2017 Mastroberardino Radici Reserva Taurasi 750 ml

Taurasi is often called “the Barolo of the South”—a red made in the mountains inland and uphill from Naples, in one of the coolest, highest corners of the Italian south, where harvest can run into November. Greek settlers planted vines in these hills long before the Roman Republic, and the grape they left behind, Aglianico, found its greatest home here.

For much of the 20th century it nearly vanished. Growers tore out the thick-skinned, late-ripening variety for easier crops, and Taurasi drifted toward obscurity.

Mastroberardino wouldn’t allow it. Farming the same Irpinian land for ten generations, the family refused to replace Aglianico, replanting from the surviving old vines and proving that the grape—grown high and hard on Taurasi’s slopes—could stand alongside Barolo, Barbaresco, and Brunello. When a 1980 earthquake devastated the region, they rebuilt. When Italy set out to replant the ancient vineyards of Pompeii by Roman methods, it turned to Mastroberardino.

Their Taurasi has ranked among Italy’s great reds for more than a century, with legendary old bottles that still astonish decades on. Taurasi became the first red in the south to earn DOCG status, and Mastroberardino remains its reference point.

Radici is the fullest expression of that legacy. First made in 1986, the Riserva comes only from the best lots of Montemarano, the estate’s finest cru, on high volcanic slopes where cool nights lengthen the season and concentrate all Aglianico has to give. It ages long in large Slavonian casks and French barriques before release.

The 2017 arrived in a warm, dry year—conditions that suit a heat-loving, late-ripening grape, and that reward the ruthless fruit selection a Riserva demands. It’s generous and powerful, riper and more giving than most young Taurasi, yet framed by the structure that lets these wines run for decades.

Expect a deep, fleshy core of dark fruit, with red roses, currant, and wild berry lifting a savory, mineral heart. The palate is juicy and layered, the tannins silky, the finish long. Structured, savory, and built to evolve, it’s one of the very greatest examples of what Aglianico can be.