Taking up the ancient Roman tradition of wine in amphored wine, Amos Benacchio – an Italian-Spanish entrepreneur from Busto Arsizio – created an innovative project: “the bottle that breathes”. Merlot and Bobal evolved in clay bottles. We tasted it.
To celebrate Christmas in advance, we at Ritmodivino make a small digression from our usual routes in Campania, moving to one of the nations very dear to the Neapolitan people: Spain, specifically in Valencia.
In preview, we taste this gem: a Merlot in a clay bottle, produced by Terracotta Wines by Amos Benacchio.
Amos is an Italian-Spanish entrepreneur from Busto Arsizio (VA), who has been working on an innovative project for some years: “the bottle that breathes”.
Inspired by a trip to his country of origin, Amos created terracotta bottles, in which he has two wines produced in his adopted land to evolve: Merlot and Bobal.
With Amos we know each other on Facebook and, after having advertised his project on our page, he sends us one of his bottles to taste from Spain, number 95.
The bottle, in its new form of clay, is elegant and mysterious: the wine evolves slowly, through micro-oxygenations, but you do not see it. Therefore, the wait for tasting increases the desire.
The tasting
We taste the Merlot one morning at the beginning of December.
Opening the bottle releases immediately aromas of clay. When pouring it you find a characteristic ruby color with strong violet reflections: a wine that says to be young.
The youth of this wine is confirmed by the nose, because the scents of this Merlot are distinctly vinous, accompanied by a fruity aroma of cherries. A wine, therefore, of a medium complexity.
At tasting, Amos wine is characterized by a clear alcohol that further covers the already light tannin of the Merlot vine, and for a sour shoulder due to extreme youth.
Overall, the Mey is still moved towards the hardness, so it is a wine that requires a wise waiting to be able to appreciate it in all its qualities. We propose to reassemble it after a little ‘evolution in a bottle that is still an innovation.
The combinations
Being a young wine, the idea is to combine this Merlot – a grape that still guarantees its evolution over time – with the soul of Mario Biondi, specifically on his first album “Handful of Soul”.
Handful, in English, means “handful”, a word that confirms the experimental character of this album by Mario Biondi. An artist who finds more and more confirmations and started from this album, with an easy and captivating soul in listening, to be able to evolve – like Amos Merlot – in one of the most interesting voices of this musical genre.
Artistically, we like to combine the Mey with Banksy’s artwork.
Famous street artist, Banksy is, like Biondi, straddling an artistic genre that is not too well known and social protest. I like it because it has so much to tell, but it can not yet be considered – and perhaps it does not even want it – as a museum artist.
Just Banksy, indeed, has jumped to the headlines for creating a mechanism that destroyed one of his works that was about to be auctioned for over a million euros.
In conclusion
After tasting the Mey of Amos, we decided to inaugurate a new section of our site: “Wines for correspondence”.
The idea is to combine the tastings in the cellar in our region, tastings of wines from all over Italy and from all over the world and combine them artistically as we have always done.
An innovative project that confirms the growth of our portal.
Three fans and a bottle
