Ep 558: The Grape Mini Series -- Sagrantino

Wine for Normal People

Alcohol, Lifestyle, Arts, Education, Food, Wine, Dining, Grapes

4.6 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this grape miniseries, I cover one of the greatest yet little known red grapes of Italy: Sagrantino.

Photo: Sagrantino. Source: Arnaldo Caprai

This grape is likely native to Umbria in Central Italy, although there is speculation that it is from more far-flung parts of the globe. Nevertheless, most of the world’s plantings are in Montefalco and the surrounding areas and it is firmly rooted (literally and figuratively) there.

With outrageously high polyphenols, Sagrantino is dark in color, high in tannin, and needs lots of heat to ripen. Its brambly berry notes contrast with savory herb, smoke, tobacco, and baking spice aromas and flavors to give this wine a sweet yet savory profile that you’d be hard pressed to find in any other bottle.

In the show I review the history of the grape, its behavior in the vineyard, its flavors and aromas, and the various regions in which it is grown, including Australia, warmer parts of the US, Argentina, and Brazil.

Although it requires age to live up to its true potential, Sagrantino is a grape you should try – it is truly one of the great reds of the world and as winemakers learn more about making dry wine from it, it’s only getting better every year.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Wine for Normal People, the podcast for people who like wine, but not the snobbery that goes with it.
0:15.7	I'm your host Elizabeth Schneider, author of the Wine for Normal People book and Certified Wine Dork.
0:21.7	This show is brought to you by my exclusive sponsor, Wine Access, the place to discover your next favorite bottle.
0:28.2	They've got highly allocated wines and incredible values, plus free shipping on orders of 150 bucks or more.
0:34.5	You cannot go wrong with Wine Access.
0:36.2	Join my Wine Club. Get six awesome bottles for just
0:39.3	$150 four times a year. That includes shipping. Go to wineaccess.com slash normal and listen to the
0:46.4	middle of the show for more details. I am doing a grape mini series because I know that this is
0:53.2	something that everyone really loves, although I
0:56.6	think this grape is something that a lot of people have never heard of, but after you listen to this,
1:03.4	you will understand why it's really important that you know about it, and hopefully it will
1:08.0	motivate you to try this wine. There's not a whole lot of it out there, but it is widely available because Sagrantino
1:15.4	makes one of the top wines in Italy.
1:18.2	It's just not that big and it's not that well known.
1:20.9	I know that the classification show was pretty heavy.
1:24.9	Hopefully that cleared up some of the confusion, though, around all of the
1:30.1	classification systems. And the show on Sanam Leone, hopefully it was interesting. I find that stuff
1:35.4	super fascinating because it's a big appellation and it's old and there's a lot of nuance to it. And it explains
1:40.7	why sometimes you get a bottle and it's like, meh, and sometimes it's great.
1:44.5	Hopefully it's something that you enjoyed, but the great mini series is always a hit.
1:49.6	So I am returning to that this week with Sagrantino.
1:54.7	Before we get started, I always have to do patron shoutouts, p-a-t-r-e-n dot com slash wine for normal people i give shout-outs to people
	...

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