Elena Fucci
Aglianico del Vulture Titolo: 2000-2014

BY IAN D’AGATA | DECEMBER 6, 2016&nbsp;&nbsp;



















There
are moments in life when you immediately realize you have stumbled upon
something or someone special. And so it was for me when I first met Salvatore
Fucci back in the spring of 2002. I was introduced to him by Vito Paternoster
(of the Paternoster estate) and found the then middle-aged physical education
teacher likeable, humble, very sensible in his approach to winemaking, and,
most importantly, very proud and knowledgeable about the Vulture volcano and its
great variety, Aglianico. Fucci was born into a family that had a long
tradition of winemaking but had never estate-bottled before. I was meeting him
that day to taste the first vintage bottled under his own label. One taste of
his 2000 Aglianico del Vulture made an instant believer out of me. It was already
clear back then that this fledgling winery was able to produce wines that were cleaner,
deeper and more refined than almost any other wine being made on the Vulture at
that time.

<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1480989507947-Elena+Fucci+with+her+parents+and+husband+Andrea++in+the+cellar+copy.JPG">Elena Fucci with her parents and
husband Andrea in the cellar

The Estate and its only Wine



















The
Elena Fucci estate is relatively young by Italian standards, but its wines have
met noteworthy critical and commercial success over the years, so much so that
the estate now ranks with Italy’s wine nobility. Prior to Salvatore’s decision
to set out on his own and estate-bottle his wine, the family had always sold
their grapes to Paternoster, one of the Vulture’s most famous and storied
estates. In fact, the Fucci and Paternoster families have always been close:
Elena’s grandfather Generoso was Paternoster’s chef de culture for the better part of his professional life, and
the two estates are literally a stone’s throw from each other. You can gaze at
the Elena Fucci vines from the Paternoster estate’s beautiful balcony. The
winery is currently run by Salvatore’s daughter Elena, who studied winemaking
at Pisa, and her husband Andrea, who oversees sales, with Salvatore pitching in
as needed. The estate makes only one wine, about 25,000 bottles annually, of
its Aglianico del Vulture Titolo, which is one of only a dozen or so southern Italian
reds actively pursued by international wine collectors.

<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1480989451839-The+Titolo+vineyard+copy.JPG">The Titolo vineyard 

The Superbly Situated Titolo Vineyard

Aglianico
del Vulture is potentially one of the world’s—not just Italy’s—greatest wines
and no single bottling demonstrates its quality better than the Titolo. It
helps that the Titolo vineyard is probably the best vineyard of the Vulture denominazione, a true Grand Cru (if such
classification existed in Italy!) uniquely blessed with a fresh microclimate. Fucci
owns 6.7 hectares (16.5 acres) of 55-to-65-year-old Aglianico vines (a few are
well over 70) in the Titolo vineyard located in the subzone Solagna del Titolo
from which the vineyard’s name is derived. Only six hectares are currently
planted, but Elena Fucci told me she plans to plant more vines shortly.As
the vineyard is situated close to the volcano’s summit at approximately 600
meters (roughly 2,000 feet) above sea level, an almost continuous cooling
breeze blows from the top of the hill down the slope through the vines. This
air movement contributes greatly to the relatively cool environment of the
Titolo vineyard. The soil here is also slightly different than that found in other
parts of the denomination. While it’s essentially volcanic, there are pockets
of loam and clay sandwiched between the layers of lava that were formed during
eruptions that occurred over eons. Thanks to the soil’s capacity for good water
retention when needed, the vines rarely suffer from water stress.

<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1480989387549-The+new+entrance+at+the+Elena+Fucci+estate+copy.JPG">The new entrance at the Elena Fucci
estate

Winemaking Technique and the Style of
the Wine



















Winemaking
is fairly traditional but with modernist touches. For example, fermentation
temperatures never exceed 24 degrees Celsius (75 degrees Fahrenheit), and this
may partly explain the strongly perfumed quality of Fucci’s wines. The wines
are aged for about 12 months in small oak barrels, depending on the vintage,
but the oak regimen has changed in recent years. The last vintage to feature
100% new oak barriques was 2008, and
the estate is now making use of larger oak casks as aging vessels. 

<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1480989318361-Da+vertical%21+copy.JPG">&nbsp;

I
have followed the Elena Fucci wines from the very beginning, and I find them to
be powerful yet remarkably refined, with deep aromas and flavors of red cherry,
minerals and botanical herbs obvious in most vintages. The oak is always
marvelously integrated. While the wines undoubtedly reflect each vintage’s unique
conditions, they also always display a suave mouthfeel that is Titolo’s true signature.
The rustic notes that plague many of the Vulture’s other Aglianico bottlings
are notably absent. Titolo’s element of refinement may be relatively subtle in
some vintages (for example, in 2004), or much more apparent in others (such as
2002), but it is always present and easy to spot. My recent vertical tasting
also demonstrated, one more time, the incredible consistency that Fucci is able
to achieve vintage after vintage. Even in difficult years such as the rainy
2002 growing season or the hot drought year of 2003 (both of which were less
extreme on the Vulture than in the rest of Italy), the wines are a major
success. Wine lovers owe it to themselves to hunt down Fucci’s knockout
Aglianico del Vulture Titolo, as it ranks with the best that Italy has to
offer.The
majority of the wines in this tasting were sourced directly from the estate’s
cellar or from my own; the 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003, which I purchased at the
time of their release, were unavailable at the winery and so I pulled the
bottles from my own collection. I tasted the wines in September of 2016 during one
of my annual forays to Basilicata’s wine country.

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