The 2006 Vigna San Valentino offers up sweet spices, flowers and red berries on a mid-weight, silky frame. Soft and fragrant throughout, the wine offers lovely balance and an accessible, open personality. Some very slight oxidative notes appear in the glass suggesting this won’t be a terribly long-lived wine, but it should offer fine drinking for at least a handful of years. The San Valentino is 70% Sangiovese, 15% Sagrantino and 15% Montepulciano d’Abruzzo. In 2006 the DOC tasting commission rejected the Vigna San Valentino for its lack of color and oxidative tones, which seems a bit harsh in my view, even if those qualities are present. Bea opted to release the wine as an IGT and lowered the price by nearly 50%. Anticipated maturity: 2010-2016. Giampiero Bea is one of Umbria’s leading producers. The wines are made in a totally natural, non-interventionalist style, with no temperature control in fermentation, only natural yeasts and no added sulfites. At their best, these are wonderfully pure, expressive wines loaded with character. Because Bea lets nature runs its course, the wines are highly vintage sensitive. In great years the wines are typically fabulous but in weaker vintages the wines tend to reflect both the positive and negative attributes of those years to a higher degree than most wines these days. Whether that is a good or bad thing depends on one’s point of view, but there is no mistaking that when Bea has ideal conditions to work with his wines are stellar. Importer: Rosenthal Wine Merchants, Pine Plains, NY; tel. (800) 910-1990