TN: 2019 Frank Cornelissen Susucaru Rosato (Italy, Sicily, Terre Siciliane)

  • 2019 Frank Cornelissen Susucaru Rosato - Italy, Sicily, Terre Siciliane (12/15/2020)
    Very vibrant strawberry and raspberry saigneed juice…fleshed with cherry skins…sour tarted up with blood orange/cranberry acidity, slight skin tannins…sun kissed brightness with a little haze…crazy exotics of mulled spices, cinnamon stick, dried herbs…a juniper berry bite…pretty rose petal and cherry blossom florals. What’s really cool is the gravelly density of minerals in this! Somewhat crunchy and saline minerality that gives more substance to the light and bright fruit. SO unique and interesting…screams Summer…yet I’m enjoying it at 50 degree weather! Love it! (94 pts.)

Posted from CellarTracker

I hate those corks.

That’s all.

Good bottles of this wine are sooo good … pretty much exactly as you describe, Brian. … but, the bad bottles … {shudder}.

p.s.: I hate those corks, too.

I’m a bit gun shy with Frank. I’m past the years of brett problems, know he’s conquered that - I’m just talking stylistically. Last few years I’ve just not felt the greatness everyone projects.

I think the Rosato has retained much of the original style. The Rosso not so much.

That’s what makes them SO fun…I like me some FUNK in the trunk! [wow.gif]

Could you elaborate a bit? What original style / how?

The Rosso, previously called Contadino, was as funky as the rosato. Not so much anymore.

Righty. I’ve had the Rosato a few times and, to me, they’ve never been particularly funky. Having had many Cornelissen wines always from the very early vintages, the contemporary Cornelissen wines are just not funky at all. I haven’t had Rosato and Rosso side-by-side so I can take your word for Rosato being more funky than Rosso, but they both are remarkably clean for what I’ve grown to expect from Frank.

And actually, in the early days, Contadino was the “rosato” in the sense that both the original Contadino and current-day Susucaru Rosato are not rosé wines, but instead blends of white and red grape varieties co-fermented with the skins for a week or two. Only later on Cornelissen eliminated the red varieties from Contadino and then introduced Susucaru Rosato as a replacement. This new, all-red Contadino then became Susucaru Rosso.

And unlike the Susucaru Rosato, the original white/red-blend Contadino was often really funky!

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I love those corks, unpopular opinion. I’m planning on opening this bottle this weekend. I drink a single bottle of this every year-- it’s one of the rare natty hypbeast wines, along with maybe Pfifferling’s L’Anglore set and the Hiyu collection, that I think actually holds up year after year.

Glad to hear you had a good experience with the '19. It seems to me like Frank is getting a tighter hold on flaws, and his wines have certainly ‘cleaned up’ over the years. A few of my friends who thirst for a flaw or two have lamented this fact.

Definitely! Based on my experience from vintages 2006 onward, the style has cleaned up noticeably. I had a pause of a few years I did not taste any Cornelissen wines and when I returned to them, they were almost unrecognizably clean! Definitely not what I had grown to expect of them.

But then again, I’ve understood he’s not as extremist as he was in the early “nothing added” days - now the wines might actually see some SO2! And while I can tolerate quite a bit of funk, too much is too much - I always prefer to drink a wine that’s not funky but drinkable to a wine that’s undrinkably funky.

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I love the Susucaru Rosato. Real taste of summer.

I like his new and “cleaner” wines. I drink a lot of “natural wines” (god i hate that term), but i will always prefer a cleaner less funky style to a dominant funky wine. But i do think we are moving towards more stable and better crafted wines in the natural wine world overall. But thats for another thread.

one thing i have always wondered was how he winded up aging in epoxy tanks (didn’t he start with amphorae?)…seems about as ‘natural’ as the closure.

A lot of Cornelissen’s winemaking career over the last 20 years has been a bit go-fund-me style…a genius for sure. Not sure there has ever been another winemaker who managed to sell less for more

Can you expand on this? Has he been asking third parties for money without product in exchange? I’m confused.

Got up to like 80 today! Calls for this wine again…

Pretty consistent showing. A little cleaner with less funk…but totally bright and refreshing. Would love to get a bubbly out of this!

Open enough bottles and you’ll come across some. [snort.gif]

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This must be one of the producers with the highest gap in appreciation I have ever seen. Too bad the prices he fetches turn me off taking a flyer and trying for myself. The other thread on Cornelissen made me very skeptical…

I don’t know what kind of prices you’ve seen, but around here the prices have been around 30€ for the entry-level wines, around 40-50€ for Munjebels and around 50-60€ for single-vineyards, apart from Magma. When they’re good, they’re damn worth the price. And I think Cornelissen’s wines have been becoming cleaner and more “conventional” by the year, so they seem to be more reliable as well.