to date of Donnafugata’s
Mille e Una Notte, demonstrates how refined and harmonious truly great Nero
d’Avola wines can be.

<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1482343239315-barrel+cellar+at+Donnafugata+copy.JPG">
The&nbsp;barrel cellar at Donnafugata The Birth of a Modern Southern Italian Icon

Donnafugata
launched their Mille e Una Notte red wine in 1995, in collaboration with
Giacomo Tachis, perhaps Italy’s most famous modern winemaker. Tachis was responsible
for many other famous Italian red wines, including Tignanello, Sassicaia,
d’Alceo, Sammarco, Turriga and Pelago). In the early ‘90s, Tachis started
creating new wines for Donnafugata, either made with international grapes alone
or from blends of international and native grapes. These included a Nero
d’Avola-Cabernet Sauvignon blend called Tancredi (first made in 1990) and the
oak-aged Chardonnay named Chiarandà del Merlo (1992 was the first vintage; the blend
has changed over the years, and the name of the wine was later shortened simply
to Chiarandà).It
was perhaps inevitable that, sooner or later, a top monovariety wine from the
island’s most abundant and iconic red grape, Nero d’Avola, would be born. In
1995, while tasting the best lots of Nero d’Avola in the Donnafugata cellar and
being blown away by their quality, Tachis suggested that the time was right to
launch just such a wine. Antonio Rallo, whose family owns Donnafugata, still remembers
vividly how, upon tasting the first Mille e Una Notte ever made, he immediately
rushed home to tell his mother Gabriella that “today we have made the best wine
ever at Donnafugata!” Clearly, she was of the same opinion, and she decided the
wine’s name should be Mille e Una Notte (or The Thousand and One Nights) because,
in her view, the wine was so good that each bottle told a new, different and magical
story, much like in the Arabian tales of the One Thousand and One Nights (in
which the beautiful and crafty Sheherazade repeatedly prolongs her execution by
keeping the Persian King Shahryar up each
night by telling one marvelous tale after another).

<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1482343279682-antonio+and+Jose%CC%81+Rallo+copy.JPG">Antonio and José RalloOriginally,
Mille e Una Notte was a blend of Nero d’Avola with a little Perricone, another
Sicilian native red grape that is currently back in fashion. In reality, at the
time this blend was unavoidable, because the estate’s oldest Nero d’Avola vines
were co-planted with Perricone vines, as was commonly done in Sicily. Clearly,
co-planting has always been typical of the Italian countryside, because this
enabled farmers to hedge their bets in weather-challenged years when one hardier
grape variety might help make up for poor quality or short crops in the others.
Of course, it didn’t hurt that Perricone is an ideal partner to Nero D’Avola, and
for many reasons, the most important of which is that Nero d’Avola is especially
rich in tartaric acid, and so it benefits greatly from the addition of a little
Perricone, which is much higher in pH and therefore has a welcome softening
effect on the blend. Also, Perricone’s intense fruit flavors nicely complement
those of the more famous, more floral Nero d’Avola.With
the beginning of the 21st century, Mille e Una Notte became essentially a monovariety
Nero d’Avola, thanks to new plantings of Nero d’Avola having reached the age at
which their fruit could finally be used in what had become the estate’s top
wine. In 2009, a little Syrah was added, and since 2010 a bit of Petit Verdot
has also found its way into the blend. It is to the Rallo family’s credit that,
over the years, these international varieties have never been allowed to
camouflage the Nero d’Avola’s aroma and flavor profile. Thus Mille e Una Notte
has remained a distinctive wine that speaks of its land’s history, soil and
climate. With Mille e Una Notte, Nero d’Avola’s ability to produce fresh, spicy
wines of real refinement comes through clearly, in contrast to the many overripe
wines from the island.

























Mille
e Una Notte is made from vineyards planted in the Contessa Entellina DOC,
situated in central Sicily at 200 to 600 meters (656-1968 feet) above sea
level. The soil is mainly calcareous clay rich in mineral elements such as potassium,
manganese and iron. Although different consulting winemakers have been involved
here over the years (Tachis until 1999, Carlo Ferrini in the 2000s), the winemaking
hasn’t changed much, with total time on the skins lasting roughly 14 days and
fermentation temperatures reaching 28 to 30 degrees Celcius (82-86 Farenheit).
The wine is aged in mainly new French oak barriques
for roughly 14 months, depending on the vintage, and is then held back for
another 36 months in bottle prior to being released.<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1482343348337-da+bottles+3+copy.JPG"> 

Keys To Understanding Nero
d’Avola and Mille e Una Notte

Mille
e Una Notte has gone through four distinct periods in its two-decade history.
The first phase, from 1995 to 1997, yielded three outstanding wines that are
varietally accurate but perhaps less polished than those made in subsequent
decades. The second phase, from 1998 to 2002, was marked by drought-year
conditions. Wines from 2003 through 2008 are nearly 100% Nero d’Avola and were
made in slightly more favorable weather conditions, and the grape variety was
better able to show off its great potential. The current phase of Mille e Una
Notte’s existence began with the 2009 vintage, when international varieties
were added to the blend.Mille
e Una Notte is a wine I know extremely well, having tasted almost every vintage
numerous times over the course of the last 20 years, and having followed the
development of the wines very closely. That said, I came away from my
comprehensive tasting genuinely blown away by the quality of many of the wines.
In fact, I have rarely tasted so many outstanding Nero d’Avola wines at the
same time. The fact that many vintages of Mille e Una Notte display remarkable
elegance and ageworthiness will only add to its reputation. Although it must be
noted that those vintages that were unimpressive at the outset have remained
so, it is also clear that the 1995 and 2008 bottlings are knockout wines that
rival the best that Italy has produced in the last 20 years. And the young 2011
looks to be a classic in the making.

<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1482343366820-the+glasses+copy.JPG"> 

A Note About the Vintages



















The
tasting at the winery in late September of this year, which included every
vintage of Mille e Una Notte yet made, was, simply put, one of the most
memorable vertical tastings of a southern Italian wine I have ever had the
pleasure to attend. (In fact, it was such a unique event that siblings Antonio
and José Rallo, who now run the winery, both quietly attended, along with their
marketing and technical directors). I was riveted by the precision and perfume
of wine after wine. And even the vintages from drought or very wet vintages acquitted
themselves admirably. All of the wines came directly from Donnafugata’s
cellars.

<a target="_blank" href="http://vinous.com/wines?sort%5Bdirection%5D=asc&amp;sort%5Bname%5D=id&amp;wine_filter%5Barticle_id%5D=1550&amp;wine_filter%5Bproducer_id%5D=1120&amp;producer=true">See All the Wines from Youngest
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