Danilo Thomain - Enfer d'Arvier 2023

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Producer	Danilo Thomain
Country	Italy
Region	Valle d'Aosta
Varietal	Red Blend
Vintage	2023
Sku	12017585
Size	750ml

 

CAC

100

If there is any wine that I ask you to “trust me, this is the real deal” this wine is it!

It is why you need us to be your wine advisors in a sea of big box/little box generic wine sellers. We offer unique, exceptional, small family domains crafting impeccable, delicious wines, perfect expressions of the people, places, vineyards and grapes from which they are born. Walk down the wine road less travelled with us, and we will find you some of the greatest, least known wines in the world! This is one of them, and if you wait, you will miss it until next year.

What can I say except that this is quite frankly one of the wines whose arrival I look forward to every year more than just about any other! I was first blown away by its utterly unique, one-off character during a ski trip to Cervinia in the Italian Alps (after the best day of skiing I ever had in the Alpen glow of the Matterhorn!) It was perfectly paired with a Veal Chop Val d'Aosta - double cut thickness, stuffed with crisped sage, melted fontina, and prosciutto - heaven! It has been one of my favorite wines ever since, and when it arrives, if there is any left we’ll recreate that great dinner. 

The man himself!

It is always just ever so slightly rustic, with beautiful aromas of dried herbs, dried cherry, sour cherry, with moderate tannins, a lovely core of fruit, a floral top note of violet and lilac, seamless from start to finish, with a hint of underlying stony minerality that stems directly from this wines' roots in the rocky Alpine soils where it is grown.

It's made from grapes grown in the tiny Enfer d’Arvier appellation, with vineyards located in an amphitheater-shaped bowl on extremely steep, terraced slopes in a high-altitude Alpine valley.

This site provides excellent sun exposure, concentrating and capturing the sunlight, creating a unique microclimate with huge diurnal temperature swings - very warm during the day, with temperatures plunging at night due to the high altitude. The name of the wine, which translates to the "hell of Arvier'' reflects this, as well as the hard work required to farm here. Danilo's the only independent vigneron working this tiny appellation, with just one hectare of vineyards in the shadow of Mont Blanc.

It’s 90% Petit Rouge, an obscure grape not widely grown outside the Valle d'Aosta, if anywhere, with 10% Pinot Noir, Gamay, and Gamaret making up the balance. The vines are rooted in sandy glacial moraines on steeply terraced south-facing vineyards in a natural amphitheater overlooking the Dora Baltea/Doire Baltée river. Natural farming methods are employed (lutte raisoneé.)

Danilo Thomain is the only independent vigneron working this tiny appellation only five hectares in size. The Thomain family works one hectare of vineyards here in the shadow of Mont Blanc.

Covering a scant 5 ha, the majority of the Enfer d’Arvier’s output is via the local co-op, and with his single hectare in production, Danilo Thomain stands as the zone’s only independent bottler of wine. Amazingly, he is currently clearing and de-foresting another hectare’s worth of hillside above his current holdings in order to expand production, thereby reclaiming some of the long-unused but prime terrain whose viticultural records date back to the 13th century.