Coenobium is latin; in this sense it refers to communal monasticism, or cenobitic living. This blend of malvasia, grecchetto, verdicchio and trebbiano is an organically produced beauty from the Lazio hills, north of Rome, and qualifies as WWOW for a bunch of reasons.

The first and most obvious being the producers themselves; nuns- that’s right, sisters. Living cenobitically, as it were. Lives given over to prayer, worship and communal labor. Living modestly on the produce they can grow, or in this case, vinify.

If we UnCorker’s had a time machine(and what we wouldn’t give for that) we could go back to a time long ago when religious orders kept viticulture alive. As you’ve read in these pages, after the fall of the Roman Empire, during the dark ages, it was the church that kept all that the Roman’s had learned about viticulture alive. Today, we don’t think twice about drinking beer made by Belgian Trappists, but wine made by nuns- weird.

Another weird bit; viticulturally, at least until very recently, Lazio was considered a backwater- Frascati and Est! Est! Est! dominate the landscape. Overcropped, carelessly made oceans of the stuff guzzled in the trattorias of Rome. And why not? The biggest market in Italy is just down the road, willing to drink just about anything, so long as its cheap, which didn’t give producers much of an incentive to make quality, characterful wines.

That’s been changing with the likes of Sergio Mottura, Casale del Giglio and Colle Picchioni, but these are big time players- trying to wipe the tarnish off of Lazio’s image, make names for their estates, and make money- not so the Suore Cistercensi, whose production is relatively tiny, and who keep a decidedly low profile. Very weird indeed in this day and age.

Like their middle-age forebears, the sisters make their wine organically, without fining or filtering. Giampiero Bea(Paolo’s son) has been the viticulturist responsible for production, so its easy to see the influence of Neal Rosenthal, the wines importer/distributor in this. An early and influential supporter of natural, traditional winemaking, Rosenthal introduced Bea’s wine to America, and the Bea style is evident in Coenobium, and even more so in Coenobium Rusticum. A good long soak with the skins gives this wine a complex personality; a rich perfume of honeysuckle, green apples, custard apples, apple cider and orange blossom give way to a rich golden wine that looks more like something commonly seen out of Friuli these days. Mineral driven, it is surprisingly clean on the palate-

The Rusticum is the same blend of grapes from the same vineyards, but in this case Giampiero Bea convinced the sisters to give a small batch an even more extended soak, and boy is this reminescent of Bea’s famous Santa Chiara- more orange then gold, rich scents of apples again(close your eyes, you’re in a beautiful orchard on a warm fall day) big and almost musky on the palate, this is the opposite of how even Roman’s have considered the state of viticulture in Lazio.

Another piece of weirdness- you can pick up a botlle of Coenobium for around $20, cuz the sisters, they’re not in this for the fame of money.

Traditionally, viticulture in the Canary Islands was focused on sweet wines, often called Malmsey, for export; Shakespeare called it “an absolutely penetrating wine,” in Henry IV. Robert Louis Stevenson writes that “a little good canary will comfort me the heart of it.” The Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV, drowned in a barrel of Malmsey in 1478. With modern tastes turning from sweet wines, vintners in the Canaries had mostly focused on crappy mediocre dry wines for the tourist trade, and almost none of their production was exported anywhere. The last decade has seen some big changes, modernization, and the number of denominated zones(do’s) making wine of real character. Lanzarote, the island farthest east is where our WWOW hails from. It is on the forefront of the Canaries wine revolution, and Bodegas los Bermejo is one leading the charge.

Viticulture on the islands is difficult; the winds are legendary, driving the weaker of the population barking mad, and driving wineries to dig zocos, little half craters for each indivdual vine- And the soil, wow, black volcanic pomice covers most of Lanzarote- over a half of the island was covered by ten feet of black lava in the 18th century. This has had its benefits; phlyoxera never got a foothold, the vines roots go deep into the soil, the volcanic pomice holds water and air, important since rain and water is scarce.

Malvasia is more of a family of grapes then a single identity, though there are usually some commonalities, for instance they all tend to be on the aromatic side, orange blossoms, peach, flowers-generous, even when bone dry. The NV Bermejo lacks that aromaticity-rather a honeyed, leesy nose is found, with a rich color to match. And boy is this bone dry- Brut Nature indeed(3 grams of residual sugar max per liter, and no dosage) Sherry and hazelnut dominate the palate, with a fine, almost sharp, persistant bead that reinforces that sense of dryness-Not our favorite sparkler, but pretty weird and unusual stuff.