2021 Cantina Benvenuto "Mare" Calabria IGT

60% Malvasia, 40% Zibibbo di Pizzo from the foothills of the Serre mountains in Calabria.

The wine undergoes temperature controlled spontaneous fermentation in stainless steel, not fined or filtered. This wine is ultra fresh, kind of opposite of what you'd expect from Calabria. the Zibibbo offers just a touch of aromatics, while the Malvasia remains rather neutral. Don't be fooled by the grape varieties, this wine is dry! try with seafood dishes cooked with citrus, sarde salate, hard and not too stinky cheeses.

Giovanni Benvenuto grows the vines in Francavilla Angitola, in the commune of Vibo Valentia on the Tyrrhenian side of Calabria. He is wholly committed to propagating and exploring the Zibibbo di Pizzo variety- perhaps a biotype to the Sicilian Zibibbo?- apparently growing in Calabria for hundreds of years! The vineyards are at 350m in elevation. The soils over here are older than those of Ciro’- they are from the Oligo Miocene period (that still doesn’t give us too much answer as to the age, because the range if 53million ya to 5.5 million ya) and sit closer to the Serre portion of the Calabrian Apennines. Here, there is a high concentration of metamorphic rock - denoting or relating to rock that has undergone transformation by heat, pressure, or other natural agencies- schist and serpentine are examples of metamorphic rock.