The Beautiful Disaster of Pertinello (Or, How I Learned The Definition of "Corked")

It's not the point of this blog to write about specific wines, but it's bound to happen from time to time. This review is a tale, though, one that is long and storied.

Way back when I was making that first horribly misguided wander through my local wine barn, one of the bottles I picked up was a sangiovese called Pertinello. I chose it because the label was different: a red circle the size of a slider bun. I thought this was novel and of course had to try it.

It was my first sangiovese, and, honestly, my first true love in the wide and wonderful world of wine. (See what I did there? ALLITERATION! That's how you know I'm getting all misty and poetic.) Instead of that inky, purply red everyone attributes to red wine, Pertinello is the color of a blood orange. And tasty, ohhh, still so tasty, even after having learned what I'm doing! It was a lucky strike for one so "young" as I.

I am writing this with a bottle open, in fact. Even after all the grief it has caused me, I love it still.

Yes, grief. PAIN. This is also the wine that put me in my place.

The first thing you should know about Pertinello is that it is hard to find on a shelf. You can find it all over the place through the online retailers, but good luck finding a review. It's Italian, from Galatea, produced by Tenuta Arpineto. This website is the best I've ever been able to do, and keep in mind, internet search is my job. (And it's a job I am damn good at, by the way.)

So here I was, bragging about my favorite wine, this brilliant and obscure sangiovese no one has ever heard of, to my wine industry buddy. In a terribly misguided attempt to impress him, I helped him track down a bottle to try. I patiently waited for him to tell me what he, a sort of wine genius/savant, thought of it.

"It's good," he told me. "It's very good. A bit corked, but still good."

I had no idea what he meant. And, well, I'm new to this, he knows that, and he's been a great teacher. I can't fake knowing what I'm doing with him. If I ever tried, he would know. I know this. I've never tried.

I had no idea what "corked" meant, but I already knew it was a bad thing. I already knew he was just being nice to me. My heart broke a little bit.

A deep breath, then, "I don't know what 'corked' means, not the way you're using it."

And so he explained it. How the wine had soaked into the cork a bit too far. How the top of the cork had been pushed up above the glass rim. And why it was bad: that it means it's been stored in heat, that the cork quality wasn't that great to begin with, that it's been oxidized and how that's just not supposed to happen.

"But it's still pretty good stuff," he tried to console me. "It would have been tight if it had been stored properly, but this comes out of the bottle just about perfect."

No one had to explain to me what "tight" meant. I figured that one out on my own.

Sigh.

I know this conversation. It's the same speech we girls give guys after a, uh, disappointing night. You know, the "It's okay, it happens to everyone, and I still love you" speech. My beloved Pertinello was, ah, how can I put this politely?

Not "up" to par.

So I checked my own bottles. (I keep it in stock. I currently have too many bottles, actually, a customer service fiasco which will probably spawn another entry someday.) Sure enough, one was raised well above the lip, the bulging foil straining like the flesh of a fat guy in a Speedo.

Did you feel a piece of my heart die there? This was a seriously heartbreaking revelation.

And yet, here I am, draining a corked bottle of Pertinello as I write this entry. When I opened the bottle tonight, the cork wasn't bulging, but it was so soaked through and disintegrated that it broke in half as it was extracted. There's a good metaphor for real life in this story, I'm sure. Probably several, actually. But it doesn't keep me from wondering what this 2003 Pertinello would be like, if only...

Whatever. Flawed as the bottling may be, I love it anyway. Bottoms up.