2016 Terenzi Vermentino di Maremma
‘Balbino’
Toscano, IT
Regular Price $19.99
Sale Price $15.99
Vermentino is great fun, both to drink and to confuse your wine snob friends because, its:
A; known by about 20 different names, and
B; is easily confused with nearly every other white wine.
Its crisp and clean with floral and pear flavors, unencumbered by oak, lively and fresh and relatively unobtrusive. And yes, dry, of course, like most wines (except for those sweet Chardonnays and Cabs from California). The fact that its unobtrusive is not a bad thing either; sometimes you want a wine that provides background music, rather than dominating the evening.
The wine comes from Maremma, a coastal area in the southern end of Tuscany, best known perhaps for Super Tuscan wines; those wines made from non-Italian grapes (Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon) often blended with Sangiovese. But Vermentino has been grown in southern Tuscany and Sardinia since the fourteenth century.