2011

About Miani

Miani’s Enzo Pontoni stands head and shoulders above most of his winemaking peers — both literally and figuratively. The nearly seven-foot tall Pontoni towers... in the vineyard, but he knows his vines on a first-name basis, and as a result, he crafts some of the most hard-to-get wines in Italy’s Colli Orientali del Friuli. Enzo thinks each individual vine possesses its own microclimate, and he tends to his individual plants with individualized care, something that includes possibly the most assertive green harvests in all of Italy. Where other winemakers would leave several bunches of grapes on a vine, Enzo leaves one, maybe two. Where other winemakers would garner a few thousand bottles of wine from a plot, Enzo will get a few hundred. Famously reclusive and shy, Enzo owns only nine acres of vineyards but rents another 22, and he produces fewer than 800 cases a year, and that’s 800 total cases, spread across his various bottlings. Enzo works with a number of different varieties, from Chardonnay to Ribolla Gialla to Tocai Friulano to Sauvignon Blanc, but he also makes some evocative reds, including his Calvari — all of which inspire collectors to snap them up upon release. No matter the Miani wine, they’re extraordinarily rare, explosive, cult-inspiring, and delicious.