2023 Sergio Mottura - Grechetto di Civitella d'Agliano La Torre a Civitella (750ml)

In 1993, at a floating restaurant on a Berlin canal during a dinner celebrating Robert Mondavi's eightieth birthday, a bottle of Sergio Mottura's Grechetto "Poggio della Costa" 1992 happened to end up on the table of Louis Fabrice Latour, of Burgundy's Maison Louis Latour. Impressed, Latour asked why Mottura hadn't tried aging the wine in wood, then generously offered his own selected white-wine barriques along with the know-how to use them, a gift Mottura has since called worth a generation of experience. The resulting wine originally carried Latour's name, until Château Latour of Bordeaux asked the estate to stop using it in 2020, prompting a rename to "La Torre a Civitella" beginning with the 2021 vintage. Mottura's Grechetto expertise, built over decades in Civitella d'Agliano, remains central to the estate's identity today.

This wine draws on some of the estate's oldest Grechetto vineyards, including parcels planted between 1970 and 1980 with the Poggio della Costa clone, grown on clay- and skeletal-rich volcanic soil shaped by the Vulsini mountains and Lake Bolsena. The grapes are hand harvested and selected in the first half of September, then gently pressed and fermented in French oak barriques, resting afterward on fine lees for about nine months to build texture and complexity.

The wine shows an intense golden color, with an elegant, complex nose of white fruit, citrus, warm butter, and hazelnut. The palate is full-bodied, soft, and pleasantly fresh, with a long finish of fruit and vanilla. It pairs beautifully with roast duck, wild boar pappardelle, or other rich, savory dishes.