Matunei, “Macaia” Rosso For Cheap

Matunei, “Macaia” Rosso

Because I’m old, I’m instinctively skeptical when I encounter a wine as cool and on-trend as today’s offering. It has all the “natural wine” bona fides, is sealed with a crown cap, and its label was designed by a tattoo artist—all of which should set off alarm bells for a crusty institutionalist like myself. But “Macaia,” from an upstart Piedmontese producer called Matunei, is an incontrovertibly delicious and genuinely serious wine. Further, if rigorous organic farming and additive-free winemaking is considered trendy, well, that’s a trend I will happily chase.

We should all be happy that the “cool kids” in wine today are the organic, biodynamic, low-sulfur/no-sulfur people: Theirs are noble ambitions to have, and producers like Carla and Alberto Brignolo prove that the results in the bottle can not only be clean and sound but loaded with personality and complexity. With Macaia, a 50-50 blend of Nebbiolo and Barbera, they acknowledge that there are some who might ask: “Who would ‘waste’ Nebbiolo for a blend?” Let me answer for them: Lots of great producers blend Nebbiolo and Barbera. It’s as seamless a combination as Cabernet and Merlot, in fact. Taste this vivid, flavor-packed 2018—a steal of a price that probably won’t hold as Matunei blows up in popularity—and you’ll see nothing has been wasted. If this is the future of Italian wine, and I think it is, I am 100% sold!

After tasting Macaia recently, I got a little nostalgic for my restaurant days. In the late-’90s and early 2000s, Nebbiolo-driven blends were all the rage: Most Barolo and Barbaresco producers were making them, sometimes even with “international” varieties, and their appeal was obvious, from a sommelier’s perspective: They delivered all the aromatic intrigue Nebbiolo is known for but were otherwise much easier to drink young, and were much less expensive, than young Barolo/Barbaresco. Barbera’s generous fruit and barely-there tannins make it a perfect complement to the earthy, tannic Nebbiolo—the steady, swinging bassist to Nebbiolo’s virtuoso lead guitarist.

The Matunei farm is in the Monferrato region of Piedmont, a little north and east of the Barolo/Barbaresco corridor. Barbera has more pride of place here, although it shares space in the Matunei vineyards with old-vine Nebbiolo, Grignolino, Freisa, and other traditional Piedmontese varieties. The vineyards, meanwhile, share space with olive groves, vegetable and fruit tree plantings, animals, and woodlands they manage and harvest for firewood. In addition to farming organically, Carla and Alberto host educational workshops to promote sustainable farming practices. “Matunei,” a word in Piedmontese dialect meaning “little boy,” was the nickname the local old-timers gave Alberto before he and Carla officially launched their project in 2015.

Their story isn’t especially unusual—we’ve got plenty of young back-to-the-landers here in the US, too—and the Macaia 2018, while hardly “conventional” in its farming or styling, is hardly some alien being, either. Lovers of old-school Piedmontese blends like “Bricco Manzoni” (from Rocche dei Manzoni), “La Villa” (Elio Altare), or “Pin” (La Spinetta) will find plenty to love about Macaia: It is a 50-50 blend of Nebbiolo and Barbera, aged 24 months in steel and a few months in used oak barriques, then bottled unfined, unfiltered, and with the most minuscule dose of sulfur possible.

What’s most appealing about Macaia, like its predecessors mentioned above, is that it delivers lots of depth without excess weight. This isn’t the ultra-ripe Barbera “fattening up” the lean, rustic Nebbiolo—no, this is the perfect infusion of dark cherry fruit into a structured, savory wine. The Barbera lends the wine a silkiness it wouldn’t otherwise have, without masking the assertive Nebbiolo aromatic profile (which is, ultimately, what we all came for). In the glass, it displays a deep garnet-red core moving to a pink rim, with vivid aromas of red and black cherry, currants, rose petals, graphite, red tobacco, and underbrush. It is just shy of full-bodied, both juicy and earthy at the same time, and measurably better after some time open: Give it at least 30 minutes in a decanter (feel free to decant vigorously) and serve it in Burgundy stems at 60 degrees. It’s a true-blue “table wine” that will sing with all kinds of gamey/earthy dishes, which of course Piedmont is famous for. This really is a new-paradigm red that should not be missed. Get after it!