Frank Cornelissen Munjebel Rosso 2019

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What seems like a long wait for such a rare wine, Frank Cornelissen’s Munjebel Rosso 2017 is finally here in the UK! Munjebel Rosso is a full-bodied and traditional expression of Nerello Mascalese and of old sapling vines from Etna. It is produced in fibreglass tanks, without additives. Magma Rosso is Frank’s “Grand Vin”, produced from only Nerello Mascalese grapes in Contrada Barbabecchi – an excellent red wine that’s made with Old Style Artisanal Methods. The Munjebel Rosso has intense mineral and fruity aromas that emerge from long and complex flavours.

All Frank’s wines contain a very small quantity of preservatives which requires storage below 16°C. Frank’s farming philosophy is based on the goal to understand nature and to avoid all treatments whatsoever in the vineyard, orchard and surroundings, in which they succeeded even in difficult vintages such as 2004 and 2005. Unfortunately, there will always be the vintages where treatments with copper sulphate and sulphur are necessary to avoid vines from dying like 2013 and 2015.

Frank began collecting wines with his father, and the first wines he bought were a mixed case of 1972 Domaine de la Romanée Conti. Despite the cost, he was hooked. Since then ‘wine has never left me’, he says. Later, he became a wine agent, and talking regularly with winemakers he became interested in the rather philosophical question of what wine actually is.

Over 20 years of tasting, he found that he liked wines that were an expression of culture, that is more evolved, and which express the soil more than the fruit. He decided that he wanted wines with a more natural approach and that he’d like to make natural wine without any treatments in the vineyard, winemaking or bottling, with full complexity and minimal interactions with mother nature by observing and learning the ways in which you should grow vines amongst the volcanic rock.

The farm and vineyards are located in Sicily, in the Northern Valley of the active volcano Mount Etna. Although Etna has a tradition in the high-density plantation of wines, they search to reduce monoculture and have interplanted various local fruit varieties and keep bees to regain a complex ecosystem, which follows the movements of mother earth. The vineyards are old ungrafted sapling vines that are more than 60 years old, from the vineyards called Chiusa Spagnolo, Monte Colla, Porcaria, Crasa, Piano Daini in Mount Etna’s north slope. Buckwheat is used for rebalancing soils low on organic material without recourse to industrial compost, especially important when preparing the land for a new vineyard plantation. As bread is a daily need and the origin of the most nutritious cereals are in Sicily, Frank Cornelissen was drawn to produce this obvious and classic farming product, abandoned many years ago in the Etna region, as buckwheat helps regenerate the soil. His ultimate goal is to evolve towards a self-sustainable agricultural reality based on the trilogy of Mediterranean farming (cereals, olive oil and wine) without exploiting Mother Earth, to produce whilst also returning, evolving towards an equilibrium of the land, which will take a lot of time before achieving. They avoid soil-tilling as much as possible, although this depends on the vintage and the quantity of water over the winter (recovering of the vines after the production cycle). These single Contrada (cru) and vintage wines are from various superb terroirs between 600-1.000 metres altitude.

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