One of the pleasures of shopping and belonging to a wine club of a small independent merchant is that you are not going to see the offerings from the chains and the corner markets.  The independent merchant has to work harder, just by the very definition.   When I was a clothier, I would lament about how the department stores could sell stuff by accident, since they tend to avoid educated sales people for low-priced help that they can either mold into the corporate persona or dismiss rather quickly.  The independent slowly nurtures his staff and his clientele slowly, but surely.  At the Fine Wine Source in Livonia, I won’t find the wines that are produced in bulk, and in the case of the monthly wine club selections I will find wines that I may never had heard about, but that is OK, because if you are like me, you can be a creature of habit and reach for something that you know will be wonderful.

Societa Agricola Le Siepi di San Giovanni Sangiovese Superiore di Romagna DOC 2012 was the second offering for the month of August.  If you are like me, you may have never heard of this wine, but the estate of Le Siepi di San Giovanni is located in the Northern Apennines in the Santerno River Valley near Bologna in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy.  The Emilia-Romagna region is big and it is the only region in Italy that has an East and West Coast.  The Estate is owned by the Zuffa family and was started in 1960.  The Estate is forty hectares, but only eleven hectares are devoted to vineyards.  The wine is pure Sangiovese and was manually harvested.  I could not find out how long the wine aged for, but I was surprised to see that it is a 2012 and I have to surmise that it has to do with the fact that it is Sangiovese Superiore (even though I cannot find any rules pertaining to it).

The wine is touted as being intensely ruby red in color with fresh notes of mulberry and floral notes on the nose.  Slightly tannic with a peppery aftertaste on the palate, so all of you that know me, know that is not my way of describing wines.  Since the wine has some aging already, it should be ready to drink, and I find that Sangiovese pairs with plenty of dishes, at least all of the food I normally eat, like pastas and red meats.  So, I will give my notes later, after it has been uncorked.