2021 Cantina Spada, El Cencio, Bianco Verona IGT, Italy.
The Spada El Cencio Bianco Verona IGT is an exotic and golden dry white wine with a beautiful sense of expansion and textural presence in the glass, it shows off racy gooseberry intensity to start and then adds expressive apricot, preserved lemons and muskmelon fruits, along with peach sorbet, vanilla, bitter almonds and a touch of waxy honeycomb. To achieve this, 50% of the grapes were partially dried, which adds some tropical notes and richness, without much if any residual sugar, keeping plenty of zest and zing, with this El Cencio having some mineral charm, mouth watering saline and wet stone notes. The winery notes, the grapes are all carefully sorted and hand picked, and this bottling saw a vinification in toasty French oak barrels, which is quite rare in the Veneto. The Spada vineyards are set in the heart of the Valpolicella Classico zone, in the area around San Pietro in Cariano in Verona, and I get the sense they are extremely focused on quality and traditional methods, along with a flourish of innovative winemaking, as seen here, with the use of red grapes in the white blend.
Cantina Spada, most known for their deep Amarone and Valpolicella reds, does an interesting selection of white wines with this El Cencio Bianco Verona IGT being a signature bottling, as this 2020 vintage shows. The vines for this wines are located in the Valpolicella Classico zone, but whites don’t get the DOC, and this wine uniquely was made from 50% Corvinone, a red varietal, juiced clear and 25% Garganega, the noble grape found in Soave, and the ancient Malvasia, again 25%, with the white grapes seeing a bit, as noted, of Amarone style drying before being pressed. The final blend is racked to small French barriques for fermentation and aging, with a percentage of new wood, for six months and then rested in bottle for another six months before release. Renzo Spada, the founder of the Spada winery, is nicknamed “El Cencio” hence the name here, and the winery continues to pay tribute to him in the most delicious way possible. I had not had the Spada wines before, I am not sure they are easily found in the States, but I was excited to try this one and look forward to exploring their full range of offerings in the future, especially the limited series of Amarone della Valpolicella DOCG bottlings, as well as the Valpolicella Classico Superiore DOC reds and the Ripasso!
($30 Est.) 93 Points, grapelive