I finally got around to trying a red wine! I decided to try this wine for a couple reasons. First, I thought I should drink and blog about a red wine since I’d done all white wines, but mostly because refosco is an indigenous varietal to northern Italy (so it has history there). And being a unique varietal, I get another notch on my belt for the Century Club.

Refosco is apparently a group of distinct red varieties. This wine is specifically Refosco dal Peduncolo Rosso (translates to ‘the red stalk’), which has a long history in the Friuli region. According to the Oxford Companion, it was used to produce the favorite wine of Livia, Augustus Ceasar’s second wife. Well there you go.

This wine, from Ermacora, was dark purple with bright pink hues around the edges (rather than brick colored, as this wine was young). It had a fruity and fragrant nose, smelling of cherries and blackberries with a bit of black pepper.

It was a pretty easy drinking red, the tannins were very mild, though at first I thought it was a bit hot down the throat. That sensation went away fairly quickly. It also tasted of berries and black pepper, and I thought a bit of tobacco. The finish was very earthy. I’d describe it almost of tasting like dirt, but not in a bad way. K&L’s description described it a bit more appealingly as “gravel”. They said coffee, not tobacco, but otherwise it seems I was right on. Being that I don’t smoke or drink coffee I’m not particularly familiar with their tastes!

I really enjoyed this wine, and if I didn’t have a seemingly endless list of new wines to try and wine in my collection to drink, I’d certainly go out and get more. Since is was a medium-bodied red with low tannins, its a good summer red and would probably go great with dinner on the grill.

The Score: ★ ★ ★½