Carpineto's baby Super Tuscan is a blend of roughly 70% Sangiovese and 30% Cabernet-Sauvignon. Both grapes are vinified in different vats, then blended together in oak casks to complete the alcoholic and malolactic fermentation.
Since I have two bottle of this wine in my cellar, I commited the crime of using one bottle as a cooking wine. Of course it was to prepare a tuscan dish. After three hours in the oven, the wine has given an extraorinary taste to a stracotto. Unfortunately, I do not have any recipe to share with you, as I combined two recipes and did not follow measurements and improvised a little.
I was afraid the wine would be oxydized due to the cork coming out of the neck by one milimeter. The wine still looked very young as I poured it in the glass.
Colour: dark red/purple
Bouquet: On the first nose, oak and vanilla, strawberries and blackberry, slowly opening on candied cherries on the second nose. Little bit of roasting (coffee, dried herbs). Retro-nasal olfaction of cherries.
Flavor:Good balance, but lack of tannins.
This wine should be drunk now. The delicate structure might not support the bouquet and balance. Very enjoyable on its own.
The stracotto was accompanied by a San Michele a Torri Chianti Fiorentini 2005. A review of this wine will folllow.
