Arnaldo Caprai: championing top-quality Sagrantino

Arnaldo Caprai is a winery that defies the inconspicuous nature of Umbria.

A landlocked region in Central Italy, Umbria is the country’s fourth-smallest wine-producing region by volume and lacks any big-name denominations equivalent to Tuscany’s Chianti Classico and Brunello di Montalcino, or Veneto’s Amarone, or Piedmont’s Barolo and Barbaresco.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for eight top wines from Arnaldo Caprai

The majority of Umbria’s wine production is focused on the Orvieto DOC, which spans 1,148 of the region’s 12,400 hectares under vine and produces light, summery whites made from Trebbiano and Grechetto which are pleasant enough but hardly profound.

Sangiovese is also widely planted in this rolling landscape and is the key varietal in both the Montefalco Rosso DOC and Torgiano Rosso Riserva, one of Umbria’s two DOCGs.

Arnaldo Caprai produces over 20 different wines in total, utilising local varieties Sagrantino and Grechetto, Tuscan varieties including Sangiovese and Canaiolo, and international varieties including Merlot, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc.

The estate’s flagship wine, ‘25 Anni’ Sagrantino Montefalco is arguably the finest expression of the Sagrantino grape, a standard bearer not only for the variety but also the region.

It was first released in 1993 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the estate and is a selection of the estate’s best plots matured in barriques for 24 months and bottle for a further six months.

The quality of ’25 Anni’ puts it on a level pegging with some of Italy’s top reds. It’s the result of two key projects implemented by Marco Caprai in the 1990s which enabled the estate to identify the best clones of Sagrantino as well as the most favourable viticultural techniques. It also benefits – as do the other wines in the range – from a continued focus on sustainability and a hawk-eyed attention to detail: the estate makes decisions based on huge amounts of data it has gathered from over two decades of vintages.

Sagrantino

Sagrantino is a variety indigenous to Umbria, infamous for its tannic, almost rugged character and propensity for giving winemakers a difficult time. It’s nevertheless capable of producing excellent wines in the right hands – in recognition of this, a new DOCG for 100% Sagrantino was created in 1992.

It is a tough, small-berried grape with large pips and thick skin which gives plentiful tannins (often described as Italy’s most tannic variety) giving wines a firm, muscular structure on the palate. It is deeply coloured and produces full-bodied wines with perfumed scents of violets and herbal aromas with attractive raspberry, black cherry and blackberry flavours on the palate. Some wines also feature earthy elements giving a combination of sweet and savoury aspects.

It is a late-ripening variety that needs to reach perfect phenolic maturity before harvesting and barrel ageing to soften its strong character. Appellation laws require a minimum of 30 months ageing before release, six of which must be in oak barrels. In good years, it has the capability to age up to and beyond 25 years.

Known as Sagrantino di Montefalco until 2009, Montefalco Sagrantino is the second of the region’s two DOCGs. It covers 357ha of rolling hillsides south of Perugia, based around the town of Montefalco, spanning much of the same vineyard area as the Montefalco DOC. In total there are 994 hectares of vines planted to Sagrantino in Umbria – accounting for almost all of Italy’s plantings of the variety.

Arnaldo Caprai purchased the five-hectare Val di Maggio estate in 1971 and soon began acquiring more land. He passed the estate to his son Marco in 1988 so that he could continue to focus on his successful textile business. Marco continued his father’s policy of acquiring more land for vines, and today the estate totals around 150 hectares.

Although Arnaldo had shown willingness to bring a modern edge to a largely traditional winemaking region, Marco took this to the next level and quickly established the winery as an innovator in the vineyard and the cellar, as well as a leader in sustainability. ‘The winery’s philosophy is mainly to focus on quality and sustainability, using new techniques and technological innovation to push ourselves to face new challenges every day,’ said Marco.

Pioneers in Umbria

The Sagrantino Clonal Selection project (1990-1993) aimed to propagate ‘mother vines’ found mainly in disused vineyards and private plots across the region, to re-establish the genetic diversity of Sagrantino and ultimately plant the best combination of clones.

In 1994 the estate planted some of these clones in two experimental vineyards to compare the traditional palmette training method planted at 1,700 vines per hectare with other training methods at densities up to 8,000 vines per hectare on a mixture of rootstocks. The estate discovered that Sagrantino produces the best grapes when grown at high-to-very high density using spur cordon or Guyot training.

A new winery was completed in 1997, with vinification and storage areas capable of holding over 22,000hL, an ageing cellar stuffed with 15 Slavonian oak barrels and around 2,200 French oak barriques, and a ‘refinement department’ with capacity for around 105,000 bottles. As well as increased capacity, it gave Marco and his team more control over the winemaking process.

In 2008 Arnaldo Caprai launched the New Green Revolution project with eight other members of the Consorzio di Tutela dei Vini di Montefalco. It was the first national protocol on sustainability in the wine sector and has resulted in a number of innovations, including fog guns and smart anti-frost fans in the vineyard.

The Rolland effect

Since 2015 Marco has collaborated with consultant oenologist Michel Rolland, who works with some of the world’s most prestigious wineries and is known for creating wines with fruit-forward, accessible profiles. If there’s anyone who can help to tame Sagrantino and bring it to a broader audience, it is probably him.

Two of the most recent additions to the Arnaldo Caprai range are Belcompare Merlot and Malcompare Pinot Noir. ‘These wines are produced by the Belcompare Società Agricola srl, a spin-off of Arnaldo Caprai,’ explained Marco. ‘The aim of this sister company is to put the spotlight on two international varieties that have long been present in the company. The arrival of Michel Rolland changed their role in the cellar – he encouraged us to try to produce a great Merlot and an equally great Pinot Noir that could express the excellence of these grapes within the Montefalco territory.’

And with just two vintages released, the Belcompare Merlot can already count itself among the top group of Italian Merlots. It’s certainly not a blockbuster in the traditional sense, instead combining some restrained elegance with Merlot, and Rolland’s signature plushness, for a complex, refined expression with nuances of herb and chocolate.

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