STING AND TRUDIE’S PICK OF THEIR OWN WINES
TENUTA IL PALAGIO, SISTER MOON, TUSCANY
Sister Moon is Il Palagio’s flagship wine, a blend of Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, matured for 12 months in French barriques.
Sting has written five albums at Il Palagio. His recording studio is just above the winery. ‘It feels that creativity is in that space,’ he says. ‘If I need a pick-me-up, I can just pop downstairs to take a sip of wine.
‘I find it a great tool, wine, for loosening the tightness in the brain. For millennia human beings have found this to be the case, no? Wine encourages stories to be told. We are more adept at telling, at listening, after a glass of wine.’
Sister Moon, he says, ‘encourages contemplation: it’s rich and mysterious. ‘Great wines, I realise, like great songs, have a narrative – a beginning, a middle and an end – and afterwards you will still be thinking about them, they will persist.
‘The name for the wine is the title of a song I wrote in the 1980s. I feel so close to nature here. Having grown up in an industrial area, nature continues to be a marvel to me: that things grow! I think I must have been well out of my teens before I had even eaten anything that wasn’t from a tin.’
TENUTA IL PALAGIO, BACI SULLA BOCCA, TUSCANY
On Valentine’s Day this year, Sting and Trudie released a new wine from Il Palagio: Baci sulla Bocca (‘Kisses on the Lips’). It’s their first collaboration with Riccardo Cotarella, and their first white wine. Made from 100% Vermentino, the wine is unoaked, crisp and fruit-driven.
‘Trudie is a great fan of white wine,’ says Sting. ‘When temperatures really soar in the summer in Tuscany, we would reach for a white from Friuli in the northeast of Italy – wines such as Venica & Venica’s Ronco delle Mele Sauvignon Blanc.’
‘We wanted to produce our own white,’ adds Trudie. ‘An invigorating wine, with lip-smacking freshness. Vermentino is gaining status as an excellent variety in Tuscany – bright, flavoursome and fruity, but also with the potential for ageing.
‘It was the perfect match. The name was inspired by the pandemic. After more than a year of Covid restrictions, of covering our faces with masks, we wanted this wine to be a call for romance to return: for intimacy and connection.’
Grape variety: Glera, picked in the foothills of the Dolomite mountains, Italy
Vinification: off-skin at a controlled temperature of 18 °C for around 8 days. Slow second refermentation at 14-15 °C. Sugar residue: 12 g/l. Alcohol: 11%. Pairings: perfect as an aperitif and ideal with fish, this wine goes particularly well with hors d’oeuvres and light first courses.