2010 Bastianich La Mozza Aragone Maremma Toscana IGT 750 ml

Babbo, Felidia, Del Posto, Becco, Eataly, and the Hottest Tuscan Red in NYC

Earning not only 92+ points from Antonio Galloni but also feature placements at Babbo, Felidia, Del Posto, Eataly, and Becco, the 2010 Bastianich La Mozza Aragone is one of the most talked-about Tuscan reds of the year in Manhattan sommelier circles.

Typically, at this point in our missives, we might talk about the superb growing season that gave birth to this luscious black-fruit blend. We might focus on the last weeks before harvest, and how the call to pick was delayed, allowing each variety to reach optimal phenolic maturity. We might devote a few paragraphs to sun-drenched Maremma, the region that’s attracted so much critical attention in recent years.

But today is different. Why? Because the passion and the resolve that went into the making of the 2010 La Mozza didn’t begin in the winter of 2009-2010. It began in the late 1940s, at the tip of the Istria Peninsula on the Adriatic Sea, when Erminia Matticchio gave birth to a baby girl. That baby girl has become famous the world over as Lidia Bastianich, America’s First Lady of Italian Cuisine.

When Lidia was a child, her parents allowed her to travel by bus on weekends to stay with her mother’s relatives. Little Lidia became her grandmother’s favored helper. Together, they milked the goats, made ricotta, and baked bread twice per week. “I still remember picking potatoes, still warm from the sun, as if they had life in them. When, as a child, you develop a visceral connection to food and the earth, it remains with you for your entire life.”

But all wasn’t fun and games for those living in Communist Yugoslavia in the 1950s. Lidia was prohibited from speaking her first language, Italian, and went to mass with the understanding that practicing religion was forbidden.

In February 1956, Erminia took Lidia and her brother north to visit an aunt in Trieste, the closest city in Italy, after convincing the authorities that the aunt was quite ill. Lidia’s father, Vittorio, was forced to stay behind to ensure that his wife and children would return. Three weeks later, Vittorio paid a man to take him to the Italian border, which he then crossed under sniper fire and arrived in Trieste in the dark of night.

It was a bittersweet transition for Lidia. While the family’s new life in Italy would lead her to places and culinary heights unimaginable at the time, Lidia would have to wait 10 years to see her grandmother again.

In 1958, the family’s displaced persons application was granted and they were allowed to emigrate to the United States. Lidia was 12. She married Felice “Felix” Bastianich (born Bastianić), also a Croatian immigrant, in 1966. Five years later, the couple opened their first restaurant in Queens. Italian cuisine in America would never be the same.

In 2000, the Bastianich family’s search for a vineyard property in Tuscany culminated in the purchase of a 90-acre spread in the southwest corner of Maremma, just eight miles from the sea and 45 minutes southwest of Montalcino. Mediterranean varieties flourish in this area, which is drier than the fog-riddled hills of central Tuscany, and the absence of morning mist allows grapes to ripen more quickly. In a 2010 vintage that may never be forgotten in Tuscany, with the help of their friend and consulting winemaker Maurizio Castelli, the Bastianich family turned out a deep, dark, sumptuous blend that’s taken N.Y.C. by storm.

Deep, dark, and bold aromatically, the 2010 La Mozza Aragone Toscana IGT features a powerful combination of crushed black and red fruits, Tuscan herbs, and licorice. This powerhouse is massively concentrated on the attack in a New World way, chewy in texture, packed with blackberry and black raspberry preserves. Burly, mineral, and complex, finishing with sturdy tannin backbone and persistence. Drink now for its primary-fruit flash or still better, lay this magnificent 2010 down until the mid-2020s. It could surely use the rest.

$92/bottle at Felidia. Only $29.99 today — as if discounts even matter when speaking of the gastronomic genius of Lidia Bastianich.