Alternative Italian

341. 2005 Greco di Tufo dei Feudi di San Gregorio (Greco di Tufo DOCG - Campania - Italy)

Even before I ran across the Wine Century Club, I used to keep my eyes open for different and interesting wines. This is one that I bought back in the summer. The bottle was dark enough that I might even have been mistaken about it being a white wine. It's not like I'm actually familiar with Greco di Tufo. I'd heard of it before but odds are I couldn't tell you anything about where or when I might have had it before.

I generally find that Italian whites don't offer me all that much in the way of fruit. They're usually easy drinking - more for quaffing back with pastas and seafoods on a sunny patio than for slow sipping and contemplation. This one supposedly promises a lot more but I didn't find that it was all that much different - maybe a little more body and complexity, but at $23, I'll think of it more as a novelty wine than as a "go to" bottle.

We might run into it a bit more down the road though. I've read that Greco di Tufo is one of the oldest white varietals known in Italy and that it's enjoying a bit of a resurgence with more modern winemaking practices being introduced more and more into the southern regions of Italy.

Until then though, at least I get to add another varietal to my Century Club efforts.