Tornatore Rosso 2020 - Original and stimulating Etna wines

The 2020 is exceptionally pure and impossible to resist. ERIC GUIDO, Vinous

Etna – the mountain and the wine appellation surrounding it – provides a jaw-dropping landscape, one every wine lover should see. Millions of gnarled old vines grow out of avalanches of dark, crumbling lava soils with a massive, commanding peak looming in the background. The theme of Mount Etna is ever destruction and renewal, fueled by a boundless energy residing deep within the earth. The active volcano is always erupting – sometimes spectacularly, with fireworks and rivers of molten rock, and other times with just a distant plume of smoke. RAJ PARR, The Sommeliers Atlas of Taste

Tornatore is the new kid in town. I visited this relatively new name on Etna a few months ago and was blown away. MONICA LARNER

 he firm’s reds are equally gorgeous, especially those from Pietrarizzo and Trimarchisa, which boast juicy fruit and a weightless elegance. KERIN O’KEEFE, wineenthusiast.com

What a remarkably lovely wine. Tornatore don’t really skip a beat but this guy is worthy of special attention. 

I reckon most of our customers are somewhat familiar with the wines of Etna now? They burst in to the mainstream of Italian wine consumers consciousness about a decade ago and their popularity has only become more pronounced. I don’t know what percentage of our orders would include some Etna wine, it still wouldn’t be much, but I can tell you how often I get asked and how bananas every offer of these goes. It’s a feeding frenzy. 

Rarely this is a situation where I agree with the hype. Unlike a lot of these resurgent areas and varietals I find the best wines of Etna to be entrancing. The reds marry a sense of hedonism with wonderfully seductive, floral, spiced, outlandishly perfumed fruit. They have an all together different delivery of minerality too. Something I don’t see anywhere else. Bright acidity but also fulsome fruit. Etna reds (and whites) are as interesting to drink as anything. 

Then you get a wine like this come along, where all the bits I love about them rolled in to a neatly presented, exuberant package that hits all my prerequisites for enjoying a good bottle of red, well, happy days. 

Perfumed and pretty with swirling aromatics that blend spice with floral notes, red fruits, something just touching on a savouriness but it’s a hint amongst all the liveliness that surrounds it. The palate delivers beautifully on that promise too. It glides across the palate with ripples of fruit, a tantalising saline aspect picks up the beat through the long and snappy finish where a light dusting of tannins make an appearance. It’s so lovely. 

Look, we have tonnes of this. There is no reason not to go hard here. It’s quite captivating now, in all its youthful enthusiasm, brightness and vivacity. However all the elements are in place to ensure that five odd years from now this will be an even more exciting wine to drink. 

If you would like to place an order for some of this stupidly tasty wine, then please either reply to my email or follow the link below to order online.