Our wine feature
for July comes to us from the island of Sardinia. Sardinia (which
belongs to Italy) is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean
Sea and lies roughly 190 miles west of Italy's mainland. In recent
years, researchers including Dan Buettner and National Geographic
have identified Sardinia as a “Blue Zone." Blue zone areas are places where people reach the age of 100 at rates 10 times greater
than in the United States.
Within the Blue
Zones, researchers have identified nine specific characteristics
that they believe contribute to a long healthy life. One of the
characteristics in Sardinians is drinking a glass or two of their
island made Cannonau wine daily. The Cannonau grape (known in other
parts of the world as Grenache) contains two to three times the level
of artery scrubbing flavonoids as other wines and may be a
contributing factor to their long life.
Our feature wine,
Costera, is from the Argiolas estate owned by Franco and Giuseppe
Argiolas. The vineyard is located in the Trexenta hills just north
of the capital of Cagliari. The wine spends 8 – 10 months in
French Barriques and 5 months in cement vats. Costera shows the typicality of the Cannonau (grenache) grape with flavors of very ripe
strawberries, black cherries, herbs, and spices. The warmth and
intense sunlight of southern Sardinia can be seen and felt in the
wine with unexpectedly deep color and fullness on the palate. French
oak barriques provide rounded tannins, medium body and flavors of
vanilla.
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