The Girolamo Russo 2021 Etna Rosso San Lorenzo is a very exciting wine with so much energy and verve. It opens to lean-bodied concentration with a brilliant ruby shine. The wine shows a long array of wild fruit and tiny berry aromas backed by crushed white pepper and crushed stone. San Lorenzo is one of the most impressive interpretations of Etna. I highly recommend you try and cellar this wine.

Maybe the most classic interpretation of an Etna wine you will find, the Girolamo Russo 2020 Etna Rosso San Lorenzo sets the bar very high for all neighboring producers on the volcano. The wine is extremely elegant and nuanced with a filigree of wild berry, white cherry, mountain flower and campfire ash woven within its tight, silky texture. San Lorenzo is actually quite solid in terms of mouthfeel, despite the very light texture of its fruit weight.

Beautifully light and graceful as it pours from the bottle, this is another epic wine from Giuseppe Russo of Girolamo Russo. His 2018 Etna Rosso San Lorenzo is firm and structured, even more so than the other single-vineyard expressions from this vintage. The San Lorenzo parcel measures eight hectares at 730 to 770 meters in altitude and is planted to 70-year-old vines. The bouquet is detailed and fine, and it takes a minute or two to compose a list of adjectives to describe it. There is wild berry and blue flower for sure, and the wine fleshes out nicely with mineral aromas, smoke and tar. This release of 4,000 bottles is a journey under the volcano.

The 2017 Etna Rosso San Lorenzo is beautifully balanced and bright. Indeed, San Lorenzo is often my favorite single-vineyard expression from Beppe Russo, although I preferred some of the other expressions in this unique vintage. The wine shows elegance and purity, all clearly within the context of a warm growing season that produced overripe aromas in many of the red wines made on Etna. This expression holds back in terms of that overt ripeness, stopping cautiously at black fruit, sweet spice and volcanic ash. Pull this one out for a grilled veal or pork dinner.

I'm having a hard time choosing my favorite single-vineyard expression among this group of new releases from Giuseppe Russo. The 2016 Etna Rosso San Lorenzo, to me, is the most elegant and complete. It has most of the power of the Feudo di Mezzo (my other favorite) with some of the more interesting and wild aromas you get in the other wines. It's all packed into this very complete bottle. This wine is almost all Nerello Mascalese with a tiny part Nerello Cappuccio. Go in close and you will smell those crushed white pepper aromas that come from the Cappuccio. This wine might also be a touch more accessible overall.