Our tasting impressions
With 2020, Ersa has stepped out of Difesa's spotlight. Now, it is its own wine with its own harvest...and boy does it show. It's still designed for drinking on release, but there is more depth of flavor than past iterations. It's simultaneously more delicious and interesting. Given how popular Ersa has been, it may be hard to imagine that it can be better. Believe it!
About this wine
Ersa 2020 is a blend of 30% Aglianico, 30% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Barbera and 10% other native, unclassified varieties. The soil is calcareous with green and red clay and some sandstone. The elevation is about 250 meters.
A manual harvest occurred on October 6th. This is the first vintage, where this wine is comprised of its own harvested grapes, rather than merely a first-pass through the vineyard of grapes designated for Difesa.
Fermentation is in small vats. Maceration is on the skins for 20 days with gentle punch-downs. The wine is moved into French oak barrels (10% new and 90% one-year old) to age for 24 months. Then they rest in bottle for at least a year, so they are ready to enjoy upon release.
About the grape
Aglianico is one of Italy's three most prestigious grape varieties - along with Nebbiolo and Sangiovese. Grown mostly in southern Italy, it is at its best from Campania and Basilicata. It thrives in a warm and dry climate. Cabernet Sauvignon, famous the world over, is hearty fruit that flowers and ripens late. It is highly adaptive to a wide variety of climates and soils. Its vines are capable of prodigious production, which must be restricted in order to produce the grape's best quality. Barbera is a dark-skinned grape from vigorously growing, easy to manage vines. It is high in acidity, low in tannins and light-bodied.
Francesca's thoughts on the vintage
A warm year despite a winter that was very frigid. Autumn was mild, wet with heavy rains. March started with strong sea winds and rainy but with mild temperatures.
At the end of March, a front from the Balkans brought about a marked drop in temperatures and even some freezing at night. The month of April, and a good part of May, were mild with sunny days and average temperatures alternating with rainy days and cooler air. The first ten days of June saw abundant rain. After mid-June the climate recovered bringing sunny and warm days. A heat that was interrupted by a storm in mid-July which lowered temperatures and refreshed the vines. August, on the other hand, was very hot with temperatures above seasonal average and caused the technical ripening of the grapes to come earlier. Fortunately, another storm at the end of August, prevented the plants from becoming stressed and continued good phenological maturation.
Francesca Fiasco is young, passionate and driven. Since 2015, she has relentlessly worked the land and cellar her grandparents started many decades ago in the beautiful Cilento National Park (a preserve that prohibits any industrial activity). Everything she knows about farming and wine she learned from her Nonno. More than 90 years old, Luigi still tends the vines.
From the 6.5 hectare farm (comprised of various small vineyards), Francesca produces less than 20,000 bottles per year from a mixture of traditional local grapes, some typical of other regions of Italy and one conspicuous interloper from France - Cabernet Sauvignon. Production of her 4 wines is unconventional - it's Nonno's way - but the results are remarkable. The expectation from a farm like this, in an area like this, is that the wines will be rustic, simple and honest. Instead, we find sophistication and complexity without compromising a clear expression of the place they come from.
To say that this is manual labor is an understatement. It starts with the grapes for each wine being harvested separately and concludes with Francesca writing notes on each case of wine leaving her cellar. Her devotion and determination are undeniable. The wines from Paestum may not be well-known or highly regarded but don't tell her that - nor does anyone who has tasted her wines much care. Wow, what a discovery! Only the great story of this family and Francesca's project can outshine her wines.
