Dans les vignes with Gianfranco. Photo from Riccardo Avenia.

We asked our friend, the eminence grise of natural wine in Chicago, Jeremy Quinn, to write about Panevino as a producer near and dear to his heart and one of the only people we know to have visited this remote and magical estate. Take it away JQ:

Gianfranco Manca of Panevino is a true iconoclast. Very rarely have I known a winemaker to absorb artistic influence so thoroughly, and then express it so transparently in their work, with such trust in dynamic instinct. His wines can remind one of the sensual jazz of Tristano, or Konitz. “Intuition”, Gianfranco believes, “is the alphabet of God.” His labels change every year, without protocol for harvest. His wines are field blends, cuvées which express instinct of place, rather than varietal correctness. A baker by training, he was first introduced to wine by its living aspect, the yeast of fermentation, and it’s that aspect which has shaped his thinking. (When moving cellars, he will make a mud paste from the walls to apply in the new space, to preserve yeast activity.) A few years ago, I had the privilege to spend a few days with Gianfranco at his home, about 70 km north of Caligari on the island of Sardinia. When I asked for the ideal description of his wines, he replied, “Non-schematic. Visceral.”

Tasting adjectives for his wines vary with time. A fresh and minty profile can turn lean and salty; a slightly volatile wine can take the tannin of long-steeped tea, or the texture of velvet. I’ve frequently been surprised by a bottling which I thought I knew well; countless times I’ve marveled that a wine could be that good. In a significant way, his wines challenge one’s preconceptions as a taster. He spoke about the grape varietal giró, which starts flowering late in the season, and moves from nearly no vegetation to outgrowing its neighbor vines. “It’s like me”, he smiled, “it likes to contradict itself.”

He sources his fruit from a host of tiny old-vine plots. Each can contain as many as 40 different grape varieties, white and red, ranging from 20 to 80 years of age, with mesmerizing names: Cagnuloti, Monika, Ciliegiolo, Nuragus, Cannonau, Semidano, Retellada...

We visited a number of these plots together. Importantly, memorably – and, informing his wines’ character - we could only reach them on foot, leaving our rented car to tramp through high grass, past goat herds; leaping streams, ducking under wilding shade forest and prickly herbs to finally arrive, surprised and sweaty, at stunning vistas where bony old vines reach up like hands from earth. The soil is scarlet as Mars, and filled with quartz and schist. Asphodel and wolf berry bushes surround, worried in the wind. “The center of the earth”, he said, “doesn’t belong to a territory. It’s no more Italian than American, it’s not national, at all.” He’s only used Bordeaux copper treatment twice in the vines. (As a defense against moths and mold, he uses essential oils.) Sulphur is reserved for cleaning floors. At the time of my visit, he was phasing out of any steel in the cellar (“Would you put a baby in an iron bed?”, he asked), to only employ older oak.

I asked if he’d ever bottle a wine which was not necessarily to his taste, but because its story was so compelling. “Yes and no”, he answered. “It’s difficult. If I had a son with one eye, how would you expect me to feel?” After a moment, he added, “It’s like painting with oil. Sometimes it’s on canvas, sometimes on hard card-stock... the material can change your method of art.” At the end, he insisted, “Don’t give unto others what you wouldn’t give yourself.”

While his labels change, a few can repeat. These present, perhaps, the quickest way to come to grips with his wines as a whole: U.V.A., Tanka li Conti, Alvas, and Giro Tondo. The first of these, UVA, can contain as many as 28 different varietals.

On the simplest level, at a time when Sardinian wine has been commercialized into either only high-octane Cannonau or clean Vermentino, Panevino presents a remarkably diverse and important set of flavors. On another, these wines provide an engagement with a uniquely creative mind – Gianfranco’s been called ‘Sardinia’s last true vigneron’ – and an urgent lesson in preserving the past.

JQ

If you’d like to order any bottles, give us a call at (773.360.8365), email us, or see what's currently in stock on the online store . Here’s what is available:

Boxi e Croxiu 2016 ($48 ) Free run juice from every pressing of 2016. Very limited. (out)

Shugusucci 2017 ($48) Field blend of local grapes, mostly Cannonau. (out)

Axina e Ixinan 2017 ($45) - Field blend of local grapes. (out)

U.V.A. 2016 ($48) - Field blend of local grapes. (out)

Picci 2014 ($48) - 100% Cannonau. Very limited. (out)

Pikade 2016 ($52) - Old vines selection of Cannonau and Carignano del Sulcis. (out)

Cortemuras 2016 ($53) - Cannonau & Cagnulari.

Kano Nan 2016 ($56) - Old vines selection of Cannonau.

Tanka li Conti 2016 ($54) - Alicante, Bovale, & Monica. (out)

Girotondo 2016 ($52) - Giro, Monica, and Carignano del Sulcis.