2019 is the last vintage of Di Costanzo Farella. As of 2021, the fruit from this vineyard is going to another winery. Whilst this is sad news for followers of Farella, Massimo and Erin have signed off with a magnificent swan song.
Over the course of the last decade, Massimo and Erin di Costanzo have established their eponymous winery as one the brightest names in the Napa Valley. Of Italian descent, Massimo’s vision is to create wines of genuine energy, with the requisite tannic integrity to allow them to age for decades. He works a variety of single vineyard plots, from Coombsville to Moon Mountain, vinifying the wine according to traditional methods, with little reliance on technology. Singing the praises of site singularity is still a concept in its infancy in California, which makes Massimo’s ascendency all the more remarkable, and yet, with these 2019s, it would seem he has cemented Di Costanzo as one of the must have releases in the Californian calendar.
Read More“Massimo and Erin DiCostanzo turned out a breathtaking set of 2019s” writes Antonio Galloni. “The wines are ample, rich and classically built. Much of that comes from choosing sites that lend themselves to a style that is all about energy, but the wines are also impeccably crafted. I also had a chance to revisit the 2018s, which are every bit as captivating as they were last year. This was a memorable visit, to say the least.”
The flagship wine in the range is Farella, a magnificent bottling from the coolest end of the Valley. Powerful and deep with beams of structure and fabulous graphite-like minerality, it persists in the mouth for what feels like a minute or more yet has remarkable lift and definition. Awarding it 98/100 Galloni highlighted it as one of his picks of 2019; 24 wines were chosen as “wines of true distinction readers should be on the look for… the wines I would want to personally own most”. A fitting tribute in its final year.
The second single vineyard bottling Massimo produces comes from high up on Moon Mountain, an AVA nestled on the western flanks of the Mayacamas range, and thus technically in Sonoma. The wines grown up here at elevation have striking profiles and enormous aromatic complexity. Sadly produced in tiny quantities, Montecillo is an expressive, aromatically supercharged wine full of high altitude nerve and intensely iron rich minerality.
Finally, there’s DI CO, produced entirely from a single vineyard in the Oak Knoll district. Initially Massimo separated this as he felt certain qualities weren’t quite as refined as his top bottlings. And yet, as time goes, on, it is certain that this site has much to say. The wines here are powerful, dark fruited, intensely mineral, and take just as long as the other wines in the range to find full maturity. They may not have quite the finesse of the Di Costanzo bottlings, but they make up for it in sheer personality. The 2019, rated 93-95 by Galloni, is probably his finest effort to date.