wine we’re drinking | August 2024

New natural wine picks from us at Monsoon Market! These natural wines are straight out of our Natty & Nice Wine Club, now on the shelves ready for you to pick up and enjoy yourselves!

CAROLINA GATTI La Bolla de Fugazi

Our girl Carolina is back! We loved her wine from last month so much that we decided to follow it up with another. We already gave you her whole story, so we’ll just include the highlights to refresh your memory.

Carolina Gatti is an unconventional and revolutionary force in the Prosecco production area in northeastern Italy. She has a degree in Oenology, but her winemaking style is anything but by-the-book. Her 5 hectares of 80-year old vines are in the remote Veneto countryside and she farms the land herself without the use of any harmful chemicals.  She honors the local winemaking traditions, while at the same time pushing the boundaries of what low-intervention winemaking can look like in her notoriously conventional wine-making region. Since last month, we’ve also learned that Carolina blogs extensively about natural wine and is known for her punky, badass hairstyles: most recently she’s working a spiky platinum moment that’s a cross between a pixie and a mohawk.

The bottle we’re featuring this month is her bubbly red blend, La Bolla de Fugazi. Carolina, in keeping with her gusty, punk-rock style, has chosen an unexpected blend of grapes for this bubbly bottle: Cab Sauv, Raboso, and Merlot. All three of these grapes are particularly well-suited for the cooler climate of her vineyard location.  Carolina’s blog is actually called Rabosando, an homage to her love for the rare local varietal Raboso despite its reputation as an unfashionable wine-making grape.

La Bolla de Fugazi is made in the col fondo style, the original method used to make prosecco, and the wine is unfiltered, unfined, and un-disgorged. “Col fondo” translates to “with the bottom”, referring to the presence of lees at the bottom of the bottle. Wines made in this style are frizzante rather than spumante, meaning they have a gentler bubble. This wine is super dry, with notes of crunchy red berries and a green, earthiness that is typical of these grapes in the Veneto region. We think this wine would HIT with a grilled red meat moment or with anything hearty and fatty. Think steak au poivre, pasta with lamb ragu, or veal parm made with Saint Pasta vodka sauce. The acid and tannic structure of the wine will balance the fat and act as a perfect refresher between bites.

MASSERIA LA CATTIVA

Masseria La Cattiva is something of a wine-making collective, run by a group of 7 friends with extensive experience as beer brewers. They started to experiment with their own fermentation techniques and combined this with their interest in natural wine in 2018. Their winery is located in Sammichele di Bari, in the Puglia region of southern Italy and was originally a dairy farm before the friends revived the land in 2019. Everything in the vineyard is done by hand with absolutely no intervention in the cellar.

The La Cattiva portfolio is very broad, and these wines have a playfulness that matches the energy of a group of friends having fun and exploring their passions. But there’s more to these wines than fun names and labels. The wines showcase their technical fermentation expertise and the result is a lineup of complex, extremely tasty wines.

Trebbiano Frizzante Spettinata Bianca

Region: Puglia, Italy
Grapes: Trebbiano

Everyone’s always asking us to show them our funkiest bottle and we may have outdone ourselves with this one. This is a lower-abv spritzy sipper with some very light skin contact – 30% of the grapes were left on the skins for the weekend before joining the rest to finish fermentation in steel vats for 6 months. When we researched this wine, we kept reading descriptions that included unexpected notes of …… miso. This wine definitely has a pleasant salinity, lemony tang, and a savory fruitiness. She’s spunky, she’s elevated and she’s definitely unique. Pick up your favorite takeout spicy noodles and see how this wine comes alive.

No Virus Please on the Dance Floor

Region: Puglia, Italy
Grapes: 50% Negroamaro, 35% Aglianico, 15% Trebbiano

Our final bottle is another unexpected blend of red and white grapes, the highlight being Negroamaro which is a native southern Italian varietal that is grown almost exclusively in the peninsula that makes up the “boot” of Italy. Negroamaro has a distinct earthy, spicy quality, often expressing notes of clove, tobacco, and coffee. The Trebbiano adds a zippy acidity and the Aglianico gives a bit of body and dryness. You can also expect notes of rhubarb and strawberry, along with a pleasant minerality. This bottle is aptly named, the perfect prelude to a night out. Or honestly, a night spent at home blasting music and having a solo dance party. Either way, turn the lights down low, pour yourself a full glass and let loose!