2020 Galatrona

I was absolutely blown away by the wines I tasted from Petrolo this year. Proprietor Luca Sanjust and his team have done a remarkable job with the wines. "Overall, 2020 was marked by some pretty intense heat spikes and was not as even as 2019," Sanjust notes. "On the other hand, it's pretty hard to complain about vintages these days. I remember years in the 1980s my grandfather was not able to bottle at all because the fruit never ripened," he adds, a reminder of how much things have changed in the present era, some for the better and some for the worse. In tasting, the flagship Merlot Galatrona is off the charts. It's the best Galatrona I can remember tasting. There's plenty of richness but also greater freshness than in the past. I was also quite impressed with wines made in amphora, as they show greater precision and fewer of the funky notes that penalized some wines in some previous years.