Each of these three wines reminds me of seeing things in a new light. Every one of these bottles lives in the shadow of a bigger wine made in the same cellar. Chianti Classico made its name on Sangiovese built to age for decades, and this month it gives us the more easygoing rosato. Oregon’s Willamette Valley is Pinot Noir country, but this month ours is Gamay. Valpolicella is the home of Amarone, one of Italy’s most concentrated reds, yet this second-summer bottle selected for you is pale enough to read a label through.
So: fridge first. An hour for the rosato, twenty minutes or so for the two reds. If a red comes out tasting tight, leave it in the glass a few minutes and it will open right up.
One last thing. It’s September, which means all three of these families are in the vines right now, or about to be. We get the easy bottles and a chair in the sun. They get the picking bins and the crush pad. Worth a glass raised in their direction.
Cheers to second summer,
P. + E.
2023 Sass Gamay Noir
Willamette Valley, Oregon
We tasted with Jerry Sass on a hot, muggy Michigan afternoon that turned into one of those biblical Midwestern storms, which suited us fine, since it meant staying in the shop with good wine and better stories.
Jerry came to winemaking sideways. He spent three decades in newsrooms and finished as copy desk chief at The Oregonian, and he started the winery in 1996 while he was still working the desk. He describes himself as a winemaker, journalist, and teacher, a combination he calls semi-lethal. The wines he grew up on were his father’s, made in western New York from Finger Lakes grapes, which is the reason he wanted to make wine at all and, he says, a useful education in what not to do. One of his sons works alongside him now. Sass makes about three thousand cases a year, small enough that nothing gets away from him.
This Gamay comes off Walnut Ridge Vineyard at the south end of the Willamette, hand-harvested, fermented with native yeasts, and raised in neutral oak, a no-frills approach that lets the fruit do the talking.
In the glass it is a light, bright ruby. Bright cherry and juicy cranberry on the nose, with a peppery lift. The palate is clean and mineral-driven, with a long, easy finish.
At the table: Roast chicken, a burger off the grill, salmon, mushrooms, anything with a little smoke on it. This is also the bottle to bring when you don’t know what’s being served.
2025 Buondonno Rosato
Castellina in Chianti, Tuscany, Italy
Gabriele Buondonno and Valeria Sodano were fresh agriculture graduates out of Naples when they bought Casavecchia alla Piazza, the old house at the piazza, in Castellina in Chianti in 1988. The farmhouse dates to the 1500s, and sixteenth-century documents tie the property to the Buonarroti family, Michelangelo’s own. They farmed it organically from the first season, in Chianti, in 1988, when almost nobody was. Their parcels sit high in the northern corner of Castellina at around 450 meters, many facing north, on cool ground that holds on to acidity.
The rosato is a good odd idea: Syrah pressed off its skins almost immediately, blended with Sangiovese bled out of the tanks headed for Chianti Classico. Native yeasts, steel, nothing else. An intense cherry pink in the glass. Cherry, raspberry, and strawberry on the nose, with a light touch of rose and spice behind them. Fresh and balanced on the palate, with just enough tannin to remind you there is red wine in the family.
At the table: Grilled anything, a cold pasta salad, or just a good porch and nothing else on the agenda.
2025 Pietro Clementi Valpolicella Classico
Marano di Valpolicella, Veneto, Italy
Ellie tasted this one at Rosenthal HQ over the summer, and her notes include the word “wow.” Pietro Clementi practiced law in Verona through the fifties and sixties and later served as mayor of Marano di Valpolicella, which is how his Amarone came to be known around town as the Mayor’s Amarone, poured for family, friends, and the occasional political gathering. He had been sent up into these hills as a boy, when his parents moved him out of Verona to get him away from the bombing, and in 1969 he bought the Gnirega estate, twenty hectares of vines and woods around a seventeenth-century house, to come back to them. His three children run it now.
Marano sits in the high, original heart of Valpolicella, on stone terraces between 300 and 400 meters, high enough that the fruit comes in with its acidity intact. This is a field blend: everything picked and fermented together, native yeasts in stainless steel, a short rest, and into the bottle. No oak, no drying, no extra steps. A light, transparent ruby in the glass. Cherry and red berry on the nose, with a whisper of violet and spice. Juicy red currant and raspberry, soft tannins, lively acidity, light enough to pour freely, which is the point.
At the table: Pizza, charcuterie, pasta with red sauce, or a bowl of olives and nothing else. Straight out of the fridge, and don’t be precious about it.
