There are unknown places that carry extraordinary stories. And you discover them only if you have strong enough reasons to go there and look.
Irpinia is one of those places. Virgil — not just anyone: the poet Dante considered his master — wrote that somewhere in the province of Avellino, there was one of the gates to the Underworld. A place of some importance, then.
And what is a good reason to end up there? Well. Wine, for example.
Fifteen years ago, working as a journalist and following certain industry fairs — Vinitaly, one of the great moments of Italian food and wine culture — I discovered what Irpinia was capable of. And I fell in love with a wine: Taurasi. The Barolo of the South. I became friends with a young man who had decided to make it seriously. His name is Mimmo Nardone.
Ten years later I founded Sood. And I started with him.
The vineyard before the bottle
Nardone Nardone is a family winery. It stands in Montemarano, on the border with Sannio. An inland area of Campania that most Dutch people wouldn’t be able to find on a map — and that many Italians confuse with other regions by the sound of the name.
Irpinia is mountain. It’s a territory where summers are hot but nights stay cool, where the soils are deep and clayey, where the wind is constant. It is not the Tuscany of tourist brochures. It’s a place where things are done seriously, in silence, for generations.
The grape that grows here is called Aglianico. An ancient variety — some say the Greeks brought it to southern Italy three thousand years ago. It’s a difficult grape, late-ripening, with a thick skin and a natural acidity that makes it suited for ageing like few other Italian wines.
From the finest Aglianico of Irpinia comes Taurasi. A DOCG — the controlled and guaranteed designation of origin, the highest that exists in Italy. By law, Taurasi must age for at least three years before leaving the cellar. The riserva requires five.
This means that when you buy a bottle of Taurasi, you are buying years of patience.
The wines
Irpinia Aglianico DOC
The entry wine of the cellar. Which, in the case of Nardone, already means something out of the ordinary.
The Aglianico DOC ages less than the Taurasi — a few months in wood, then in bottle. It’s a younger, more direct wine. Red and black fruits, natural spice, tannin present but not aggressive. It’s the wine you put on the table without thinking too much — with a ragù, with grilled meat, with an aged cheese.
And yet there’s something that sets it apart from industrial Aglianico. A sense of place. The technical term is terroir — the combination of soil, climate and human hand that cannot be reproduced elsewhere.
Taurasi DOCG 2015
This is the wine that makes people stop talking.
2015 was an exceptional vintage in Irpinia. A balanced season, a healthy harvest, natural concentration in the grape. The Taurasi of that year has had time to develop a complexity that young wines don’t yet have.
On the nose: tobacco, leather, cherry in spirit, something mineral that is difficult to describe without sounding pretentious. On the palate: the tannin is silky — years of bottle ageing have done their work. The finish is long. Very long.
It is not a wine for every evening. It’s a wine for the evenings when you want to sit still and listen.
A note on the whites — because they matter
It would be a mistake to think of Nardone and see only the reds.
Irpinia produces two white DOCGs that in Italy are considered among the great ones: Greco di Tufo and Falanghina. Indigenous varieties, ancient — here too, probably brought by the Greeks. Two grapes completely different in character, united by the same volcanic territory.
Greco di Tufo is mineral, almost saline. It has a lively acidity and a structure that holds ageing well. It is not a white to drink immediately — it gains with time in bottle. In the Netherlands it is almost unknown. In Italy it is considered one of the most serious whites of the South.
Falanghina is more accessible. Floral, fruity, with an immediate freshness. It’s the aperitivo white, the fish white, the white for a light evening. But in Nardone’s version it has a depth that the industrial versions do not.
We will write a dedicated article on each. For now it’s worth knowing that if you know Nardone only through the Taurasi, you have seen half the picture.
How to pair them
Aglianico DOC wants red meats, pasta with ragù, well-seasoned legumes. In the Netherlands it works well with braised beef, with lamb, with a semi-aged cheese.
Taurasi DOCG is more demanding. It wants important meat — game, beef, wild boar. Or it is the protagonist itself, with little or no food alongside. A wine you drink alone, in company, without distractionì
And both, like all important reds, want to be opened at least an hour before serving. Better two.
Why it’s worth it
The Taurasi of Nardone is not an inexpensive wine. It has no marketing behind it, no widespread distribution, it’s not on the supermarket shelf.
It has three mandatory years in the cellar. It has a family that said no to anyone who didn’t understand what they were buying. It has a denomination that in Italy is considered among the great ones — and that in the Netherlands almost nobody knows yet.
This is exactly why we went to Montemarano. And this is exactly why Sood exists.
Nardone wines are available at soodmarket.com — Irpinia Aglianico DOC and Taurasi DOCG 2015.