Adelaide Hills winery Longview has released its latest range of Italian varietal wines, which includes what CEO Peter Saturno says is ‘the best wine we have ever made’.
The range includes Barbera, Nebbiolo and Nebbiolo Rosato, but it is the winery’s flagship ‘The Piece’ Shiraz, which has Saturno particularly excited.
Speaking about the range of wines, Saturno told The Shout: “Being an absolute Nebbiolo nut, our Nebbiolo journey at the vineyard started 20 years ago with our first wine and we had obviously planted four or five before that.
“Small steps is the way with Neb and to just keep on learning and this is the first year we’ve had some seriously good, large format seasoned oak and you see that in the wine which had just over 18 months to settle in that large format oak. So you’re starting to see some of those traditional signs that you see from the mother country, like liquorice root, which is really pleasing to see.
“The tannins are building pretty well, the 2018 was a very pretty wine, but I was yearning for more tannin profile and we see that in the 2019 Nebbiolo.”
He added: “With the 2018 Barbera, we didn’t make a straight-up Barbera for the first seven years, ’18 was the first one and that’s just because it holds its acidity so well, to the extent it throws you off. But now it’s gaining maturity the acidity is settling down and it has a beautiful core of fruit, a beautiful colour.”
With the Nebbiolo Rosato Saturno told The Shout: “I think this will be one of its best years, it’s absolutely wonderful. It was just one of those years that it really built on the vine and the flavour profiles were just incredible, so that’s really exciting, and then we have The Piece.”
The Piece is Longview’s flagship wine and this is the winery’s tenth release of the wine and Saturno said: “I don’t want to sound like every other wine winemaker, but this is definitely the best wine that we have ever made. It’s really elegant, we don’t buy into the fact your top wine needs to be brooding and big and smack you in the face. This is an elegant wine with lovely savoury notes and we’ve been working extremely hard on finding the right blocks of Shiraz to do the wine with. We’re not scared to throw in some whole bunches and really get that beautiful pepper-lift and spice.”
Saturno said the wine is drinking great now and while it’s got a good 10 years he said it’s probably a wine to drink in the next five, adding “but I do like primary Shiraz, instead of overtly secondary Shiraz”.
The 2021 Longview ‘Juno’ Nebbiolo Rosato, 2019 Longview ‘Jupiter’ Barbera, 2019 Longview ‘Saturnus’ Nebbiolo and 2018 Longview ‘The Piece’ Shiraz are available now from Longview Wines.