Guido Marsella was the first producer of Fiano di Avellino to market his wine after a year of aging in the cellar. The normal practice for the Irpinia producers, was to take out the wine just after the harvest, after a minimum stabilization time of the wine in steel. Marsella, with justifiable obstinacy, lays claims to being the first to do so, which has elevated him to inspire many other names that followed. And now, his Fiano comes out not after one, but two years after the harvest.
For those who have had the pleasure of knowing him, Marsella is as fiery as a bull. He reminisces with bitterness the first failures, fuelled by those people who advised him against putting an already “aged” Fiano on the market. And with satisfaction, combined with a maniacal precision in the hygiene and management of the winery, he shows visitors an incredible steel vat, which looks like a brick tower, in which he places the entire product. Why, you may ask? It is aged all together, and it arrives uniformly, either to the taster, the critic or the simple consumer, without the slightest imperfection due to resting in different containers.
The vineyards are located on the Fiano side which, for years now, is proving to be the best-performing for verticality, minerality and longevity. It is the area of Summonte, at the foot of Mount Partenio, at altitudes of more than 600 metres, up to about 800. The terroir is volcanic, with rocky and clayey inserts, steep, rugged, of Vesuvius origin. A natural setting for exceptional wines.
Fiano di Marsella has a fixed acidity of about 7 g/l and a total dry residue of about 20 g/l. Impersonal figures, maybe, but they describe an incredibly vertical white wine for acidity and it is extremely structured: characteristics that, combined, not only give the product a marked personality, but also guarantee a great longevity. The Fiano di Marsella from the first harvest of the 2000s, not by chance, are unusually pleasant, an indication of the fact that they can still surprise for decades.
Delicate straw-coloured, without excesses of gold - Fiano di Marsella has an innate longevity quality, without the aid of oak - it expresses a pleasant consistency to the eye. The bouquet, even when young, expresses a citrus puff that immediately convinces and suggests its future ageing. It's a wine to wait for, as displayed not only by the aromatic fragrance of the Mediterranean scrub, but above all by its typical smoky note, which is markedly mineral and volcanic. Its verticality, which is uncompromisingly territorial, returns upon the palate. What is sensed here is an extraordinary dynamism and a sharp freshness, which however do not hide the authoritative structure of this top-notch wine.
