Monastero Suore Cistercensi "Coenobium" Lazio Bianco 2023

The Cistercian order of nuns at Monastero Suore Cistercensi in Lazio have been making wine at their convent for over 60 years. The sisters’ flagship wine, “Coenobium,” is a blend of Trebbiano (45%), Malvasia (35%) and Verdicchio (20%), co-harvested and co-fermented without added yeasts or temperature stabilization. It is aged on its fine lees in steel and fiberglass tanks, and bottled just before the next harvest without fining or filtering. The 2023 Coenobium, produced from a tiny mildew-affected crop augmented by purchased fruit from a neighbor, is streamlined and elegant, with brisk acidity and notable salinity.

Lightly aromatic. At once savory, earthy, floral and dry, with brilliant acidity, this is a complex and lively skin-contact wine. Notes of dried flowers and a subtle chamomile tea-like character, showcasing Vitorchiano’s volcanic soils in a more direct manner than usual. Almond, fennel fronds, grapefruit and green apple ride a gentle, slender palate, washed with iron-rich salinity and finishing with lingering elderflower and a decidedly decadent edge. A wine with so much potential it’s hard to wrap your mind around it -- feel it instead: supple summer morning air deep into your lungs. Open this in advance and let it stretch a bit. Best not briskly chilled.

The fruit is grown in the Monastery organically, according to natural methods, without the use of synthetic chemical treatments, and harvested by hand. This wine's particular intrigue comes from the volcanic soils that underlay the vineyards and the longer than usual contact that the fermenting juice has with the skins. Spontaneous fermentation in stainless-steel and fiberglass tanks. the grapes are co-fermented without added yeasts or temperature stabilization. Unfined, filtered if necessary. Minimal sulfur applied at harvest and bottling.

The nuns planted their vineyard in 1963, but it wasn’t until the early 2000s that their wines began to attract more attention, largely due to their employment of the noted winemaking consultant, Giampiero Bea, son and successor to the celebrated Paolo Bea. The wines share Bea's rare combination of wildness and elegance. They are unique, fun and playful, while still showing off serious skill as well as the viticultural heritage of southern Italy.