August 2026
The Month of
The Turning
August is the month the vineyard changes its mind. Somewhere in the heat the vines stop growing and start ripening — veraison, the French word for the turn, when the fruit colors up and the whole plant leans toward the harvest to come. This month’s three reds all sit on that hinge between summer and autumn: a southern-Italian Aglianico built for the everyday table, a Piedmont Nebbiolo that is the latest of the noble grapes to ripen, and a single-slope Etna red where the volcano itself decides when the turn arrives.
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01
WEEKDAY · UNDER $20
FEUDI DI SAN GREGORIO RUBRATO AGLIANICO
2021 · Irpinia DOC, Campania, Italy
Dark cherry and wild raspberry lead, edged with dried herbs, tobacco leaf, and a savory mineral snap. Aglianico is the south’s great late-ripener, among the last of Italy’s reds to come in — picked deep into October, when the slopes around Avellino have already turned — and even in this everyday bottling it keeps the grape’s firm tannic spine and dark, savory pull. Feudi di San Gregorio led the modern revival of Irpinia, the inland highland where Aglianico has grown since Greek antiquity; founded in 1986 as, in its own telling, the sixth winery in a region that now counts some 140, it is the largest family estate in the south. Rubrato is the house’s weekday red — 100% Aglianico raised in steel, structured and savory but ready for a Tuesday table. At just under twenty dollars, it is the rare everyday bottle with a region-defining producer behind it.
TASTING NOTES
Dark cherry, wild raspberry, dried herb, tobacco
PAIRS WITH
Lamb ragù, aged pecorino
GRAPE
Aglianico (100%)
DRINK WINDOW
2025–2030
Vintage Context
Campania’s 2021 was a warm, dry Mediterranean year, but Irpinia is the cool exception in the south — a highland of 400 metres and up, where wide day-to-night temperature swings hold the acidity and stretch the season late. Aglianico ripens so slowly here that harvest often runs into late October or November, well after the rest of Italy has finished. Feudi draws Rubrato from across those inland hills and raises it in steel rather than oak, keeping the vintage’s dark fruit and firm structure in front. It is a warm year read through a cool-climate lens: ripe but savory, structured but ready to pour tonight.
Build the Board
via Murray’s Cheese
A weeknight board for the south’s slow-ripening red
Caciocavallo · Soppressata · Fig jam · Cerignola olives · Friselle
02
SATURDAY POUR · $20–$50
VIETTI PERBACCO NEBBIOLO DELLE LANGHE
2022 · Langhe Nebbiolo DOC, Piedmont, Italy
Pale garnet in the glass, then the classic Nebbiolo signal: rose petal and red cherry over tar and a thread of woodsmoke. The tannins are firm and the acid is bright, the twin scaffolds that let this grape age for decades, though Perbacco wears them lightly enough to open tonight. The name is an old Italian oath, roughly “by Bacchus,” and the wine earns the exclamation: declassified fruit from Vietti’s Barolo and Barbaresco sites, serious Nebbiolo pedigree at a fraction of the flagship price. Growers call Nebbiolo the last grape off the vine, the one that keeps everyone waiting until the autumn fog settles over the Langhe — the nebbia that may lend the grape its name. Barolo’s little brother, and the most honest introduction to the family you can buy.
TASTING NOTES
Rose petal, red cherry, tar, woodsmoke
PAIRS WITH
Braised short ribs, tajarin with sage butter
GRAPE
Nebbiolo (100%)
DRINK WINDOW
2025–2032
Vintage Context
Piedmont’s 2022 was another hot, dry vintage, with summer drought that tested the vines and pushed sugars up early in many varieties. Nebbiolo’s saving grace is its patience: because it ripens so late, it caught the cooler, steadier weather of autumn, which let the tannins mature and the aromatics hold. For an early-drinking bottling like Perbacco, the warm year is a gift: Nebbiolo with its structure intact but its edges already softened, ready sooner than a cooler vintage would allow.
Build the Board
via Murray’s Cheese
A Saturday board for Barolo’s little brother
Castelmagno DOP · Bresaola · Mostarda di Cremona · Taggiasca olives · Grissini
03
SPLURGE · $50+
BENANTI CONTRADA DAFARA GALLUZZO ETNA ROSSO
2021 · Etna Rosso DOC, Sicily, Italy
Pale ruby, and deceptively delicate for a wine grown on a live volcano: red cherry and pomegranate, dried thyme, a twist of blood orange, and beneath it all the crushed-rock savor that Etna presses into everything it grows. Nerello Mascalese behaves like a mountain Pinot Noir: light in color, high in acid, its tannins fine but insistent. The fruit comes from a single contrada, Dafara Galluzzo, on Etna’s cool north face at around 750 metres, where the season runs so long that pickers can still be working these slopes in November. Giuseppe Benanti revived serious Etna wine in 1988, and the estate he built works vines on all four of the volcano’s slopes, exactly to prove the point this bottle makes: a few hundred metres of elevation rewrite the ripening calendar. This is the turn toward harvest made structural — the mountain, not the month, decides when the grapes come in.
TASTING NOTES
Red cherry, pomegranate, blood orange, crushed rock
PAIRS WITH
Herb-roasted lamb, grilled porcini
GRAPE
Nerello Mascalese (100%)
DRINK WINDOW
2026–2036
Vintage Context
On Etna, the vintage is a local affair: the mountain makes its own weather, and elevation matters more than the calendar year. 2021 was a warm season across Sicily, but the high north-slope contrade like Dafara Galluzzo stay cool at night even in a hot summer, holding the acidity that gives these wines their nerve. The long hang time on the north face, where harvest can stretch toward November, let the fruit ripen slowly and the tannins fine down. Benanti bottles this contrada on its own to show exactly that: a single slope, read without blending, ripening on the volcano’s own clock.
Build the Board
via Murray’s Cheese
A splurge board for a red grown on a live volcano
Pecorino Siciliano · ’Nduja · Blood orange marmalade · Pantelleria caper berries · Sesame taralli
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Producer Spotlight
Nikolaihof
Wachau — Austria’s oldest winery, in no hurry to pick
In the Wachau, on a site that has grown wine since Roman soldiers held the Danube, the Saahs family has farmed biodynamically since 1971 — one of the longest unbroken runs on earth. Meet Nikolaihof, where the whole philosophy is patience: never rushing the turn toward harvest, and trusting the vine’s clock over the calendar’s.
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