Salvatore Molettieri, Taurasi “Vigna Cinque Querce”

Although Sicily’s Mount Etna has lately stolen some of the spotlight, Taurasi is still the premier red wine appellation of the Italian south. It covers a relatively small cluster of hills in the Irpinia region of central Campania—about 50 kilometers east of Naples but, terroir-wise, a world away. Irpinia is the start of the climb into the Campanian Apennines, with vineyard altitudes typically averaging around 400 meters in thickly forested hillside sites (chestnut groves are another key feature of the region). The soils are a mix of calcareous marls and volcanic deposits, and it’s the latter that the great Aglianico-based reds of the south really speak to: There’s a brooding, smoky, deeply mineral structure to Aglianico that can be downright ferocious, more forbidding in some cases than young Barolo wines from Piedmont. One of Aglianico’s distinguishing features is its nearly unrivaled concentration of anthocyanins—the phenolic compounds that intensify color pigmentation and tannin.Alo