2020 Suore Cistercensi "Coenobium" Lazio IGT

These suore (sisters, nuns) are maintaining the ways of Italy's Medieval past, when the monasteries became the main winemaking hubs, often credited with the survival of Italy’s wine making traditions. Certainly their collaboration with the Bea family in Umbria helped some, as now the Cistercensi Order’s wines sell like hot cakes here in the US, their culty followers eagerly awaiting their release.

The Coenobium is a skin contact white made from Trebbiano (Toscano), Malvasia, and Verdicchio harvested together and co-fermented without added yeasts or temperature stabilization. A touch of tannin, apple skin and spice,  aromas of fennel fronds, chamomile tea, almonds, and tangerine that lead into a full but delicately rendered palate. While the wines appeal to the natty wine drinking crowd, they offer depth and complexity. Aged on its fine lees in steel and fiberglass tanks, it is bottled just before the next harvest without fining or filtering. Vitorchiano’s volcanic soils, remnants from the nearby extinct Bolsena volcano, come through with a somber smoke-iron interplay.

This selection was held back a couple years, as I like to experiment with aging whites of Italy. I suppose we would not consider 2020 a highly aged wine, but the tannin has rounded out and the smokey elements a little more pronounced. An orange wine drinker’s paradise to indulge and curiously drink on its own, but have fun pairing it up with an array of foods, like ham and gruyere grilled cheese.