The Perfect $25 Bottle of Wine | Exploring Wine with Tim Fish | Blogs | Wine Spectator

The Perfect $25 Bottle of Wine | Exploring Wine with Tim Fish | Blogs | Wine Spectator



Tim Fish is Hoosier-born and living the good life in Sonoma - boy, do I envy him!

Celebrity Wine – Sting’s Casino delle vie 2009

I was fortunate to welcome the New Year 2015 with good friends and good wine. One celebratory bottle was also a celebrity bottle – a product of rock star and 2014 Kennedy Center honoree Sting’s 900-acre Il Palagio estate and winery in Tuscany, Italy.  Three of the Tuscan reds are named after Sting’s greatest hits – Message In  A Bottle, Sister moon, When we dance – and the fourth, our bottle, is named after one of the properties on the estate – Casino delle vie which translates to either “little house by the roads” or “the muddling of the ways” according to the website www.palagioproducts.com. (Note – the labels are as stated on the website, i.e. Sister moon, not Sister Moon.)

Tenuta Il Palagio Casino delle vie 2009 IGT is almost 100% Sangiovese and rated 90 by Wine Spectator. Average cost is $33 per bottle but I paid $40 this summer at a charming art gallery/ wine store in Douglas, Michigan which has as much to do with locale as limited US availability. This is only the second release from the estate purchased in 1999 and restored through biodynamic farming techniques. Wife, actor, producer, and philanthropist Trudie Styler donates a percentage of the estate’s sale of the wine, Il Palagio olive oil, and Thousand Flowers honey to environmental causes including the Soil Association and the Rainforest Foundation.  

Sting & Trudie are relative newcomers to celebrity winemaking which could be credited to Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States. The grapes he brought back from Europe over 200 years ago are still on view at Monticello, Virginia and the estate gift shop sells a non-family related selection of Jefferson Vineyards wine. Many celebrity wineries have been handed down to younger generations, such as California’s Fess Parker Winery established in 1987, whose labels bear a coonskin cap in recognition of Disney Legend Parker’s portrayals of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett.  Others are as new as the first six thousand bottles of the 2012 Miraval Rose from Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s Chateau Miraval estate partnership with the Perrin family of Chateau de Beaucastel in Provence, France.   

My group was enthusiastic about Casino delle vie 2009’s aroma, color, legs, and most importantly its taste but I could not find it reviewed by anyone of note (other than “moi” to quote Miss Piggy). Sting’s Sister moon 2009 (40% Sangiovese, 30% Merlot, 30% Cabernet Sauvignon) was reviewed in BuzzFeed “The Best And Worst Celebrity Wines” and was rated “Best Dad Birthday Gift” with 2 ½ out of 3 stars. If I can find Casino delle vie again, I will buy it. Ditto for the rest of the rock stars’ greatest hits. And I will hope for “Desert Rose” and “Fields of Gold” to become wine as well as song.