Buttafuoco is the name of a Consortium in Oltrepò Pavese. The full name of the Consortium is Il club del Buttafuoco Storico. Founded in 1996 by 11 young wine growers. Today 20 wineries are members of the group. Initially, the growers wanted to promote this special wine from a specific terroir between two rivers, the Versa and the Scuropasso. The soils here are impacted by the nearby Apennine mountain range and the Alps.

The area has a lot of history, in fact documents exist from the 1700s that mention great full bodied wines from this area. Buttafuoco is made from four indigenous grape varieties from Oltrepò Pavese: Croatina, Barberam Uva Raram and Unghetta di Canneto. The grapes have to come from a single vineyard which is listed on the label and must be harvested and fermented together.

The grapes for these wines must come from a group of municipalities: Broni, Canneto Pavese, Cigognola, Montescano, Stradella, and Petra de’Giorgi. The trellising system must be Guyot with a maximum of 15 buds on the canes. Moreover, Buttafuoco Storico spends a minimum of 12 months in oak and 6 months in the bottle before release, or at least 36 months from the harvest before it can be released.

As a wine, Buttafuoco is full bodied, with a serious structure, a well-knit texture, red and black berriy aromas, considerable tannins and a long and persistent finish. While it can be drunk upon release, it can also be laid down for 15-25 years.

The bottles of Buttafuoco for the special project in the picture above have a photo of a sailing ship known in Italian as a Veliero or sailing ship in relief on the glass bottle. There is a long explanation on their website why they have a sailing ship on the bottle. To summarize, the ship represents a boat that was named Buttafuoco during the time of the wars between the Austrians and the Piedmontese before Italy became a country in 1861. Many myths surround the power of this wine and how some Austrian deserted the army and instead of going to battle with the Piedmontese, they got drunk on Buttafuoco and did battle with bottles and barrels.

On the neck of the bottle you can also see a judgement about the quality of the year expressed in “fire or fuochi” going from 3 to 6. A committee of Oenologists does a blind tasting and assigns the rating of “fuochi.”

The producers of Buttafuoco Storico created the above wine which is signed by the Oenologist Jean-Francois Coquard. Each year they produce a wine made from the grapes grown on the historic vineyards of Buttafuoco. The wine is then created each year by a different Oenologist. The wine is the top of the top of Buttafuoco, with a tasting panel which decided which vineyards to include in the blend. They give points on a scale of 100 and only vines that receive 80/100 or more can be part of the blend. This cuvée of the best of the best that we tasted was intense and very full bodied with wonderful dark fruit, spice, pepper, leather, and some mineral notes derived from the soils, good acidity and silky, forceful tannins. The first year they made this group wine was 2011.