Agricola Romanelli

​The last winery we visited in Italy turned out to be one of the nicest:  Romanelli Winery.  Located in the Umbrian countryside just outside the town of Montefalco, it is a peaceful, rustic facility with a great view, good wines, and excellent olive oil.  Unfortunately, we visited them after our visit to Montioni and a heavy lunch in Montefalco, at the end of a very long journey, so we did not really enjoy the visit as much as we should have.

​While the facility is quite nice, there is an animal there that is a bit on the strange side.  Not uncommon to have farm animals at wineries – they are, after all, farms – but this one appears to be some sort of pig.  I managed to get it to stand still for a picture:

​We tasted four wines, all quite nice.  The first was a white wine made from the Grechetto grape, their Fonte Perna (Coli Martani Grechetto DOC).  People need to pay more attention to wines made from Grechetto grapes.  This was our second version and just a good wine.
Umbria borders Tuscany, so it should not be surprising that they grow Sangiovese grapes in the Montefalco region.  The second wine we tasted was, indeed, a Sangiovese varietal with a small blending of unidentified grapes.  This wine, Capo de Casa (Montefalco DOC Rosso), was quite nice.
Of course, we came to Montefalco for the Sagrantino, and Romanelli did not disappoint.  Their Montefalco Sagrantino DOCG wine, Terra Cupa, was excellent.  It was made more in the Barolo style in that the wine was left in contact with the skins and seeds for around four weeks, i.e., long after fermentation was complete, to extract every bit of tannin and color from the grapes.  It was then aged in oak barrels of different sizes to homogenize the wine and remove nasty volatiles.

​Remembering that up until the 1950’s Sagrantino grapes were used only to make sweet wines, it should not come as a surprise that they also produce a quality passito sweet wine.  Their version of Montefalco Sagrantino DOCG Passito is called Cocre.  Grapes are picked ripe then dried on racks for around two months.  The fermentation is carried out like the dry version for around four weeks before the wine is aged in stainless steel and bottles for three years.  The result is a very nice dessert wine.
Romanelli, like Montioni, is also a producer of olive oil, served on thin toasted Italian bread.  Quite delightful!  I should add that Romanelli is also a bargain, as tasting ran us 10 euro per.  Now if we had just not been so worn out when we reached them….