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The Life and Times of “Daddy Wine”

Ottavio tasted like a risk. Bottled by Cascina ‘Tavijn’s Nadia Verrua, a winemaker based in Piedmont, Italy, the wine reminded me of a mixed-media painting in which all of the materials laid out on the canvas just barely come together to form a single image: a mess that somehow works.

The first sip prickled my mouth. It was so dry, the wine sucked the moisture out of my tongue like I had flipped the switch on a vacuum hose placed between my lips. A combination of raspberries, apple cider vinegar, and cherries peeked through the tannins, but the rugged texture prevailed over the fruit and acidity. It made my mouth thirsty, like I had just walked for a mile in the desert. You would think a wine so robust would be heavy, with a deep, dark crimson complexion, but it drank light, appearing ruby pink in the glass.  While drinking through the bottle, fruitiness muscled its way onto my palette. By the last sip, the disparate elements of the wine seemed to finally find balance.

Cascina 'Tavijn Ottavio

Ottavio’s mixture of extremes, the mouthful of red fruit and bone-dry tannins, made for a head-turning taste and tactile experience, but the wine seemed, to me, like a haphazard success, a risk that paid off by a stroke of luck, not by design. 

Verrua made Ottavio with Grignolino, a grape planted and appreciated in Piedmont and almost nowhere else. I had never tasted something like it before, and I loved it so much I bought Ottavio again to bring to a party. One of my friends dubbed it “daddy wine” because Verrua named the wine after her dad — the name has stuck!

Then, throughout five months I continued to buy Ottavio and gave it to friends or drank it at home. I bought one bottle to store and open on a rainy day. Cascina ‘Tavijn’s other wines appeared at Irving Bottle (my nearby wine store) and I tried a few of them — Bandita, a bold and fruit-forward Barbera; 68, an easy-drinking blend of Barbera and Ruché grapes; and, Teresa, a heavy wine with Ruché grapes that reminded me of Robitussin and black currants. 

Cascina ‘Tavijn 68
Cascina ‘Tavijn Teresa

I opened my “rainy day” Ottavio, finally, six months after first trying it and a few months after trying many other wines, and I was disappointed. The fullness I picked up on when I first tried it in the summer had dissipated. No more of that pulverizing dryness. It still had a rough backbone, tannins and an equal measure of acidity, but cheerful fruit flavors dominated the first sip and the last. It was less aggressive, more like a table wine you could chug down with ease. I still enjoyed it; it was delicious, but different, not the Ottavio that smacked me six months ago.

All of this led me to a conundrum. Did the wine change or did I change? The Ottavio I tried in the summer, six months ago, went bad if I didn’t drink it by the end of the night. Did the wine stabilize? I also drank, like, dozens of different wines since first opening it, so maybe my tongue had grown wiser over time. Maybe I was just bored of it. Or, maybe, what I had loved about it initially were actually all of its flaws, and what I drank most recently was Ottavio the way it was meant to be, after it had aged and had become “ready to drink.” An old school sommelier would probably say the Ottavio from the summer was so full of flaws, it was the epitome of “garbage” natural wine. 

What’s most likely is the wine changed, and my palette changed, too, and it was time for me to move on. Whatever the case, I’ve lost interest in drinking Ottavio again, but my experience with it over the course of a half-year seems emblematic of what it’s like getting into natural wine. 

I would recommend daddy wine to anyone.

  • Producer: Cascina ‘Tavijn
  • Grape varieties: Grignolino
  • Region: Piedmont
  • Country: Italy
  • Taste words: Raspberries, roses, bitter cherries, apple cider vinegar, dry dry dry, changeable
  • A temperamental, enigmatic father figure who goes on time out for a few months and comes back changed into a cheerful, decidedly more easy-going guy.
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Cherries in a Leather Jacket

Pācina’s “Il Secondo” is bloody fruit splattered on black leather. If it were music, it would be Black Sabbath. Every sip is a study of contrasts. Strawberries intermingle with gasoline. Elegance flirts with chaos. At first the wine quakes in your mouth with such animated, angry effervescence, it’s like the screams of a death metal band, but then the texture softens to fine leather, and it feels like velvet is coating your tongue. 

Although the wine may seem haphazard, “Il Secondo” is the work of experts, a third-generation winemaker family who grow and bottle Sangiovese in the center of the Chianti appellation of Tuscany, Italy. 

A Chianti is the kind of wine ordered at expensive Italian restaurants by middle-aged suburban couples who did cocaine in the 1980s and listen to Fleetwood Mac on plush Chesterfield sofas. Chiantis had a fabulous public relations campaign in America 30 years ago, when fancy pasta restaurants displayed the wines in straw-wrapped bottles, called fiascos, on their shelves, and Hannibal Lector said he ate someone’s organs paired with “the finest Chianti” in Silence of the Lambs. 

“Il Secondo” doesn’t taste like that kind of Chianti. Those Chiantis have strawberry and cherry tart tones, but they lack of liveliness of Pācina’s wine. Pācina doesn’t have the “Chianti” appellation stamp because they opt out of following the designation’s rules, and yet, Pācina has made wine in the region since the 1960s, and their estate dates back to 900 AD. You can’t say their wine doesn’t have a sense of place because they’ve been in the place for over a thousand years. It has energy and a personality of its own. It’s not “Chianti;” it’s “Pācina.” 

My appreciation for “Il Secondo” is also rooted in some nostalgia. Although the wine’s strawberry, cherry, and smoky flavors loom largest on the palate, the gasoline and leather hints swirling in the mix make me remember something from my childhood. 

My mother used to drive an orange Volkswagen beetle that smelled like an old gas station. Its stick shift was a chrome rod with a black bulb on top. The car’s metal interior was scuffed, its glossy shine long worn out. CD case stickers for The Beatles, Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, and Tool covered the glove compartment. I was too short to look out the window, and my small body swayed and shook with the car as it bumped down the highway. I would sometimes fall asleep with my mouth open on the car’s leather seats and wake up with my face wet from drool, a toxic taste in my mouth. 

I remembered falling asleep in my mother’s Volkswagen and waking up, tasting the car, when I sipped “Il Secondo” for the first time. I suppose this doesn’t read like the most flattering way to describe a wine. “It tasted like an old car.” But I love the warmth I feel in my body when I think about the endless road trips in my mother’s ridiculous, orange Volkswagen. 

When wine is unpredictable, when the first sip confounds my expectations, and its flavors reach beyond the typical boundaries of fruit and spice, it helps me recall sensory experiences I had long forgotten. 

  • Producer: Pācina
  • Grape varieties: Sangiovese
  • Region: Tuscany
  • Country: Italy
  • Taste words: Strawberries, cherries, tart, leather, smoke, tar, gasoline, effervescent, unhinged
  • A pissed-off gothic princess on prom night serves her friends a strawberry tart from Hell.