Vintus

Antonio Galloni tweets about Petrolo Olive Oil – “one of his favorites”. Petrolo’s oil is used by, among others, Naked Chef Jamie Oliver, and it has an outstanding reputation.  See here for the full tweet, or just below:

Petrolo 2011 olive oil arrived today, one of my favorites and my first 2011 oil, excited to check it out tonite…

On August 20, 2011, wine critic Antonio Galloni talks of his travels in Tuscany on eRobertParker.com.  Galloni had the chance to taste the grapes and walk through three great Merlot vineyards.  Check out his comments on Petrolo’s Galatrona in his post below.

“On Thursday Tua Rita was harvesting the last of their old vine Merlot for Redigaffi. We will have a video up in a few days. Further north in Bolgheri (about 45 mins away by car) I walked through several of the Merlot parcels at Ornellaia used for Masseto. Here the fruit was much more backward and probably won’t be picked for another 3-4 weeks. It is amazing how different the raw fruit is in these vineyards and in the various sub-parcels. You could spend an entire lifetime trying to understand the subtleties.

James Suckling tastes the two most recent vintages in bottle of Petrolo’s Galatrona with owner Luca Sanjust.  He awards the Petrolo Galatrona his No. 10 Best Collectible Wine of Tuscany.  James says the pure Merlot has class and texture with vivid fruit and soft velvety tannins.  Here are his tasting notes:

“2009 Petrolo Toscana Galatrona: Amazing aromas of black truffles, crushed blackberries and dark chocolate. Dried flowers too. Full-bodied, with wonderful fruit that is layered and gorgeous. The finish is fruity, long and stylish. Give it three years to come together. Best after 2013. 97 points.”

“2008 Petrolo Toscana Galatrona: This shows lots of smoky and meaty aromas with black olives and brown sugar. Balsamic too! It’s full-bodied and velvety with a beautiful finish. Why wait? 95 points.”

Click here (subscription only) to watch the video of them tasting the wines together and learn what Luca’s favorite vintages of Galatrona are.

It’s the 2011 harvest of Merlot for Petrolo’s cult Galatrona. Luca Sanjust writes – “We have started the harvest of the Merlot’s grapes for Galatrona. Everything is fine, spectacoular weather. Grapes look great and I think and belive we will have also in 2011 another gorgeous version of Galatrona!!!” See the picture below.

Another piece on British Prime Minister David Cameron’s stay at Petrolo, this one focusing on Chef Jamie Oliver’s connection to Petrolo.  Read here for more.

The British Prime Minister is currently vacationing at Petrolo, as reported by the Telegraph, the Guardian, and a host of other British publications.

Check out this quote from the Guardian:

“At Villa Petrolo in the Tuscan province of Arezzo there is excitement over the imminent arrival of David Cameron and his party for their two-week summer holiday, but also a degree of trepidation. Luca Sanjust, the head of the family that owns the place, said it was “an honour” that Cameron had chosen it for his holiday, but among his staff there were mixed feelings because of memories of the last prime ministerial visit. This was the one last summer of the French prime minister, François Fillon, and his family, who arrived at Villa Petrolo with a retinue of 40 security men and a fleet of French cars.

“It was overdone,” said one resident of the Petrolo estate. “The guards bugged everything, even potted plants in the garden. And nobody was allowed anywhere near the villa, not even members of the Sanjust family.” As well as the French security team there were two vanloads of Italian carabinieri parked permanently at the front and back entrances to the villa, both to protect it from intruders and to provide escorts for the French prime minister if he should decide to go out.

The word has been going around here – though I’ve no idea whether it’s true or not – that David Cameron’s support staff is going to be even larger than the French one. All the nearby hotels are said to have been booked out by No 10 to house security people, secretaries and other personnel.”

Click here to read the full article.

A recent article on the Thomson Reuters web site lauds Petrolo winemaker Luca Sanjust for sending a lifeline to Africa by contributing a portion of the sale of Petrolo wines to the DREAM project to fight HIV and AIDs.

“‘This is about life, it is not about business,” said Sanjust, 51, whose wines for the project include his Galatrona and Torrione labels, contributing tens of thousands of euros to the programme each year.

“‘Wine to us is sacred. Life is sacred. I think the people who are doing this work in Africa are living saints,” Sanjust said at a recent benefit and wine auction for the programme.’

Read the article here.

Petrolo has joined forces with other leading Italian wine producers to help fight AIDS in Africa with the Wine for Life project to help DREAM, an intitiative run by Italy’s Comunità di Sant’Egidio. For every bottle of Galatrona and Torrione sold, Petrolo donates 50 Euro cents to the cause.  DREAM, short for Drug Resource Enhancement Against AIDS and Malnutrition, focuses on administering antiretroviral treatment through centers in Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Nigeria, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroun.

Petrolo’s Luca Sanjust was featured in a recent article from Reuters about the project, and had this to say:

“It’s all about love, taking the love that we receive from nature, in the form of wine, and giving it back to the earth, in the form of helping our needy brothers and sisters in Africa,” said Luca Sanjust, owner of the Petrolo winery in Tuscany.

“This is about life, it is not about business,” said Sanjust, 51, whose wines for the project include his Galatrona and Torrione labels, contributing tens of thousands of euros to the programme each year.

“Wine to us is sacred. Life is sacred. I think the people who are doing this work in Africa are living saints,” Sanjust said at a recent benefit and wine auction for the programme.

The full article is here.

As though the 98 points from Wine Spectator weren’t enough, the Galatrona 2007 has doubled down with a whopping 98 points from Wine Enthusiast.

Petrolo Galatrona 2007
“Galatrona is an opulent, gorgeous wine (from the excellent 2007 vintage) that shows the very best of Merlot in Italy. Thanks to a unique growing climate located between Florence, Siena and Arezzo, as well as extremely low vineyard yields, the wine feels soft and velvety and imparts long-lasting flavors of black cherry, lively spice, tobacco and cigar box. The true beauty of Galatrona is that it shows all the passion and enthusiasm of its very talented winemaker.” 98 and Cellar Selection, Wine Enthusiast