Agri Segretum

Todi, Umbria, Italy

It is so exciting to meet a winery in its nascency—before it’s on the pages of reference books with its reputation well cemented—that is so clearly making wines of consequence.

I met Lorenzo at Raw Wine in New York in 2023. Hot take—if you’ve ever been to this notorious natural wine festival, you may share my sentiments—at a natural wine festival, the highs are higher and the lows are lower. Tasting Agri Segretum was the high of the highs. I remember being floored by the Marmocchio, a wine that struck me as if López de Heredia had made a Brunello. It was that special moment in wine you hunt for, when immense interest meets immense pleasure. It became my utmost prerogative to see this wine in Alberta. The time has finally come!

Agri Segretum, latin for the secret of the field, is located in the northern end of Umbria’s Todi DOC, where the appellation borders with Montefalco Sagrantino DOCG. It was in 2008 that husband and wife duo Lorenzo de Monaco and Eileen Holland bought this incredible borgo and the 90 hectares of olive trees, jasmine, and lavender it was ensconced in. Eileen, who hailed from upstate New York and studied art history and classics, had worked for The Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice, met her husband Lorenzo, and eventually they’d ended up in Boston. With great determination they packed up their young family and returned to Italy to pursue their dream of farming great wine.

A southwest facing slope at a majestic 300 meter elevation was identified where they could bring their dream of wine to life. They undertook the fresh planting of strictly indigenous varieties with a careful eye to clonal and rootstock selection best suited to the site. In went Sangiovese & Sangiovese Grosso, Sagrantino, Colorino, and Malvasia Nera, introducing a vineyard for whites in 2015 with Grechetto di Todi and Manzoni. The vineyards have been organic from day one, as are their olives and other produce. It is hard to surpass their eloquence; in their own words:

We planted our vines in 2008. We learned about the strong Umbrian sun, the dry wind brought by the scirocco and the mud. Lots of mud. We were helped by our Tuscan agronomist and enologist who were curious to see what the Umbrian soil could produce. Pensioners, village moms, and teenagers hiked into the vineyard with us with buckets and a pair of shears to harvest our crop. That’s how we’ve done it since the start and that’s how we keep doing it.

The hard, mineral-rich Umbrian soil gifted us delicious fruit. We brought it into our cantina and carefully let it develop. We sorted by hand, squeezed the fruit, and let it bubble in the tanks. The juice picked up the natural yeast that has been in the air for generations. We punched down the skins and let them rise again. Our fall was (and still is) a dedicated and delicate play with our grapes.

And then we bottled. We baptized each wine with names that came from local dialect: Cinino (“Tiny One”),  Pottarello (“Little kid”), and Marmocchio (“Rascal”). Seemed like a good fit. We’ve created some delicious wines and are part of the new Todi DOC appellation. We couldn’t be happier.

The style at Agri Segretum is everything we hunt for. The wines are fresh yet concentrated, wild and free while free from flaws, loaded with interest and provocation without sacrificing comfort and pleasure. They are patient in the cellars, allowing the wines an unhurried maturation that speaks volumes in the glass.

The Pottarello is gracefully poised, suggestive of excellent Chianti but with slightly rounder tannins, a touch broader acidity, and a slightly more sun-drenched fruit profile, buoyed by a generous 15% body that it carries with remarkable ease.

The Marmocchio clocks in the same but is on a whole other planet. A truly unique wine that is hard to describe, dense with oily minerality, mountain herbs, and scaffolded by Sagrantino’s notorious tannins and heady notes of pine resin. The wine tastes as if it was made for bears, elaborated with endless notes of wild bush berries and sous bois and wild dill and mace.

And what of the Santino… this wine makes the case for why Sagrantino may be the best variety for red dessert wines. It’s insane tannins and resinous fernet-like profile add profound interest to the sweetness created by appassimento. It’s epicurean sweetness is carried from bodily pleasures to the realms of the mind by the mnemonic nuances and poetic license of its myriad aromas. Meanwhile, the tannins put a frame around the viscous generosity of such a luscious dessert. The name is linked to the Italian for sacred  and for the sacrament, and indeed the dessert version of Sagrantino was the Umbrian eucharist wine throughout the middle ages. It is such a rarefied and elevating experience, perfect on its own or as a sounding board for all kinds of chocolates, patisseries, and confections.