94 points - "Beguiling nose of red fruit and pistachios, with flowers and black pepper enhancing the aromas. The attack is a bit raw, with edgy tannins and crisp acidity. It’s medium- to full-bodied and chewy, with a balanced finish. It needs time to soften the structure, but displays a tight, crunchy youthful style that will match well with food and has the potential for aging. This high-altitude vineyard delivers greatness. Drink after 2028." - James Suckling

92 points - "The 2022 Passorosso is spicy in the glass with an herbal thrust up front, giving way to ginger-tinged dried cherries and dusty sage. This is silky-smooth with ripe red and hints of blue fruit. Brisk acidity motivates the mouthfeel as the 2022 takes on a salty savoriness toward the close. It finishes with outstanding length and concentration, leaving a coating of fine tannins and a resonance of licorice on the close. This is far from your average Etna Rosso, with nearly 50% of the fruit hailing from Contrada Guardiola." - Eric Guido (Vinous)

92 points - "The Passopisciaro 2022 Etna Rosso Passorosso opens to dried cherry, redcurrant and crushed rose that give this wine a brittle, almost fragile personality. Fruit comes from 80- to 110-year-old vines planted at a high 500 to 800 meters above sea level as alberello, or head-pruned, vines, at a high density of 8,000 plants per hectare. Winemaking includes 18 months of aging in botte grande and cement. You taste extra ripeness in this hot-vintage wine, but you also get the structural firmness we see in the other excellent wines in this portfolio. This is a release of 36,700 bottles. Drink Date: 2024 - 2030." - Monica Larner (The Wine Advocate)

Unscored - "This 2022 is a true olfactory explosion of violets, lavender, wild herbs and black cherry. Intense, ripe and fleshy flavours of red and black fruits are accompanied by a hint of Parma violets, followed by a balanced finish that is both rich and fresh." - Decanter

Importer's Notes:

Hi everyone,

Today we recieved the first shipment of the stunning 2022 Passopisciaro Passorosso Etna Rosso.
Mount Etna is one of the most unique, fascinating and alluring wine regions in Italy. Consider vine age, altitude, the grape variety Nerello Mascalese and the fact that when Etna is on-song, the wines are up there with the best of Barolo, Barbaresco and Brunello in terms of quality and complexity. However, there is still one major difference. The price.

When you compare the prices for the best wines from Mount Etna (and in my view Passopisciaro are in the top few) they are still well underpriced. When I think of the best from Barolo, Brunello and Barbaresco, prices start north of $200 a bottle and above. Hence, this wine, at $45ex GST has to be considered one of the great wine bargains of the world.

This is far from your average Etna Rosso, with nearly 50% of the fruit hailing from Contrada Guardiola.” Eric Guido, Vinous

The 2022 Passorosso might possibly be the best Passorosso in the last decade. I have tried it twice in Italy and it has floored me both times. For me Passorosso is the best 'classic' Etna Rosso that is made. Production compared to many of their counterparts is a lot smaller and it is made up of the best Cru's from Etna. There is something magical about the 2022. So fragrant, so complex: this is an unbelievable wine.

Purity of flavour of fruit, that highlights the underlying complexity that has made Etna so unique to Italian wine in the last ten years. Old vines, mulitple lava flows and a pure, intensely ethereal vintage has allowed Passopisciaro to put together a stunning 2022 Passorosso.
cheers

Anthony D'Anna

General Information:

ABOUT PASSOPISCIARO
In 2000 Andrea Franchetti decided to restore an old farm and cellars on the slopes of Mount Etna, an active volcano in northeastern Sicily. The winery sits at about a thousand meters of altitude above the small wine town of Passopisciaro in the district of Castiglione di Sicilia, on the northern slope of the volcano. His first task was to clear and restore long-abandoned terraces of ancient vines on the northern slopes of the mountain, replanting at a density of 12,000 vines per hectare on thin lavic soil. His arrival on Etna helped to initiate the renaissance of viticulture on the mountain and an international discovery of the wines of Etna. At Passopisciaro, he focuses on the native grape Nerello Mascalese and its various expressions of terroir and altitudes through a series of crus, as well as the varieties Chardonnay, Petit Verdot, and Cesanese d’Affile.

The high altitude, sun-drenched vineyards are idyllic yet a constant plume of smoke and the odd ash-filled belch present a constant reminder that Etna is indeed a volcano with attitude, given to relatively frequent lava spills. These spills devastate the landscape, yet each flow leaves a unique mineral profile, giving rise to the notion of various terroirs, here called contrade. The borders of the contrade reflect old feudal property lines, which are still mapped out on the local land registry. Franchetti respects and plays to the strengths of his chosen terroir on Etna, producing wines of remarkable complexity and individual personality. Significant temperature differences between day and night also play an important role, necessitating a longer growing period and this, in turn, contributes complexity and intensity, as do the profound mineral elements of the volcanic soils.

Terroir
Thousands of mouths across a fifty-kilometer diameter on Mount Etna have spit lava from every different depth under the earth, covering the surface of the volcano where vines take root. Flowing lava — descending sometimes dense and slow, at times fast as water — eventually stops, spreading and hardening at various altitudes. After cooling for many years, these flatter areas over the centuries became established properties, each one producing a different taste of wine because of the different mineral origin of their soils and, more importantly, because of the grain that the lava had broken into during its cooling process: sand, gravel, powder, or rock. Under their same old names the properties became territorial subdivisions called contrade, and, with regards to the wine, they represent Etna’s own version of a cru. Cru, a word that suggests areas that bring a typical, recognizable flavor to its produce, finds an almost exaggerated example in Etna’s contrade.
The arrival of new producers on Etna coincided with my own in 2000, and the focus has gradually turned more to individuating each contrada. Everyone’s winemaking since then has been showing the superiority of taste of the same handful of contrade that were considered the best before World War II, when winemaking was very active. The names of these areas are appearing increasingly on the labels in this renaissance of Etna wine.

THE VINEYARDS
Viticulture on Mount Etna has extremely ancient origins, and winemaking in the region is now experiencing a phase of renaissance. The wines are made with Nerello Mascalese, the grape that grows all over the mountain, and there exclusively. It is grown in many different mixes of lava from the old eruptions and at remarkably different elevations. These vineyards are quite separate from each other and are Mount Etna’s distinct and accurately mapped crus, here called Contrade.

At Passopisciaro, we have 26 hectares (64 acres) of vines across the northern face of Mount Etna, from which we produce six different bottlings of Nerello Mascalese. These showcase the profound differences in the terroir – lava flow, aspect, and altitude – of the various Contrade that we work with: Rampante, Sciaranuova, Guardiola, Porcaria, and Chiappemacine.

Temperature
Etna is a volcano that rises 3,300 meters above the sea, covered in snow during the winter. During the summer, in the upper thousand meters, the cold temperatures remain, setting down everyday to triumph over the Sicilian heat. Temperature during the day on the northern side, where most of the vineyards are, is over 15°C lower than on the coast, and that cool weather prepares for elegant, full wines. The temperature at night is truly cold during the grape’s most important months, September and October, when it delays the grape’s ripening and adds resilience and sturdiness to the wines.

Light
Instead of originating from the sun above, light on Etna is diffused like tulle netting across the mountain so that it seems to emanate from the objects on the ground. It bounces between the sky and the two surrounding seas over the muffled horizons, and light rays dissolve into the specter of the black volcano. Indirect light is common to many of the great wine regions of the world, like the light reflecting from the sea and rivers of Bordeaux and that coming off the silver surface of the Rhine to the vines planted on the stiff cliffs above. Light surrounds every side of the leaves, stimulating vigorous photosynthesis in the vines, beaming in the colors of clothes, inspiring the viticulturalists.

A blend of ancient grapes of Nerello Mascalese from different vineyards located at different altitudes on the northern side of Etna. In general, the highest districts lie on more gravelly soils to coarser grain, while the lower ones on the finer and deeper soils composed of older lava flows, now oxidized and reduced to lava dust. This wine concentrates the characteristics of different terroirs in a single bottle to offer a global idea of a territory.

As soon as the 2021 harvest was over at the end of October, we witnessed a torrential rain that caused a flood, especially in the Randazzo area. Between the end of November and the end of December we saw more rain in all our vineyards, cold temperatures and snow at altitudes of 1.200/1.500 meters a.s.l. A great start to winter that created good water reserves in the soil. 2022 started off with rather cold temperatures. Budbreak was regular, and the spring rains further replenished our water reserves. This fact, combined with the very warm temperatures in early summer, contributed to a rapid development of the canopy.

It was a delicate vintage to manage for the development of the polyphenols and alcohol content of our Nerello Mascalese, as the months of September and October were very hot and dry, especially in the lower-lying vineyards.

Manual harvesting took place in two main takes, from October 1st to 8th in the vineyards ranging from 550 to 700 meters / 1804 to 2296 feet and from October 27th to 28th in the higher-altitude ones. All grapes come from old vines, between 80 and 110 years of age.

In the cellar, extraction from skin and seeds was minimized to 8/9 days of maceration, and fermentation temperatures never exceeded 28 degrees Celsius / 82 degrees Fahrenheit.
The aging process, lasting 18 months, took place mainly in large oak barrels to favor tannin evolution and partly in concrete tanks. Bottling took place during the waning moon of February 2024.

Thanks to the coming together of grapes from our different contrade located on the north side of Mount Etna, this wine is poised and elegant with acidity, alcohol and silky tannins finding a perfect balance, making the 2022 Passorosso very inviting to drink at a young age but also suitable for medium aging in the bottle.